Student Literary Essays
Look at this essay for the elements that are required for an acceptable literary essay. First of all, you must have a thesis stated in the first paragraph. This author’s thesis is sentence four. After that sentence is a quoted example. Notice how the write attaches the quote to her own sentence. In this case, the quote is the object of the verb “was.” The next example shows the writer using a “that” clause to attach the quote to her sentence. And the next example uses the quote like dialogue (She said…). Then there is the long quote. A long quote is any quote over three lines. This writer treats this long quote as dialogue as well, introducing the quote with “said.” Notice that the long quote is NOT surrounded by quotation marks; the indentation takes the place of the quotation marks. Look carefully at the quote in red. Notice that the period goes at the end, outside of the parentheses.
What Do You Really See?
Symbols are everywhere a person looks. The US flag is a symbol of freedom
and justice; the "Golden Arches" of McDonald's means french fries, toys, and a fun
place to play to lots of children. Many authors will use symbols in their novel
to give the story a deeper meaning than what is only on the page. Meridel Le Suer used symbols in
the novel The Girl which painted a picture of the lives of the women who
lived during the Depression. One symbol that showed how the women changed in
this book was the Booya that they cooked. Booya was “an elegant stew of
chicken and veal and beef and every kind of vegetable and you cook it all night
and all day very, very slow and it gets to smelling even out on the streets and
the cats look in the window” (1). Just like the different meats
and vegetables that took a long time to cook very slow, the women began to come
together at the
In order to see how these women were like Booya, their different past lives need to be examined first. In The Girl, there were four main woman characters : the Girl, Belle, Clara, and Amelia. The Girl was "a virgin from the country scared of her shadow" (2). She had come to the city to find a job even though her mother told her that "terrible things could be happening to" her (1). She worked as a waitress for Hoinck and Belle. Belle was a lively woman who "you could hear laughing upstairs and downstairs and even out in the back" of the bootleg bar (2). She stayed by her husband even though he beat her and talked her into aborting all thirteen of her pregnancies. The third woman was Clara, who the Girl admired because Clara taught her things that would help her adapt to this new life in the city like "how to wander on the street and not be picked up by plain-clothesmen and police matrons" (1). When Clara said, "every cloud has a silver lining," her true nature of a dreamer was beginning to show (5). The final character was Amelia. She was the one character that did not change in this novel. Difficult times, like when husband had been killed during a strike, had formed her into this strong character.
In the beginning, the
The next mention of the Booya was after the Girl
had lost her virginity. Almost immediately after intimate relation Butch tells
the Girl that he "has to meet a guy" and that he is already late
(46). The Girl was hurt and confused. She said that she "didn't know it
would be like this. Nobody tells you the truth" (45). The Girl went back
to the
The women finally came together completely at the old warehouse. This was
where the Booya was last mentioned. After the failed
bank robbery, the loss of all of the men, and the fight to get or stay on
relief, the women worked together to survive. After the Shock treatments that Clara had received the Girl
tried to get Clara to respond to her when she said,
Remember the
Bill and Butch, those
pretty fellows, those wonderful foxes you used to call them,
those slick cats you said....Remember? (126)
The women were not going to stand around and take the abuse that they had taken from the people who wanted to sterilize the women and who wouldn't help them get the nourishment that Clara and the Girl needed to survive. Amelia told them, "We got to fight for each other" (124). The women littered the streets "with those leaflets saying Milk and Iron Pills for Clara" right before Clara died (129).
The Booya symbolised how women could band together and make a difference in each others lives like the meats and vegetables that were cooked together to make this great smelling stew. Over time, many things become symbols to everyone. The key is to find out the real meaning behind what you see.
by Sherry Burton, Spring, 1999
The Road to Womanhood
The Girl, a novel by Meridel Le Suer, is a complex story about a young, naive girl becoming an independent woman in the Depression era. In each person’s life there are many trials and tribulations that make you who you are. This story tells of the sound bonds created by women as they stick together to get through the cruel times of the Depression. The girl has her taste of bad luck, unfortunate experiences and gets a little help along the way. In the end she prevails and blooms into a stronger, more independent woman.
