the ladies of the grapes of wrath

The big shock about Grapes, besides how damn good and beautiful it was, was the ending. (So stop reading now if you don't want it spoiled). Rose of Sharon, daughter in the Joad family, has a stillborn baby during a flood and then she uses her breast milk to feed a starving man. Whoa! The end. She smiled a secret smile just like she did when she was pregnant. What does that secret smile mean? that she has power? That she can care for another?

Here is what Steinbeck said about it to his editor: "It is casual...if there is a symbol, it is a survival symbol not a love symbol, it must be an accident, it must be a stranger, and it must be quick...The giving of the breast has no more sentiment than the giving of a piece of bread" (qtd. in Kawata, Steinbeck Studies 13.1).

People have compared Rose of Sharon to Jesus. Also, as Kawata points out, there's a simplicity; she's a wildflower. She is so whiny throughout the novel, though, frankly lazy and annoying. Why does she now rise to the occassion? Because it's a stranger? because she has nothing to lose? She does offer to help pick after Connie left but for the most part she's an inveterate whiner.

So how does this book relate to class?

Anger. Like Dorothy Allison. "a hopeless anger began to smolder" (479). It's a threat, like Wright's Bigger, these people, if oppressed for too long will rise up as one and revolt. led by women, which bothers Pa Joad. I'm not sure about how Steinbeck wants us to regard the changing role of women with increasing poverty....Ma Joad clearly rules the roost but still defers to men and I'm not sure why...maybe it's ceremony. Maybe power doesn't have to be wielded overtly? Either way this notion of the woman's role in poor families is intriguing, as are the next issues, technology and the land, and the disenfranchisement of worker from product (some Marx could come in here, probably).

See 467: Pa Joad: "Woman takin' over the fambly....And I don't even care." This is a mark of the depth of Joad's despair, apathy about matriarchy.

The Joad women, with their strength yet loyalty to their men, however mean those men can be, remind me of the Boatwright women. Though Pa Joad seems to be all talk. I don't really believe Ma would let him sock her, as he threatens to do once they settle down somewhere secure and safe.

The land is figured as a woman: "Behind the harrows, the long seeders--twelve curved iron penes erected in the foundry, orgasms set by gears, raping methodically, raping without passion....No man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth. Men ate what they had not raised, had no connection with the bread" (37-38).

Coming soon: The Human Stain and The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit