In these chapters 5 and 6, I was so much involved in the feeling of despair, powerlessness that can be perceived in Anna and Jim.
I could feel Anna’s helpnessness, weariness. Despite all her efforts to work hard, to keep the family going, to satisfy the children’s needs, she can’t see any improvement. She also sees “faces masked in weariness” in the streets.
She is described as being “remote”, “lost in fog”. Anna struggles to keep her head clear but “ it was useless to resist, to cry out because it all was a voiceless dream to be endured”.
She becomes obsessed with cleaning as if “all that scrubbing in the house could make a “whiteness” inside her soul. But in vain: “the room would not come clear”, “the house resisted her”.
I could also feel Jim’s discouragement, “blinded with despair”.
The thoughts in Jim’s mind are so “vast and formless, so terrible and bitter that cannot be spoken, will never be spoken – till the day that hands will find a way to speak this; hands”. “Hands” could refer to workers who, one day, will be able to find a way to improve their condition. I think that “hands” can also be associated with writing, putting down words that could give a voice and shape to Jim’s formless thoughts and complete those “monosyllables that slip out” in the workers’ sighs and sobs and are as if never spoken. This is Olsen’s aim for writing this novel.
Jim cries out his great and wide crude singing . Here Olsen makes a reference to Whitman’s poem “I hear America singing”, by writing in parenthesis the first two lines of the poem :”I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear”. This reference has an ironic tone. In fact, in Whitman’s poem, America is a place where workers do meaninful, satisfying jobs and celebrate that by singing ( an idealized vision of America). In Olsen’s novel, that singing becomes a unifying cry of despair.
I'm glad you pointed out the role of music in these chapters. To me, it is not just the beauty of the songs that is comforting but also the agency: the way they feel entitled to sing their songs. This is one thing they can do. These days, most people feel singing together is something only professionals should do,* but in the period of this book people did make their own music, at home and socially.
* The exception is folks in the traditional music world. We have many pub sings near us in New England, and my son and his friends sing together all the time.
I confess I had to stop closely reading and annotating to make it through these chapters. I wanted to retreat with Mazie into her farm dreams. The visit to the home of their former friends is such a painful contrast. The Bedners have no children, can't have children. Jim and Anna can't care for theirs. "The children...How we going to look out for them in this damn world?" Is that cry the source that these people tap to keep striving, to keep surviving? After Anna's collapse, amazingly Else Bedner is there helping , a tiny ray of light, of community, in that vast, dark nightmare of going it alone.
I was struck by the centring of Anna's physicality and the impact of her miscarriage. Often it is male labour that is the focus. Here it is female-in both senses. Or a woman dies in childbirth 'off stage'. The impact of lack of food on the chance of survival of mother and daughter. The injustice when I remembered this is the 1930s not 1800s and contraception was known and available but not to all women. Its hard to read but the writing is so powerful. Thank you for introducing me to Tillie Olsen. I also appreciate that unlike the Iron Mills story this isn't an outside middle class view of working class experience.
This morning, rereading your analysis, here is what I've been pondering: "if you read Olsen thinking this is a time gone by, it may be worth considering who considers this book history. And for whom it feels current." And what is my responsibility to those for whom this is current. I keep going back to that passage in the Iron Mills about the responses of the factory owner's son, the doctor, and the cynical scholar contrasted with that of the Quaker woman who ministers in the prison. That's pretty convicting. Literature has a way of unnumbing numbness.
Thanks for the thoughtful analysis! This is the first book I am following along with in real-time- I had not heard of Yonnondio or Tillie Olsen before.
The passage about Jim ("the things in his mind so vast and formless, so terrible and bitter, cannot be spoken, will never be spoken—till the day that hands will find a way to speak this; hands.”) could relate to his lack of formal education: he never learned the vocabulary needed to express how he is feeling. But maybe it can be expressed without words, like Hugh did with the Korl Woman.
I found these chapters difficult to read- it was like being a fever dream (literally in the case of Anna's POV). The feeling of being completely overwhelmed by everything that needed to be done but couldn't be done was palpable.
I remembered that I had somehow procured a copy of Olsen's Silences a few years back and was struck by her ability to describe passages such as the one that was stumping you, Haley. And I was reading it just now...this could be way off, but this idea of there being no language for the experiences of this family, that in fact, there are a myriad of experiences we have in life that fly in the face of labeling or naming what it is we're experiencing.
Maybe we need more words.
But I don't think that's Olsen's point here. She emphasizes Jim's hands, and it reminds me of that scene in Dickens's A Christmas Carol, where one of the ghosts takes Scrooge to see the poor family living under the bridge. They are standing around a fire, trying to warm themselves during a harsh winter, and the father holds up his hands, turning them one way, then the other, and seeming to speak to them, he says something to the effect of "these hands want to work, but there's no work." Something like that. But it was the emphasis on the hands as body part that symbolizes work -- hard work -- work that should ideally lead to the culmination of the so-called American Dream, except for so many, especially during the Depression, that was never going to be fulfilled. So the narrator in this scene is considering how language has failed this family, and how there is nothing left to say, only that if hands could speak, what would they say? Would they want to beg? Would they want to steal? Would they want to work themselves bloody? In the moment, what they are actually doing is holding a child, so they are instruments of love.
I SO look forward to these posts and to reading everyone’s thoughtful comments! I really enjoyed the link above that explores artists of the Industrial Revolution (like Harry Sternberg).
In these chapters 5 and 6, I was so much involved in the feeling of despair, powerlessness that can be perceived in Anna and Jim.