The setting of the story begins in a tavern that performs an illegal bootleg operation. The girl says about this: “Clara and I were the only waitresses and had to be going up and down from the bar to the bootleg rooms upstairs”(1). The girl comes from simple beginnings in a rural area and is terrified by the big city culture. This is illustrated when the girl says, “My mama had told me that the cities were Sodom and Gomorrah, and terrible things could happen to you, which made me scared most of the time”(1).
The Girl has many special bonds with the women in her life. She learns a lot about living and who she is from them all. The Girl’s relationship with her mother is that of reverence, although they are not very close. The girl shows this when she says, “ I could never do that. I could never touch mama”(29). Her mother led a sheltered life. She got married young and her husband and children were her entire life. When the girl returns home for her father’s funeral she talks to her mother and wants to get some advice about her relationship with Butch. The girl says, “I wanted to ask her a million questions. I wanted to tell her about Butch. About having to decide something” (34). She doesn’t ask, but she does end up learning a lot about married life and her mother and father’s relationship from their conversation. The death of her father brought about many changes including a new found independence for the Girl’s mother. With her husband now deceased the girl’s mother is forced to be on her own and has new responsibilities she never imagined she’d have. Most of her life has been lived for her husband now she must figure out who she is as a person.
Belle and her husband Honick own the tavern the girl waitresses in. “ Belle is a mighty smart woman but she drinks too much”(2). Belle plays a key role in the girl’s life. Belle informs the girl of things her mother never told her about. She tells her about men and gives the girl advice on issues concerning her and her love interest, Butch. Belle, unlike the girl, is well informed on relationships and sex. She has received “thirteen abortions.” An ironic twist occurs when the girl loses her virginity to Butch, ends up pregnant and Butch insists that she has an abortion. Belle says, “ Don’t have it taken out”(100). This tells us that Belle has formed her own opinions about abortion and shows her growth into independence. Belle regrets having had all her abortions. She wants the girls life to be different. Belle has learned through her experiences and shows what a true friend she is by tying to persuade the girl against having an abortion.
Amelia is introduced into the story as a mother type figure to the girl. Amelia has six children and is an activist in the Workers Alliance. Amelia comes to rescue in the end. She helps the girl through the death of Butch. Amelia consoles the girl, “O you poor child. I read about it. I heard about it. O the things you been through, I know them” (99). Amelia knows how wonderful it is to have children regardless the circumstances. Amelia persuades the girl to have the child when she says:
You are going to have a child now?
When she smiled her face broke into many wrinkles.
Yes, I said.
Why, she said, you will have a child and then you will belong to the whole earth. (99)
Amelia is a very strong woman someone the girl admires and respects. Amelia is one of the more positive role models in the girl’s life and she has a very positive affect on the girl’s decisions throughout the story.
Clara is a complicated character she looks out for the girl, but is not a very good role model. Clara gets taken to a mental hospital and receives shock treatments and is never the same. The girl tries to get her to remember, “Clara! Clara! I cried remember me, remember how you took me on your wandering, how you showed me everything”(126). Clara is never becomes well and dies just as the girl is giving birth. In remembrance the newborn girl is named Clara. This is the turning point of the novel. The birth is a symbol of the new girl and the new women.
As the men who started out so strong and powerful fail, the women bind together to prevail, doing eventually what they now is right and creating a better future for themselves. They have turned their lives around and have a new sense of who they are and what they want to become. The girl, with the help of some extraordinary friends, has transformed into a woman.
Eng
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Evolution of Women
Many authors have tackled the subject of "coming of age" for their stories. Meridel Le Sueur goes deeper for her story The Girl. She writes about the idea of "coming to knowledge", or more accurately "coming to the knowledge of one's self". On the surface Le Sueur's book gives the account of a young girl living in the "big city" and working in a bootleg bar during the Depression. The story details, in part, some of the girl's relationships, such as the ones with her closest friend Clara and the girl's lover Butch. The girl's story begins in these ignoble surroundings, a bar filled with thugs and gangsters, travels through the violence of a bank robbery turned travesty, and ends with the ultimate climax of nature and womanhood: childbirth.
As with most good authors, Le Sueur tells a story much deeper than the one seen at first glance. The true story is that of the girl changing from the girl she was/is to the woman she is to become. By telling the story of the girl, Le Sueur tells the story of the transformation of women during this time.
