The Street by Ann Petry is a novel that relays the difficult, chilling, and tragic story of Lutie Johnson and several others like her. Lutie Johnson is the protagonist a smart, cunning, ambitious, and independent woman; who sadly has not yet learned to read the signs and symbols of American culture with the disbelieving irony required by the conditions of her race and gender. At the opening of the novel, Lutie is intoxicated by such commonplace American images as Benjamin Franklin, self-made individuals, and white picket fences. By the conclusion of the novel, however, Lutie is filled with a new vision of herself, of the society around her, and of her place in that society—a society in which she had formerly fully invested her faith and her
