84 pages • 2 hours read
Betty SmithA Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1943A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Book Club Questions
Tools
BetaThemes
The Correlation of Class and Shame
Throughout A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, the idea that class is tied to pride and shame is constantly revisited. From the moment little Francie Nolan is called a “ragpicker,” this association is clear to her (7). It doesn’t take her long to learn the importance of having money; even at age 11, when Francie receives a nickel, she realizes she suddenly has a “power” that she didn’t before, and she describes money as a “wonderful thing” (11)—the only thing that will keep her from being called nasty names like ragpicker and “beggar” (213).
Francie learns this sense of shame in poverty partially from her parents. For example, Johnny frequently spends extra money to appear of a higher class than he really is. He insists on getting a paper collar instead of a celluloid one, and on having a personal mug at the barber’s instead of using the communal one, so he can “emulate(e) men who were in better circumstances” (292). When Francie sees her father making these small arrangements to appear of a higher class, she follows suit. For example, she carries a paper bag to pick up her bread instead of carrying it under her arm, since doing so would let “all the world know they were poor” (15).
Katie also shows her concern over class by never accepting charity. She refuses to accept any unearned help throughout the book, and when it seems she may need to accept charity in order to survive, she says she would rather be dead than see her family fall to that level of public disgrace.
Her parents aren’t the only ones who reify to Francie that being poor means being shameful. The doctor who says she “should be sterilized” (146) and a teacher who tells her “(p)eople are poor because they are too lazy to work” (332) add to this impression. As such, Francie spends much of her life plagued by this shame, trying to reinvent herself so that she can avoid the persecution that comes with being poor.
The Limitations of Being a Woman in Turn-of-the-20th-Century America
While gender equality was certainly on the minds of many Americans around the turn of the 20th century in the United States, one’s gender still defined one’s possibilities in many ways. Mary Rommely, Francie’s grandmother, “wept when they gave birth to daughters, knowing that to be born a woman meant a life of humble hardship” (63).
These hardships become clear in early in Francie’s female life. For example, the female population’s safety was much more at risk than that of the male population. As a child, Francie was subject to sexual abuse that Neeley never had to endure. She often had to offer her cheek to the local junkie in order to get paid because he “would give a girl an extra penny if she did not shrink when he pinched her cheek” (8). This action grooms Francie to be physically docile around men, something Neeley never has to worry about. Francie also fights off a child molester. Evy’s daughter, Blossom, learns of this particular vulnerability in women when her music teacher tries to use her feet to stimulate his foot fetish.
Women were also kept out of several professions and places. For example, teachers could only be unmarried women. Women could not vote and were expected to use their own entrance when entering the saloon. Women couldn’t be errand boys, and thus Francie ends up jealous of Neeley’s job. Additionally, Johnny balks at Katie’s decision to become a janitress, because he thinks it looks bad that she works so hard when she should be tending to her femininity instead.
The only place where women get their rightful due is in Francie’s family. Her mother goes against all other influences and tells Francie that “there’s a little bit of man in every woman and a little bit of woman in every man” (250). Additionally, all of the women in Francie’s family are hard workers who dominate their romantic relationships. Thanks to this influence, Francie is able to build some self-confidence, a rare trait among the women outside Francie’s family.
Antisemitism in Turn-of-the-20th-Century America
Antisemitism is always in the background of Francie’s life. Much like gender roles, antisemitic sentiment was passed down from one generation to the next. Throughout the book, Francie is a willing participant in antisemitism. In her world, antisemitism is so rampant and so normalized that she rarely sees it as offensive.
For example, at one point Francie is reflecting on a Jewish woman she sees on the street and wonders why “the Jews […] aren’t ashamed [of] the way they are fat” (12). She also tells the pickle vendor, “Give me a penny sheeny pickle,” and though “she meant no harm. She didn’t know what the word meant really,” the vendor is still angered by her slur (45).
Francie’s treatment of the Jewish population comes from the examples she sees around her. For example, “Most Brooklyn Germans had a habit of calling everyone who annoyed them a Jew” (113). Also, on Election Day, “the boys raided the pushcarts of the Jewish merchants and stole potatoes” (188). She hears a shop woman tell Katie that “by the Jews, money is everything. By me is different,” suggesting that the Jewish population would swindle Katie but she wouldn’t. Even Neeley joins in the harassment when he and his friends “took time out to bedevil a little Jew boy on his way to temple” (19).
Although Francie’s parents are not as vocally antisemitic as many other people Francie encounters, Katie still thinks it’s absurd that Sissy hires a Jewish doctor to deliver her baby. She tells Sissy she “has nothing against the Jews” but then insists that Sissy should stick with a doctor of her “own faith” (439). Sissy is the only character who rails against Brooklyn’s treatment of the Jewish population, insisting that “everybody […] knows that the Jewish doctors are smarter” (439). For much of the book, Jewish people are the scapegoats of New York City.