This transformation is detailed by Le Sueur through three of the female characters: the girl, the main character of the book; her mother, and the girl's employer and friend Belle. The way the author shows the changes women were experiencing, which is reflective in the stages or "growing up" periods of the girl, is by telling of the reactions and attitudes each woman has to the death of her husband, or in the case of the girl her lover.
The first woman who must deal with the death of the man in her life is the girl's mother. It is appropriate that the girl's mother loses her husband early in the book, because she is symbolic of the earliest or first stages of womanhood. She is the woman of the past, only living through her husband and children. This is shown in what the mother says to the girl after the girl's father's death, "Now I'll live only for you children ..." (31).* The girl's mother has no life of her own. She is of a time when a woman's identity is that given her by her husband and in part her children. In the brief time she has in the book, she is called by the various forms of mother repeatedly and only once is her first name given. Even when we as the reader hears her name it is through her husband's words and voice (36).
The girl's mother not only has her identity through her husband, but she also finds her worth through him. When she and the girl are talking about married life, she is very clear about how she views it, "... Sorry for marrying your father! What would have become of me if I hadn't?" (34). One of the most sacred rites of womanhood is the bearing of children. The girl's mother doesn't even take credit for this feat, "He made me good children, he made good children" (37). It is interesting to note that when the girl first sees her mother after coming home for her father's funeral that the first thing the girl's mother does is throw her apron over her head (29). It is almost as if Le Sueur is trying to convey the shame women felt at this time for being widows instead of wives.
Belle on the other hand is where women were at this time. She was in the present, a state of change from the "old" woman into the "new" woman. She represents the change women were making from their mothers to who they (the daughters) would become. After her husband's death, Belle's life doesn't end. Belle has no children of her own to live through, so in a sense she mush find her own way or identity. The reason Belle has no children is that she was the woman of the past before her husband's death. Just as the girl's mother had children for her husband, Belle didn't have children for her husband (11). Belle still has some of the "old" woman in her, enough to need a crutch to make life easier. In the place of Hoinck, her husband, she turns to alcohol, "If I drink a shot now I'll have to four. O, I might as well take four as one ..." (101). The girl observes this in the book when she states that "Belle was drunk most of the time ..." (104).
Belle is changing at this time just as most women were changing. She is moving away from the woman who done what her husband told her. This is seen when the girl comes to live with her and some other women after the girl's lover Butch dies. All of the women are taking about the girl being pregnant. Belle now has her own belief about abortion, "Don't have it taken out" (100). She may still need something to lean on, but she is starting to form her own identity.
The girl is the new woman. She represents what women at the time were striving towards. She is moving away from her mother. Early in the book she speaks of this need to get away from her mother, "I had to leave. I had to get back anyway" (37). Le Sueur shows that the girl is different from both her mother and Belle. The first indication of this is the death of Butch. The girl, unlike her mother and Belle, is alone with her man when he dies (95). There is no time for mourning or feeling sorry for herself. The girl must rely on herself just to get back to the place she considers home and the people she considers family (96). Whereas the other two women became lost and had at least some self-pity, the girl became angry and defiant;
You can't keep on remembering forever, I said. I'm hungry. I'll never
have the things I want. Nobody can shut me up, I'm not going to be
good, be happy, make plans, act like nothing has happened (101).
The girl triumphs over the death of her lover by bringing forth life without him (131). This is the true journey away from needing a man for everything to finding her own way. The girl had taken the first steps on this journey before the baby's birth, even before Butch's death. When the girl told Butch about the pregnancy, he wanted her to have an abortion. She defied him and made a choice for herself (73).
Meridel Le Sueur tells the story of the girl finding herself and by telling her story she tells the story of many women finding themselves. The girl isn't just one girl, she is many girls. Her journey is that of a nation of women. In the book the girl is changing and is turning away from the life of her mother and of Belle. I think this transformation is realized in the final scene of the book: the birth. The girl's mother doesn't even see this event as her own miracle; Belle denies herself this miracle, but in the end the girl has this miracle for herself.
________________________________________________________________________
*All quotes are taken from:
Le Sueur, Meridel. The Girl. 2nd ed. 1990. West End Press, 1999.
