the burn of charity

I wanted to wait to write about Grapes of Wrath until I finished it but I had to pause and write about this issue. I've often wondered when reading Bastard Out of Carolina why Anney Boatwright doesn't just get welfare. In fact, I doubt think there is any mention of any of the Boatwrights getting welfare. But Anney and her daughters are poor, so poor she feeds them ketchup on Saltines for dinner. So poor that she (if the implications can be believed) prostitutes herself to feed them.

Of course, it's pride, right? Family should provide for family. But what does this say about the author? I would hesitate to say it means Allison is against welfare. She knew poverty and hunger; she must be sympathetic to those who seek assistance. Or maybe she's not. Maybe she's somewhat ambivalent, like I am?

I've thought about this extensively in relation to Sapphire's Push, so much so that I don't feel like re-hashing it. The protagonist, Precious, wants to use welfare but her teacher, Ms, Rain, (a rather idealized, heroine figure) suggests Precious not use welfare. Ms. Rain says something to the effect of "Why don't you go home and see how much welfare has done for your mother?" Precious's mother is a hateful, manipulative, abusive woman who is committing welfare fraud.

A passage I didn't write about but would consider addressing in a revised version of the essay reads:

Miz Rain say value. Values determine how we live much as money do. I say Miz Rain stupid there. All I can think she don't know to have NOTHIN'. Never breathe and wait for check, check; cry when check late. Check important. Most important....Miz Rain say feelin's is important. White woman on the news leave her daddy in desert in a wheelchair when checks run out....Bitch leave him under a cactus tree wif teddy bear. Don't tell me 'bout check not important.

So, we admire the Boatwrights and love Precious because charity is not necessarily a given for them. They don't feel "entitled." Does this mean for a character to be noble that they can accept charity but they must struggle with that choice? They can't do it automatically, as the sensible option for someone who is malnourished and in need amidst an atmosphere of American affluence?

I feel uneasy with these narrative devices...these double binds. It's as if we're saying as a culture, "Yes, you can accept charity but you better not be happy about it! Please, take a dollop of shame or at least ambivalence with that welfare check. You better be thinking about your future!". But really consider how hard it must be to think about the future in the face of so much financial uncertainty....As much as she's a monster, I somewhat sympathize with the situation of Precious's mother Mary. Mary had no Miz Rain to tell her she could be something more than just another welfare recipient....

Back to the beginning, to The Grapes of Wrath which has arguably shaped so much of the way we think about the noble poor. There's a scene in that book at the campground (which much like the Each One Teach One school in Push is an idealized space of community, where each member is equally important and valuable, where authority is compassionate rather than oppressive). One woman explains that she is responsible for the all the TP going missing because her family is terribly malnourished. The camp committee head yells at the woman, "You ain't got the right to let your girls git hungry in this camp." The camp has a fund where families can be fronted five dollars worth of food, to pay back when they work again. But this woman is reluctant to take advantage of it. Another committee member tries to rationalize this reluctance, "Maybe she's took charity one time-another....If a body's ever took charity, it makes a burn that don't come out....[speaker explains a time when she took charity] Las' winter....Fella tol' us to go to the Salvation Army....they made us crawl for our dinner. they took our dignity."

The other committee member didn't get it because she never accepted charity. So, do you have to go there to know there? Can anyone know how humiliating it feels to need a hand-out? It's not resilience; it's need and nowhere else to turn. What's worse: stealing, prostituting oneself, or accepting a welfare check? Is there a way to take the stigma out of poverty and need or should that stigma exist because it is in fact a really miserable state (I think The Trouble with Diversity may apply here, but I don't feel like witting much more).

If the poor don't feel some shame or frustration does that mean they want to be poor? I'm asking this not as some political baiter, but as a person trying to find out where literature intersects with society, where our class structure and the beliefs America touts as essentially or, for lack of a better term, admirably American (like self-reliance, individualism, and the importance of family) influence literature. Clearly, Steinbeck is arguing for a dramatic shift in the practices of labor and capital. But, what about Sapphire or Allison? Do they also advocate for a more communal society less married to the pursuit of rugged individualism and Manifest Destiny? If this were the case, if these authors wanted us to consider a more communal social structure as viable then why are there narratives so centered on an individual? Steinbeck makes all the Joads important, though Tom is of course paramount. But Allison and Sapphire both have first person narrators with rather f*ed up families. Allison's extended family may be alright but, still....