Gender Roles In Anzia Yezierska's 'Bread Givers'

Discuss Yezierska’s representations of gender roles and relationships in her novel Bread Givers.

The story ‘Bread Givers’ observes the role and practices of the Jewish immigrant, particularly females in America coarsely after the world war on New York City specifically. The novel focuses on a family and the relationship between a father who is a Rabbi, Reb Smolinsky and his daughters and wife. However, the story does focalize on Reb’s and his youngest daughter Sara’s relationship. Through events the storyline portrays the movements towards a young Jewish immigrant including her family. She does ‘come of age’ in a country that has completely different standards than those who are looked upon in the Smolinsky household and by a majority of the Jewish community in the area in the early 1900’s in New York City. I will be focusing on the daughters Bessie and Sara in order to state out the gender differences and roles they carry in the novel. As well as, the relationship and the way their father treats them relate to the fact that they are females in a new country.

In Sara’s eyes the hunger to adapt to the American standards
Here, the author makes very strong opinions that people may feel similar concerning why and how the Jewish community look upon ‘mixing’ with negative emotions and especially why the average Jewish immigrant female has a rare experience because of her sex. (Wilentz, 1991, pp 33-34). Wilentz stated that many Jewish writers had noted that ‘…The price of Americanization was increasing. The loss of the Jewish traditions and the rich, cultural life of the shtetl’. Bread Givers shows the reader the consequence of Americanization when Sara voices ‘I had made my choice and now I had to pay the cost,, daring to follow the urge in me. No Father, no Lover, no family, no friend’. (Yezierska and Kessler Harris, 2005, pp.