Reading Journal: Women's Voices in American Literature

Gertrude Stein: The Gentle Lena

The most obvious thing about this story is that nothing really happens. From the start, reading continually about the "patient, gentle, sweet and German" Lena and her "peaceful life," I expected some twist — perhaps Lena snapping and becoming something other than patient, gentle, and sweet. However, this twist does not come, which is probably what makes the story work so well. It is a simple and sad story about a life lived without consequence. Having Lena resolve the situation in some way would not be true to the story, since any action would imply that Lena's life had some meaning she herself never claimed.

Overall, it is a story of a woman accepting her life without questioning it. Lena does not appear either content or happy; it is more as though she is numb. This is emphasized by the fact that nobody seems to notice when she dies, and it is equally striking that she dies peacefully.

While this peaceful life could in some ways be seen as a good thing, the overall effect is that it seems even sadder than a life of suffering. There is no point at which Lena is described as happy or sad. Instead, the narrative constantly repeats that she is patient, gentle, and sweet. While these might seem like admirable qualities, they are also deeply passive ones. This effect reveals that Stein has been very careful with her word choice: the whole story carries a passive quality that mimics Lena's life. Just as Lena dies at the end without struggling against her death, the reader is left wondering what the real significance of the story is.

It then becomes apparent that the whole point is that nothing happened — and nothing could have happened — because this is who Lena was: a woman who went through life without ever really experiencing it. Any action would not have honored her character.

The other important aspect is that Lena never changes; she remains the same throughout the story. This is another reason why any different ending would not have been fitting. Without truly experiencing life, Lena did not have the experience needed to grow, so she died the same way she lived — without consequence. In the end, Lena dies as if she were never really here. And in many ways, she never really was. She was alive in that she existed, but she left no impact on the world because she was never really part of it.

Anzia Yezierska: The Free Vacation House

The first-person narrative in this story is especially effective. Yezierska manages to maintain the strong voice of her narrator throughout, and that narration says more about the situation of the poorer class than any other approach could have achieved.

One of the main features of the story is how this poor woman sees herself compared to how society sees her. She clearly values herself, as shown by her objections to needing charity. At the same time, the rest of society treats her as inferior. By allowing the narrator to describe the situation from her own perspective, the story makes both her self-perception and society's treatment of her unmistakably clear.

This effect also prompted me to consider what society thought of people like her and why they were treated as they were. The conclusion is that society as a whole believes it is superior to these lower-class people. One scene where this is especially apparent is when the charity lady comes to the house to ask questions and immediately removes the dummy from the child's mouth. Despite the woman's poverty, she is still the mother, and this moment makes clear that the upper class looks down on the lower class and presumes to know better. This attitude is further emphasized by the way the poor families are treated more like children or animals than like real people at the vacation house.

The meaning of the story crystallizes when the poor woman returns home and realizes she is free. She is genuinely thankful to be back, showing that personal freedom is more important to her than the pleasures richer people enjoy. This ending also reframes the title. "The Free Vacation House" carries an irony: the house that costs nothing is far from free. This illustrates that personal freedom matters far more than material comfort.

Lillian Hellman: Watch on the Rhine

One of the things I especially admired about this play is the way Hellman manages to express a strong and controversial viewpoint without allowing it to overwhelm everything else the play offers. The play deals with the struggle against Nazism and can be read as a warning to the audience. Despite this heavy theme, it also manages to be entertaining, relevant, and even amusing.

Hellman achieves this by centering the larger theme in the lives of individual characters. The action revolves around Kurt's personal struggle, and this human dimension keeps the play engaging and understandable. This approach ensures that the themes do not press so insistently that the play begins to lose its entertainment value.

That entertainment value is also sustained by Hellman's use of humor. She seemed to understand that the heavy political material needed something lighter to balance it, and it is a mark of her skill that the humor and the political themes coexist without the former diminishing the seriousness of the latter.

Tillie Olsen: Yonnondio

I found this approach particularly effective because I both understood the message and enjoyed the action of the play. This was not a case where the seriousness made for a laborious read. Instead, the play is driven by action, with the message underlying that action rather than displacing it.

One of the things that stood out about this story was how hard life was for the women. This was evident from the beginning and seemed to intensify as the story progressed. As it developed, it became clear not only that the women endured a difficult life, but that they were also unable to exercise any real control over it. A good example is the section in which Old Man Caldwell tries to help Mazie. He attempts to educate her, but Mazie is unable to benefit from his help. He gives her books as a means of teaching her, but Jim sells them. This demonstrated that Mazie is trapped in her situation and beyond reach of outside assistance.

The story also communicated to me that Mazie is trapped in her situation partly because of her own good character and her deep desire to care for her family. She cannot fully benefit from Caldwell's efforts because she does not see education as what she needs most. She seems to want to care for her family above everything else, and this good intention works against her given the harshness of her circumstances. I think that if Mazie had cared less about her family, she might have focused on herself and found a way to rise above her situation. This gave the story a tragic quality: a good person is undermined by her own goodness.

This dimension of Mazie's character is also visible after she is raped by her husband. Following the rape, she becomes obsessed with cleaning and with protecting her children from germs and disease. I read this compulsion as her way of coping with her complete lack of control. While she is desperately trying to keep the family functioning, the rape seems like the ultimate sign that her husband has no respect for her. Mazie reacts by trying to impose order on her life through the tasks of housewife and mother. This obsession also shows that despite the terrible circumstances, she remains focused entirely on her family.

I also came to see Mazie as a kind of hero. While she is treated terribly as a woman, I did not read the central theme as being about women trapped in a prescribed role. Mazie's role as housewife and mother seems like the one that is genuinely right for her, and I believe she would have chosen it even if it had not been forced upon her. The real message, as I understood it, is the suffering Mazie endures because her poverty prevents her from fulfilling this role effectively. She constantly strives to care for her family, yet her circumstances always stand in the way. Yet she never gives up. I see this as contrasting sharply with her husband's behavior — most powerfully illustrated by the rape, which goes against everything that should be right. In this way, Mazie manages to endure the hardship with her values intact, while her husband falls victim to it.

In the end, I saw the story as demonstrating Mazie's strength in the face of a world that treats her so harshly. The fact that she is treated so poorly is itself a sign that this strength is not recognized or valued. Mazie deserves respect, yet receives none. This communicated to me the error of a society that fails to recognize the worth of women. Even after all the hardship and her husband's treatment of her, she does not reject him — another sign of her strength, and a suggestion that she is able to see his cruelty as the product of his own pain. This further illustrates a commitment to family that is, in the deepest sense, honorable.

Ultimately, I saw this story as showing how people cope with hardship when they try everything and yet can never quite rise above their situation. While Mazie is poor and uneducated, she is admirable for her dedication to her family and her refusal to prioritize herself. The tragedy is made even sadder by the fact that she is such a genuinely good person.