By Rhonda Wright
Is Love Blind?: The Girl by Meridel Le Sueur
When I think of the novel The Girl by Meridel Le Sueur, I think of tragic love stories. The Girl is the story of a young girl, referred only as the girl by the author, set in the Great Depression era. Not only is this story one of love, it is one of finding out the cruel truths of society. The girl like so many is willing to let her love for a man lead her down the path of self destruction. Is love blind? The girl is willing to be abused, give herself to another man, and even commit crimes all for the love of a man.
From the very beginning of the novel you come to know the girl as a young country bumpkin who moved to the city to try and earn money. The girl states, “I was lucky to get a job after all the walking and hunting Clara and I had to be doing” (1). Clare who is the girl’s best friend seems to be the street savvy of the time. The girl looks up to Clara and trusts her judgment. The girl states:
I was lucky to have Clara showing me how to wander on the street and not get picked up
by the plain clothes man and police matrons. They will pick you up, Clara told me, and
give you tests and sterilize you or send you to a woman’s prison. (1)
At this point in the novel you get the feeling that the girl is like the sheep in the lion's den. All though she is dependent of Clara, she begins to start to discover life for herself.
Butch who is also introduced in chapter one is the girl’s first love. Clara who sees the infatuation for Butch by the girl tries to warn her saying “[t]hat there Butch is a dangerous cat” (1). Butch, like most men in that era, was down on his luck, dreaming that his luck would change. Butch says to the girl, “[a]sk Bill, Butch said, he’ll tell you I’m a natural winner” (6). The girl is drawn to Butch like a moth to a flame.
The girl becomes more attached to Butch after the death of his brother Bill, when they try scabbing on a factory job. The girl’s ignorance to the ways of the world is shown again in chapter 8. Butch declared, “Jesus he said, I don’t believe you ever did kiss a guy before, like you said”(35). This is the first time in the book that the girl considers having sex with Butch. She is very afraid, not knowing what will happen. She does not know if she will do it right. Butch finally believes that she is a virgin, and his hunger is multiplied.
Just after this encounter the girl gets a letter from her father. The letter is harsh, and gives a look at how she viewed her father. The girl says, “I wished he could die” (40). Not long after the letter the girl receives another letter saying her father is dead. The girl returns home to help her mother to help with the arrangements. This trip home is a critical time for the girl. Here she hopes to gain answers from her mother, on how to deal with her feelings for Butch. Her mother tells her of how her father worked hard, and she stayed by his side, and they managed to feed all eleven children day in and day out. To the girl’s mother, her father was a good man and the tough times was what made him bad. The girl’s mother states, “[t]hey used him bad” (52). The girl leaves and returns back to the German Village with a new outlook, another turning point for the girl, in that she begins to see more of the cruel world.
Chapter 13 is what I like to call the fight scene. Butch says to the girl,”[i]f you are going to sit there and cry like a banshee, by God, I’m going”(59). This chapter is critical in two ways. First, the girl compares Butch to her father and states that she wants to be like her mother. The girl says, “I want meat, bread, children; I am starving”(59). The second important shift in the girl's life comes from losing her virginity. After her sexual encounter with Butch, the girl comes out even more confused. When Butch notices the blood, this frightens the girl in thinking she has done it wrong. The girl wonders, “Had Butch won, struck a foul, thrown a home run, made the bases, or struck out?" (64). To seek these answers once again the girl finds herself with the women of the German Village, the bootleg bar where she had found work as a waitress.
After talking with Clara, Belle and Amelia the girl knows that she is in love with Butch and would do anything for him. The girl says, “I did love him, I loved him, I want to help him, I want him”(67). Here hopeless love becomes more evident in chapter 17 when the girl, Butch, and Ganz are going over some of the plans for the bank robbery. In this conversation Ganz seems to put down Butch and asks the girl most of the questions, even questioning Butch’s ability to do the robbery. The girl assures Ganz that Butch will be fine. This is one of the first hints that Ganz is interested more in the girl than Butch and the robbery.
