“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty” (Winston Churchill). The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan is a novel told in the perspective of two sisters, Marie and Antoinette van Goethem, living in 19th century Paris as part of society’s lower class. The two are forced to go into various types of work following their father’s death and their lives spiral down from there. Meanwhile, Gas Girls, a play by Donna-Michelle St. Bernard, follows two young women, Gigi and Lola, who work in the sex trade in Zimbabwe’s depressed economy. The two stories parallel each other in a variety of ways, including the fact that they both follow two young women as main characters, and that each of these women are part of the proletariat class.…