James Hood

LITR 4333 2003 research project

On the Role of Education in the Female American Immigrant Narrative

In studying the American immigrant narrative, one soon becomes aware of recurring themes that link many of those stories together. One discovers that the stories often begin with the narrator describing conditions of political oppression, religious persecution, or economic disadvantage in the person’s homeland, but the reader becomes just as aware that there are new issues that confront the immigrant upon arrival in this so-called “Promised Land.”

            Among the many new problems that the American immigrant faces in this country is the fact that the person is now—and, depending on that person’s previous station in life in the “old” country, perhaps, still—an “outsider.” The immigrant feels as though (s)he is outside the mainstream of the dominant culture, and that (s)he will be left behind as the rest of the people in the world around the newcomer move ahead towards their destiny with fortune and personal fulfillment. One means of mediating this feeling of being outside the mainstream of the dominant culture lies in one of the most basic of American ideals—that of an education being a right to which any individual is entitled. As one soon discovers, it is education that plays an important role in the assimilation process, and particularly so in the case of the female American immigrant, who often comes to this country after having borne the additional burden of gender bias in her own country that comes from generations of oppression.

            One example of this legacy of female oppression with regards to education is shown in Mary Antin’s autobiographical work, The Promised Land, first published in 1912. Antin describes life as an American immigrant, beginning with her early childhood in Russia as part of a Jewish family that adheres to “tradition.”  Antin speaks of the atmosphere of political, religious, and sexual repression, stating that the attitude towards Jews in general—and females in particular—is as follows:

The survival in Russia of mediæval injustice to Jews was responsible for the narrowness of educational standards in the Polotzk of my time. Jewish scholarship, as we have seen, was confined to a knowledge of the Hebrew language and literature, and even these limited stores of learning were not equally divided between men and women. In the mediæval position of the women of Polotzk education really had no place. A girl was “finished” when she could read her prayers in Hebrew, following the meaning by the aid of the Yiddish translation especially prepared for women. If she could sign her name in Russian, do a little figuring, and write a letter in Yiddish to the parents of her betrothed, she was called wohl gelehrent—well educated (Antin 111).

Antin’s father, however, departs from this tradition by traveling to America, in order to establish a foothold in this country from which he and his family can begin their climb to freedom from persecution and oppression. Her father also believes in the power of education, and is anxious to bring his children to the new country so that they can take advantage of this wonderfully American right of passage. Antin writes of her father’s belief in this principle as follows:

Education was free. That subject my father had written about repeatedly, as comprising his chief hope for us children, the essence of American opportunity, the treasure that no thief could touch, not even misfortune or poverty. It was the one thing that he was able to promise us when he sent for us; surer, safer than bread or shelter. On our second day I was thrilled with the realization of what this freedom of education meant. A little girl from across the alley came and offered to conduct us to school. My father was out, but we five between us had a few words of English by this time. We knew the word school. We understood. This child, who had never seen us till yesterday, who could not pronounce our names, who was not much better dressed than we, was able to offer us the freedom of the schools of Boston! No application made, no questions asked, no examinations, rulings, exclusions; no machinations, no fees. The doors stood open for every one of us. The smallest child could show us the way (Antin 186).

            Antin realizes the magnitude of this principle of education as a means of “equalizing” society, allowing those who are as poor as her to learn and become empowered individuals who stand on equal footing with others who are “above” her own station in life. In later years, Antin writes that she “thought it miracle enough that I, Mashke, the granddaughter of Raphael the Russian, born to a humble destiny, should be at home in an American metropolis, be free to fashion my own life, and should dream my dreams in English phrases (Antin 197). Of these dreams, she also states that

Your immigrant inspectors will tell you what poverty the foreigner brings in his baggage, what want in his pockets. Let the overgrown boy of twelve, reverently drawing his letters in the baby class, testify to the noble dreams and high ideals that may be hidden beneath the greasy caftan of the immigrant. Speaking for the Jews, at least, I know I am safe in inviting such an investigation (Antin 198).

            In Jane Martin’s Coming of Age in Academe: Rekindling Women’s Hopes and Reforming the Academy, however, the author addresses the particular issues that confront women who attempt to “cross the bridge” that separates their world from that of the men in a society. Martin suggests that “The land we immigrants walk into has long belonged to men. It has been ours only in our dreams “ (Martin 70-71). Martin, it seems, recognizes that women are strangers in their own land, and that those who venture into the world controlled by men are “immigrants” as well as those who come from other countries to America’s shores. Martin cites support for her theory of estrangement, both from the perspective of the immigrant and the woman in society, stating that

…historian Oscar Handlin called the story of nineteenth-century immigration to the United States “a history of alienation and its consequences.” Emigration took people “out of traditional, accustomed environments and replanted them in strange ground, among strangers, where strange manners prevailed.” As I write, the plight of women in my own country and many other nations resonates with Antin’s first-person and Handlin’s third-person renditions of the immigrant experience (Martin 71).