In chapter 19 the girl is willing to sell herself to Ganz for twenty five dollars. She believes that this will help Butch with the service station. This is another part in the life of the girl that has tragedy. Trying to get out of the deal with Ganz, she is raped by him. The girl leaves the hotel room and heads to where Butch lives; not finding him, she returns to the German Village finding him there. The Girl tries to warn Butch about Ganz, but Butch sees the robbery as a beat down. And he likes to beat. Butch tells the girl, “Ganz is nuts about you, just play along, and it will be over with and we will have all that do re mi” (92). This is again were Butch treats the girl as a piece of meat dangling her in front of Ganz to get what he wants.
The next turning point in the girl’s life is when she tells Butch she is pregnant. Butch’s reaction is one of disbelief, and then becomes angry. He suggests that the girl go down to the river and get it taken care of. When Butch takes her to the woman this is when the girl defies Butch for the first time and makes a decision for her own sake and not having the abortion, keeping it a secret from Butch.
Chapter 27 is what I like to call the robbery scene. This has been what Butch has been waiting for to reshape his life make him his own boss. The girl is at the wheel when the men enter the bank. All is going well till a man gets loose from Butch. Ganz shoots Hoinck in the back and the Butch shoots Ganz. In the gunfight Butch is also hit. This is when Butch finally begins to realize that to make things work he needs to cooperate with the girl instead of trying to beat her. Unfortunately for Butch he learns these lessons in his dying moments, discovering his dreams of being his own boss at a service station as a lie. Butch in his dying breaths finally realizes that he hade made nothing of his life and wishes he would have changed it all.
These sad events lead up to my question: Is love blind? As we have seen here the girl was willing to give up her freedoms to do a crime just for her man. The girl out of love sold herself just to help Butch get his service station. Finally she was willing to risk her self to have a baby and bring it in a time were times were hard. Perhaps only romantic love is blind. In the final moments of the book, with the passing of Clara, and the birth of baby Clara the girl finally understands about love.
By James Tabor (2008)
My comments: This essay is an example of what I am calling an Objective Literary paper. It is not objective because it professes to be the truth. It is objective because the focus of the writer's attention is on one of the many patterns of relationships the writer is attempting to make more known to the reader. To reveal this pattern, it is a distraction to impose personal information about the writer. Again, the focus of the writer's attention, and the reader's attention, is on the literary text; the job of the writer to reveal something interesting (or to make something interesting) about the novel that the casual reader is little aware of.
The next literary essay is more personal. The focus for this type of essay is still on the literary text itself, but with a difference: what is revealed about the novel is made known through an emphasis on the writer's own history. Each writer is unique; each writer writing about literature brings to the literary text his or her own personal history that is unique to the experience of the text. From that unique personal history, the literary text can be evaluated, appreciated, explained personally. The emphasis is still on the text, but now the emphasis is personal.
The Girl & I
We are all guilty of taking certain things in life for granted. Take me for instance; I always concentrate on today and what I can do to make life easier for myself and my family. I get depressed thinking about war, starving children and abuse of any type. It wasn't until I read The Girl that I realized how lucky I really am. We have all heard of the Depression and shrugged it off as a terrible time to have lived in.
When I first started reading The Girl, I was somewhat bored. After three or four chapters something ticked in my mind that what I was reading actually happened, and it was during the time that my parents and grandparents were alive. They suffered through the Depression, and to me that was probably the biggest accomplishment during their life.
Le Sueur brought out the hard facts of the Depression. She writes in such a way that I felt at times that I was the Girl. I actually found myself acting out the part.
Here I am a country girl, leaving home because I really can't find a purpose for staying. My father is far from being the loving caring man that defines a father, and my mother, after yielding to my father for so many years and having all us children, is not as stable as she should be.
I go to the city to find a job and being young, inexperienced and scared, I'm concerned what the city has to offer me during the bad times of the Depression. Belle and Hoinck, caretakers of a tavern, give me a job as a waitress. In this tavern, my life actually begins. Even though I know that Belle and Hoinck are bootleggers, and the other waitress that becomes my dear friend, Clara is a prostitute, I feel wanted in this environment and safe enough to know that I can survive.
I fall in love with Butch and dream of a life of love and happiness. My relationship with Butch is one-sided: my side has all the love and dreams that could make a relationship, but Butch's side is made only of dreams of making it rich.
