Table of Contents
What is the Bread Givers about?
Bread Givers — Persea Books. This masterwork of American immigrant literature, set in the 1920s on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, tells the story of Sara Smolinsky, the youngest daughter of an Orthodox rabbi, who rebels against her father’s rigid conception of Jewish womanhood.
How does Sara struggle at college Bread Givers?
In the novel Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska, the main character Sara, expresses her dislike of her father. Sara is frustrated by her father’s tyrannical rule over her life and the lives of her sisters. As a result, Sara runs away in order to pursue a life of her own — filled with her hopes, dreams and ideas of love.
How does the Bread Givers end?
This new relationship finally marks the end of Sara’s loneliness, and in her new happiness, she decides once again to reach out to her father. Hugo does this as well, and the novel ends with the implication that Reb Smolinsky will soon escape his new wife by moving in with Hugo and Sara.
Who is the bread giver in Bread Givers?
A bread giver is literally the person who gives the family bread, the one who puts food on the table and supports the family financially. Traditionally in a Jewish household this is supposed to be the male figure.
Who was the antagonist in bread givers?
Reb Smolinsky
The head of the Smolinsky family and Sara’s major antagonist. Extremely dedicated in his religious beliefs, Reb Smolinsky has devoted his entire life to studying the Torah and other Jewish holy books.
Who is the protagonist in bread givers?
Sara Smolinsky
10-year-old Sara Smolinsky is the protagonist and narrator of Bread Givers. Sara lives in a tenement with her Orthodox Jewish father, Reb Smolinsky, her mother, Shenah, and her three older sisters Bessie, Fania, and Mashah in the Lower East Side of New York City.
Which book describes the protagonist’s lonely struggle for upward mobility in bread givers?
Salome of the Tenements, a novel that was also made into a film, and Children of Loneliness, a collection of short stories, followed in 1923. Bread Givers (1925), with the original subtitle “A Struggle Between a Father of the Old World and a Daughter of the New,” is her most famous work.
Which book describes the protagonists lonely struggle for upward mobility in bread givers?
What year does the bread givers take place?
1925
One of his daughters runs away rather than live by his rules. The author tells us during the period of time 1925 what is was like to have no money in America and what the struggles of everyday living was like.
Who did Fania marry in bread givers?
Reb Smolinsky also disapproves of Fania’s sweetheart, a poor poet named Morris Lipkin, and shames him away. He then arranges marriages for all three girls, which leave them all desperately unhappy. Sara is furious with her father for what he’s done to her sisters, but her age and gender leave her powerless.
What is the setting time place of the bread givers?
Setting. The novel is set in the 1920s in Lower East Side of New York City, specifically, on Hester Street.
Did Anna Yezierska have a second marriage?
The second marriage yielded a daughter, Louise, whom Yezierska eventually left for her former husband to raise. Yezierska published her first story in 1915, and she began receiving wide recognition for her writing in 1919. She published her first novel, Salome of the Tenements, in 1923.
What was Yezierska’s final book?
Yezierska’s final published book, a fictionalized autobiography, Red Ribbon on a White Horse, was one last retelling of the story she had spent her entire life writing. She died in 1970. Though Yezierska achieved a measure of success during her lifetime, it was always a struggle.
What happened to Bessie Smolinsky daughters in the giver?
The older daughters, Bessie, Mashah, and Fania, can’t find work, and Mashah spends what little money she has to make herself look more beautiful. Their father, Reb Smolinsky, doesn’t work at all, spending his days reading holy books and commandeering his daughters’ wages—his due as a Jewish father.
Why did Mary Yezierska move to New York?
Her father was a Talmudic scholar, and the large family lived on the money her mother made from peddling goods, as well as on contributions from neighbors, who honored the way the family supported their studious and holy father. Yezierska and her family immigrated to New York City in around 1890.