Bread Givers And Quicksand Literary Analysis

In the early 20th century was not a particular good era for women. The conventions at the time of womanhood was to get marry and have children. In Anzia Yezierska’s Bread Givers and Nella Larsen’s Quicksand, the female protagonists dare to want more than marriage and they want a place for themselves to be independent stable women. Both of Bread Givers and Quicksand explores the image of American female identity in the early 20th century. Both Sara and Helga struggles with their identities with their racial and gender backgrounds that manifest in different ways that shape their journey into finding a place to call their own. In this quote “A lack somewhere. Always she had considered it a lack of understanding on the part of the community, but …show more content…
Where it affects Sara hugely in her role in the novel, with Helga the affects are subtler and nuance. Sara is told by her father “God didn’t listen to women. Heaven and the next were only for men. Women could get into Heaven because they were wives and daughters of men” (Bread Givers pg 9). That Sara has only value if she can serve a man in her life whether its her father, husband, or son. Sara originally wants to have her independence because she wants a room to herself, where her father at first had a room to himself and his books. Sara is always look down upon because of her gender whether it’s her family, friends, or strangers. When Sara tries to find a place for herself people assume that she is a prostitute because she is a young single female. As she working hard to go to college, she meets Max Goldstein who is man she always envisions an American born made man. However she recognizes he wants a wife and not her. He belittles her because she wants to improve herself with completing her education and not marriage. “What for should you waste your time yet with school any more? You’re smart enough the way you are. Only dumbheads fool themselves that education and colleges and all that sort of nonsense will push them on in the world” (Bread Givers pg 199). That Sara knows she cannot find happiness in a man and that she also knows she cannot be happy with Max. This scene is important to show the importance of accepting oneself and not letting people control you. She does get marry, Hugo Seeling the principal of the school she works at. When they meet, he tells her he appreciates her work at the school, which no one has ever told her they appreciate her work before. Her is only one who she feels that she can truly be seen as person as not anyone’s