Le Sueur lets us feel the Girl's emotions toward Butch:
I felt hot and strange and the sweat ran down my armpits... Then something kind of exploded in my eyes and I saw him...uncover his black sleek head. (4)
Clara and the Girl keep a close relationship throughout the story. The Girl soon learns that Butch will go to extremes to get his riches. A bank robbery is planned, and greed brings about the death of Hoinck, Butch and Ganz, a gangster who deceives Hoinck and Butch during the robbery.
The Girl finds herself pregnant, and by keeping the baby, this story stays alive also. The survivors are the women. This seems ironic because during the days of the Depression, the men were portrayed as being the strong ones = the survivors.
During the Girl's time of need, Amelia tries to see to it that the Girl is cared for. Amelia also tries to get help for Clara who is dying. It's sad to think you even had to beg for milk and juice. In a sense, Amelia is the hero of this story. Amelia shows her strength by standing up to the Worker's Alliance:
Well death doesn't wait either. I tell you a mother needs milk and Clara is dying...and Clara having all those abortions and now electric shock treatments... (120)
The women eventually have to move into an old warehouse that is occupied by other women seeking shelter. It is in this warehouse that the determined young girl gives birth to her baby, and her dear friend, Clara, succumbs to the call of death. Le Sueur writes: "It was then I heard Clara, such a little gasp was her last. I knew it right away. Clara, I cried, Clara don't go" (128). And later she connects with her friend by naming her child: "A girl, she cried, a girl... She turned golden as Clara... Light, I said, Claro Clara. Her name is Clara..." (131) .
I recently had a chance to visit with my grandmother and discuss the Depression days. To my surprise, I learned that my own sweet little grandfather was a bootlegger during the Depression. My grandmother said,
We had to do something to survive. We didn't look at bootlegging as a sin but a way of feeding our children.
I couldn't mail a letter in those days because stamps were three cents, and I just didn't have it to spare. (Ousley)
I found myself getting engrossed in her story of how she would saddle her mule early in the morning, get her pistol and saddle bags and head out peddling extra butter, eggs and bread. She would even strap live chickens to her saddle to peddle. (I couldn't help but laugh just picturing the chickens flopping against the mule). Even though she was recalling the roughest times of her life, a smile remained on her face. How amazing! I can't imagine living like she had to in those days.
I'm really glad I read The Girl. Le Sueur sparked an interest in me that made me ask questions about the Depression that I probably never would have otherwise. The inhuman abortions that took place, and the government program plan of sterilizing women seem more like fiction than reality. My children will probably never have the opportunity to talk with someone who actually lived during the Depression. I am going to make sure that the stories given to me about the Depression will be shared with my children. Thank you Meridel Le Sueur.
—Lynn Ousley, English
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The Ties That Bind
In each
person’s life there are certain people that we seem to be drawn to.
Whether it is certain characteristics or the circumstances by which we meet
them, there is something that binds us to them in a way which is not always
easily understood. Such is the case in the story The Girl by Meridel Le
Sueur which tells of the life of a naive, young country girl who comes to the
"big city" to find work. As readers we are transported back to the
Great Depression era, where life is hard and strong relationships are even
harder to find and keep. The girl manages, even though times are hard, to make
lasting women friends, find work (albeit in a bootleg bar), and to fall in
love. Devastating circumstances happen though, when she loses her
love in a tragic bank robbery gone wrong, and her best friend to death in
a horrible and degrading way. The one bright spot in the story may
be the end where we see the girl, more mature and enlightened, become a woman--a
mother.
Le Sueur
takes the reader through the different women characters that each play a pivotal role in the maturing growth of the girl. One
aspect of these characters we find to look at might be the mother-daughter
correlation that the women in the story relate. In the beginning, we see the girl
describing how her own mother warned her "that the cities were Sodom and
Gomorrah," and this made her "scared most of the time"(1). The
girl comparing her mother to one woman she meets early on named Amelia
says, "I am thinking she looks like mama, like she has carried a lot and
fought a lot and endured a lot" (2). We get to meet the girls’
mother when she hears of her fathers’ death and returns home. Immediately
we see the character of her mother when the girl arrives home:
She looked
smaller than ever and older. O’ Girl, she cried, they’ll blame me.