I could feel Anna’s helpnessness, weariness. Despite all her efforts to work hard, to keep the family going, to satisfy the children’s needs, she can’t see any improvement. She also sees “faces masked in weariness” in the streets.
She is described as being “remote”, “lost in fog”. Anna struggles to keep her head clear but “ it was useless to resist, to cry out because it all was a voiceless dream to be endured”.
She becomes obsessed with cleaning as if “all that scrubbing in the house could make a “whiteness” inside her soul. But in vain: “the room would not come clear”, “the house resisted her”.
I could also feel Jim’s discouragement, “blinded with despair”.
The thoughts in Jim’s mind are so “vast and formless, so terrible and bitter that cannot be spoken, will never be spoken – till the day that hands will find a way to speak this; hands”. “Hands” could refer to workers who, one day, will be able to find a way to improve their condition. I think that “hands” can also be associated with writing, putting down words that could give a voice and shape to Jim’s formless thoughts and complete those “monosyllables that slip out” in the workers’ sighs and sobs and are as if never spoken. This is Olsen’s aim for writing this novel.
Jim cries out his great and wide crude singing . Here Olsen makes a reference to Whitman’s poem “I hear America singing”, by writing in parenthesis the first two lines of the poem :”I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear”. This reference has an ironic tone. In fact, in Whitman’s poem, America is a place where workers do meaninful, satisfying jobs and celebrate that by singing ( an idealized vision of America). In Olsen’s novel, that singing becomes a unifying cry of despair.
I'm glad you pointed out the role of music in these chapters. To me, it is not just the beauty of the songs that is comforting but also the agency: the way they feel entitled to sing their songs. This is one thing they can do. These days, most people feel singing together is something only professionals should do,* but in the period of this book people did make their own music, at home and socially.
* The exception is folks in the traditional music world. We have many pub sings near us in New England, and my son and his friends sing together all the time.
I confess I had to stop closely reading and annotating to make it through these chapters. I wanted to retreat with Mazie into her farm dreams. The visit to the home of their former friends is such a painful contrast. The Bedners have no children, can't have children. Jim and Anna can't care for theirs. "The children...How we going to look out for them in this damn world?" Is that cry the source that these people tap to keep striving, to keep surviving? After Anna's collapse, amazingly Else Bedner is there helping , a tiny ray of light, of community, in that vast, dark nightmare of going it alone.
This was a tough read... So much pain... But thank you for this super-informative post. I learned such a lot.
Yes. There is much in the post to think about and follow.
There are no new songs, only old ones.
No new hope, only an old one.
Dreams are broken.
The quicksands of poverty are sucking them in.
Anne has nothing more to offer to her children than the warmth of an old, hopeful song.
"She held him warm into her singing"
I was struck by the centring of Anna's physicality and the impact of her miscarriage. Often it is male labour that is the focus. Here it is female-in both senses. Or a woman dies in childbirth 'off stage'. The impact of lack of food on the chance of survival of mother and daughter. The injustice when I remembered this is the 1930s not 1800s and contraception was known and available but not to all women. Its hard to read but the writing is so powerful. Thank you for introducing me to Tillie Olsen. I also appreciate that unlike the Iron Mills story this isn't an outside middle class view of working class experience.
This morning, rereading your analysis, here is what I've been pondering: "if you read Olsen thinking this is a time gone by, it may be worth considering who considers this book history. And for whom it feels current." And what is my responsibility to those for whom this is current. I keep going back to that passage in the Iron Mills about the responses of the factory owner's son, the doctor, and the cynical scholar contrasted with that of the Quaker woman who ministers in the prison. That's pretty convicting. Literature has a way of unnumbing numbness.
Thanks for the thoughtful analysis! This is the first book I am following along with in real-time- I had not heard of Yonnondio or Tillie Olsen before.
The passage about Jim ("the things in his mind so vast and formless, so terrible and bitter, cannot be spoken, will never be spoken—till the day that hands will find a way to speak this; hands.”) could relate to his lack of formal education: he never learned the vocabulary needed to express how he is feeling. But maybe it can be expressed without words, like Hugh did with the Korl Woman.
I found these chapters difficult to read- it was like being a fever dream (literally in the case of Anna's POV). The feeling of being completely overwhelmed by everything that needed to be done but couldn't be done was palpable.
I remembered that I had somehow procured a copy of Olsen's Silences a few years back and was struck by her ability to describe passages such as the one that was stumping you, Haley. And I was reading it just now...this could be way off, but this idea of there being no language for the experiences of this family, that in fact, there are a myriad of experiences we have in life that fly in the face of labeling or naming what it is we're experiencing.
Maybe we need more words.
But I don't think that's Olsen's point here. She emphasizes Jim's hands, and it reminds me of that scene in Dickens's A Christmas Carol, where one of the ghosts takes Scrooge to see the poor family living under the bridge. They are standing around a fire, trying to warm themselves during a harsh winter, and the father holds up his hands, turning them one way, then the other, and seeming to speak to them, he says something to the effect of "these hands want to work, but there's no work." Something like that. But it was the emphasis on the hands as body part that symbolizes work -- hard work -- work that should ideally lead to the culmination of the so-called American Dream, except for so many, especially during the Depression, that was never going to be fulfilled. So the narrator in this scene is considering how language has failed this family, and how there is nothing left to say, only that if hands could speak, what would they say? Would they want to beg? Would they want to steal? Would they want to work themselves bloody? In the moment, what they are actually doing is holding a child, so they are instruments of love.
I SO look forward to these posts and to reading everyone’s thoughtful comments! I really enjoyed the link above that explores artists of the Industrial Revolution (like Harry Sternberg).
https://magpiesmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/1_max_481.jpg?strip=info&w=950