Impact of the Great Depression on the Characters in Tillie Olsen’s nove

Impact of the large economic crisis on the Characters in Tillie Olsens novel Yonnondio From the Thirties The corking Depression of the 1930s, which has been called the invisible scar, the absent presence, continues to impact American culture (Rabinowitz 17). The waste effect of failed businesses, the dust bowl, farm foreclosures, and an unemployment rate of 30 percent reminds us that capitalism is fallible. Although we recall with humility this bleak period of our history, we seldom consider on the plight of the Depressions most vulnerable victims--the underpaid, innumerate working poor. In Yonnondio From the Thirties, Tillie Olsen gives readers a searing personal account of a family fight to escape, or at least manage, abject poverty. Their journey from a Wyoming tap town to a farm in South Dakota to a massacre in Omaha presents one disaster after another for the Holbrook family. Because of this cycle, they represent thousands of unnamed heroes who struggled to surviv e and principal(prenominal)tain a family unit during difficult times. Although the novel depicts the familys struggle as a unit, three members emerge as the main characters. Trapped by lack of opportunity and a faltering self-image, Jim Holbrook plant under subhuman conditions to provide for his family. His struggle demonstrates how patriarchal culture oppresses twain men and women into ascribed roles based on impossible ideals. Anna, his wife, holds the family together with the meager resources brought in by her husband, who devalues her role because she is a woman and earns no money. As a result of this oppression, she grapples with her own identity, as motherhood and domestic responsibility countersink her opportunities for personal fulfillment an... ...ieb, Annie. A Writers Sounds and Silences. The New York times Book Review31 March 1974 5.Faulkner, Mara. Protest and Possibility in the Writings of Tillie Olsen. CharlottesvilleUniversity of Virginia, 1993.James, El izabeth. Written, They Reappear Rereading Yonnondio. Frontiers 18.3 (1997)141-45.Macpherson, Heidi Slettedahl. Class-ifying Escape Tillie Olsens Yonnondio. Studies In Contemporary assembly 41.3 (2000) 263.Orr, Elaine. On the Side of the Mother Yonnondio and Call It Sleep. Studies in American fabrication 21.2 (1993) 209-15.Rabinowitz, Paula. Labor and Desire Womens Revolutionary Fiction in Depression America. Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press, 1991.Tyson, Lois. Feminist Criticism. Critical Theory right away A User Friendly Guide. New York Garland Publishing, 1999. 117-152.