You
don’t think they’ll blame me?
What
for? I said. She smelled funny.
It wasn't my
fault, she said. Why should they blame me? A doctor costs a lot.
Didn't
you call the doctor, mama?
She threw her apron over her head. You see, they'll blame me. (29)
The relationship between this girl
and her mother is not a close one. She relates this when she tells how her
brother put his hand on their mothers shoulder and the girl says, "I could
never do that. I could never touch mama" (29).
Even though the girl and her mother are not close, she does find lasting relationships that help her grow and mature. Her friendship with Clara, the prostitute, proves to be a immense learning experience for the girl. Clara seems to bond with the girl, because her relationship with her mother was not close either. Clara tells the girl, "My mama had eight children . . . they took four away from her and I run away to something bigger and better” (2).Clara may not be the best role model for the girl, but they have a bond which helps them to understand each other, "And we put our arms around each other, our lives being so the same"(9). This statement shows the compassion they have for each other. The bond between Clara and the girl continues as the girl takes on the role of mother almost to Clara, because the many years of prostitution have now taken a toll on Clara and her body. When the state takes Clara away to a mental hospital for shock treatments, and brings her back she is never the same: "It wasn't that she was white, she was always white, it was that look in her eyes and her stillness. She was very very still as if she had gone out of herself, as if the shock like an explosion had sent the doves of her spirit flying away never to come back" (123).
Soon after,
with Clara on her death bed the girl tries to shake some memory of their
relationship in Clara. She says, “Remember that, Clara, we’ll
remember for you. We’ll help you bit by bit, all of it, all our
great lousy beautiful and terrible life, you'll see, we’ll remember it
all, all. I remember every insult those rich johns gave you that night, Clara,
and you shining like a light, that's what you are a light, Clara, a prarie city light. Don't forget it!” (126).
Another
character in Le Sueur’s story that takes on the
role of mother is Belle, the gregarious wife of a bootlegger for which the girl
works. The girl introduces us to Belle as "a beauty once, with dyed red
hair and white skin and her eyes made up so they glittered" (2). Belle
takes on this role by telling the girl about men and women and their
relationships. She shows compassion and understanding for the girl after her
first sexual experience with her love, Butch. Seeing Belle, the girl
says, "I knew Belle knew when she came toward me, and I buried my face in
the great beery breasts and she lifted my face and looked into it and
said, Here baby, sit down, you look like a ghost" (47).
Although Belle mothers the girl, she is the first to admit she’s only had
her husband, "Hoinck to mother, and a hell of
a child he is" (48). Her reasoning may be because she has had
"thirteen abortions" and that this world, "it’s covered
with slime . . . I wouldn’t bring up no kids in it" (9).
The last
and probably the strongest character in this story to be a mother figure is
Amelia. In the first of the story the girl compares Amelia to her mother when
they meet and from there the relationship begins. Amelia is an activist for the
Workers Alliance and for the poor, especially women. She believes
"everyone is important" and spreads her beliefs as well as her
literature in the bootleg bar where the girl works (2). Amelia evidently has
experience in being a mother, because she tells the girl "that she had had
six children already " before her husband was killed on the picket line
(48). As life sometimes repeats itself in others, the girl’s lover Butch
is killed and Amelia, knowing the pain of loss, consoles the girl. Amelia
comforting her says, "Don’t cry girl, don’t cry now"
(99). The girl feeling the "awful emptiness"
of death gains her strength from Amelia with her mothering touch
"which was like a root of a tree" on her (99). Upon learning the girl
is pregnant, Amelia tries to encourage her by talking about her pregnancy:
"No matter how hard it was for me I would feel good" (100). She
continues to care for the girl throughout her pregnancy and ends up helping the
girl to deliver the small life which begins a new chapter for the girl now a
woman: “Covered with a kind of slime and dark she lay
the child on me. A girl, she cried, a girl, and she rubbed the slime
and the child let a little gasp and breathed before my eyes turned and
glowed the dark memory, flushing” (131).
The tragic
circumstances and the hardships that take place in the girl's
life and the women around her seem to bind them together. These women learn to
depend on one another and support each other and this shines as an example that
the strength of a woman is sometimes the mothering nature from deep inside.
By Sheila Howell
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