            Martin does concur, however, with Antin in asserting that education provides the means for mediating these conditions of exclusion and alienation. Martin states that “To find a harsh and brutal filter that lets relatively few women into the Promised Land unscathed we need look no further than that thing called education” (Martin 75). The author offers a caveat, however, stating that “Education is by no means the only filter of girls and women. Family church, peer groups, and media all do their part. But the existence of other screening devices does not diminish education’s central role in maintaining the “purity” of the Promised Land “(Martin 75).

            Of the role of education as the “great equalizer” for immigrants (and, for minorities in general, it would seem), Beverly Cassara writes that “The learning process is valid…if learners understand how to change their oppressive situation and how to participate ‘critically, creatively in the defense of their social interests’” (Cassara 152). This might seem to indicate that education alone does not “cure” all social ills, but it might still imply that education is the catalyst for effecting those changes, by creating an “awareness” that there are means for doing so.

            Returning to the issue of gender bias in the female immigrants’ old countries as a basis for wanting to change “their oppressive situations,” as Cassara suggests, Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior illustrates precisely why that desire to escape gender roles exists. In this wonderful tale of realism mixed with folklore, the author creates a character based on Fa Mu Lan, a mythical warrior princess in ancient China. Kingston’s young female character is given a choice by an old couple, to whom the child has been sent. In giving the young girl a choice to determine her own destiny, the couple tells her that “You can go pull sweet potatoes, or you can stay with us and learn how to fight barbarians and bandits” (Kingston 2963). The child chooses to partake of this “education,” and she endures many hardships in her training before finally succeeding in ridding her world of evil.

In her character’s other persona, Kingston writes that she is always reminded by her mother, however, of the Chinese proverbs that state that “There’s no profit in raising girls. Better to raise geese than girls” (Kingston 2976). Kingston also writes of the attitude towards older women in China, stating that “The Communists gave axes to the old ladies and said, ‘Go and kill yourself. You’re useless’” (Kingston 2979). These two passages illustrate the gender bias that exists, even to her present day.

The character listens to her mother belittle her because she was not born male, and she tries to mitigate this feeling of being an “outsider” by immersing herself in a college education. The character states that “I went away to college—Berkley in the sixties—and I studied, and I marched to change the world, but I did not turn into a boy” (Kingston 2977). Despite making good grades and becoming an enlightened, empowered individual, the narrator states that “My American life has been such a disappointment” (Kingston 2976). This disappointment and disillusionment with the outcome of her experiment with education, as one will later learn, indicates that the American Dream sometimes becomes the American Nightmare.

One also sees this struggle to break free of traditional gender roles in Nicholasa Mohr’s The English Lesson, a story of an immigrant wife who attempts to better herself through adult education courses. Lali, the main character, must deal with a husband who is so insecure that he questions her motives: “’Why is it necessary, eh?’ Rudi had protested. ‘She works here in the store with me. She don’t have to talk to nobody. Besides, everybody that comes in speaks Spanish—practically everybody, anyway’” (Mohr 21). Her husband adheres to the “tradition,” and therefore wishes to keep his wife subjugated to him, as generations of this type of oppression have dictated as the “norm.”

Another example of this desire of the female American immigrant to escape traditional gender roles through education is illustrated in Pat Mora’s poem, “Elena,” which follows:

My Spanish isn’t enough.

I remember how I’d smile

listening to my little ones,

understanding every word they’d say,

their jokes, their songs, their plots.

        Vamos a pedirle dulces a mama. Vamos.

But that was in Mexico.

Now my children go to American high schools.

They speak English. At night they sit around

the kitchen table, laugh with one another.

I stand by the stove and feel dumb, alone.

I bought a book to learn English.

My husband frowned, drank more beer.

My oldest said, “Mamá, he doesn’t want you

to be smarter than he is.” I’m forty,

embarrassed at mispronouncing words,

embarrassed at the laughter of my children,

the grocer, the mailman. Sometimes I take

my English book and lock myself in the bathroom,

say the thick words softly,

for if I stop trying, I will be deaf

when my children need my help (Mora 11).

Note that Elena, the mother, wishes to become educated, but that her approach does not include making use of conventional methods such as adult education classes, as does Lali in The English Lesson. Elena hides in the bathroom to practice her English, because, as her child says of Elena’s husband, “Mamá, he doesn’t want you to be smarter than he is.” This reinforces the notion that female American immigrants must contend not only with education as a means for moving beyond exclusion, but with “traditional” gender issues that follow them from the old country.

            While one might consider that these gender issues become less distinct—or at least, not as overtly practiced—as one moves towards the “upper” strata in societies, such is not always the case. One case in point is Bharati Mukherjee’s A Wife’s Story, which details an account of a female immigrant from India who is working on her Ph.D. in special education in America, while her husband remains behind in India.

While Panna, the main character, goes so far as to state that “I’ve made it. I’m making something of my life. I’ve left home, my husband, to get a Ph.D. in special ed.,” she also explains that  “My mother was beaten by her mother-in-law, my grandmother, when she’d registered for French lessons at the Alliance Française. My grandmother, the eldest daughter of a rich zamindar, was illiterate” (Mukherjee 60). Thus, it seems, that although her mother comes from an affluent segment of their society, she is beaten by her own mother [the narrator’s grandmother] for attempting to move beyond the confines of “traditional” gender roles—in effect, she has been denied the opportunity to become an “immigrant” in the world of men, and is to remain an “outsider.” Panna herself defies this tradition by refusing to return to India at her husband’s insistence, because she wants to obtain her Ph.D.—the pinnacle of education—as a symbol of empowerment and enlightenment, and in fact, freeing her from the shackles of traditional gender roles.

Anzia Yezierska illustrates the role of education in the female American immigrant narrative as well, with her novel, The Bread Givers, in which Sara, the daughter of a particularly oppressive Jewish father, escapes her prison-like existence by attending college. Her father, it seems, is aware that education is a valuable commodity, but he believes that he (by virtue of being the male in the family) is the only person entitled to an education—in his case, the education being that of the scholarly pursuit of the teachings of the Holy Torah. He even proclaims to his family that his education is necessary—at the expense of his children having to slave their lives away to provide for him—because he believes that “all America will come to my feet to learn” (Yezierska 9).

When Sara decides to leave, she soon realizes that a gender bias exists, even in America, as she attempts to rent a room in a boarding house, only to discover that “no girls allowed” is the standard mantra of a society in which women are the “unwelcome outsiders” who are to be denied access to the true Promised Land. Sara decides to get an education, and is determined that she will no longer be denied her goal. She states that “Nothing had ever come to me without my going out after it. I had to fight for my living, fight for every bit of my education” (Yezierska 218). Her obsession with obtaining this education is apparent with her statement that “I want knowledge. How, like a starved thing in the dark, I’m driven to reach for it” (Yezierska 230).

Upon beginning this education, Sara becomes disillusioned at one point, however, and wonders if the college is “only a factory, turning out lectures by the hour on wooden dummies, incapable of response?” (Yezierska 224). This reference to the institution of education as a “factory” mirrors many theorists’ views that the purpose of education is to maintain the status quo—to ensure that people are trained to be take their place in society, and that this “place” is dictated more by class structure than any other determinant. This disillusionment at discovering that education may not be the “cure-all  for society’s ills” might be displaced, however, inasmuch as the problem may lie instead in the very construct of an American society that seeks to maintain that status quo, despite the fact that, at the very heart of the American ideal, a notion that a social contract exists that at least tacitly implies that those who work hard to “get ahead” in this society will be rewarded.

One such example of society reneging on this “contract” is seen in another of Yezierska’s works, Soap and Water. In this tale, the female protagonist slaves her life away in a laundry, cleaning other peoples’ fine clothing. She decides to better herself, much as Sara does in The Bread Givers, by attending college in hopes of becoming a teacher. After working for many years to obtain this degree that will allow her to finally enter the “land of milk and honey,” she is told that her teaching certificate is being withheld, the only reason being her unkempt appearance, which, Dean Whiteside claims, is unprofessional and not befitting that of a teacher. As the protagonist discovers, what seems to be the American Dream has now become the American Nightmare.

This “American Nightmare” illustrates the fact that, despite one’s dedication to the concept of the American Dream, there are (and always will be) obstacles for those who are already disenfranchised by the dominant culture in a society. Whether those “outsiders” are minorities, immigrants, or simply those who have the misfortune to have been born into a working-class family rather than one of wealth, there remains only one hope for mediating those circumstances. That one hope is education, and it is, by far, the great equalizer, and plays an especially important role in the female American immigrant narrative.

Works Cited

Antin, Mary. The Promised Land: The Autobiography of a Russian Immigrant. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969.

Cassara, Beverly B., ed. Adult Education in a Multicultural Society. New York: Routledge, 1990.

Kingston, Maxine Hong. “The Woman Warrior.” The Heath Anthology of American Literature. 4^th ed. Ed. Paul Lauter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002. 2961-2980.

Martin, Jane R. Coming of Age in Academe: Rekindling Women’s Hopes and Reforming the Academy. New York: Routledge, 2000.

Mohr, Nicholasa. “The English Lesson.” Imagining America: Stories from the Promised Land. Revised ed. Ed. Wesley Brown and Amy Ling. New York: Persea Books, 2002. 21-34.

Mora, Pat. “Elena.” Unsettling America: An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry. Ed. Maria Mazziotti Gillan and Jennifer Gillan. New York: Penguin Books, 1994. 11.

Mukherjee, Bharati. “A Wife’s Story.” Imagining America: Stories from the Promised Land. Revised ed. Ed. Wesley Brown and Amy Ling. New York: Persea Books, 2002. 57-69.

Yezierska, Anzia. The Bread Givers. Revised ed. New York: Persea Books, 1999.

---. “Soap and Water.” Imagining America: Stories from the Promised Land. 1^st ed. Ed. Wesley Brown and Amy Ling. New York: Persea Books, 1991. 105-110.