In the Studio...



From the library...

"To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth."
There are so many comments I would love to make and an in-depth conversation I would love to engage in, but what I want to focus on about this book is the role women played in the novel, the matriarch of the family in particular. I'm obviously drawn to this discussion because of my body of work and its exploration into the role of women. This novel seems to make the quiet case that circumstances of the time (the Dustbowl and mass migration to California) allowed women to rise to a position of power they'd not experienced before. The role of the men was to find work and when they did find that work to earn as much as they could from the limited work there was. There role was to earn the money to buy food and other necessary provisions. I recognize that is a difficult job in itself - the pressures of finding work to feed your starving family must be overwhelming. But it seems to me the men had the easier of jobs. Time and again Ma was burdened with the task of trying to fill the bellies of her family, especially the men, so they'd have the energy to work; a simple task when you have the provisions to work with - not so easy when all you have is flour, water and a bit of grease. She also had the job of trying to barter with shopkeepers to get any discount she could and was often up against a wall in trying to make a dollar stretch far enough to get what the family needed for sustenance. They were the cooks, cleaners, general homemaker, peacemaker between children (and sometimes between the arguments of the men) and morale booster. They were responsible for keeping the threads of the family from fraying and breaking apart during stress and strife.
There's a passage in the book that summarizes for me very well this position women had and demonstrates the source of their strength - this is the same passage that marks the end of the 1940 film adaptation of the novel:
" 'We got nothin', now,' Pa said. 'Comin' a long time - no work, no crops. What we gonna do then? How we gonna git stuff to eat? An' I tell you Rosasharn aint' so far from due. Git so I hate to think. Go digging back to a ol' time to keep from thinkin'. Seems like our life's over an' done.'
'No, it ain't,' Ma smiled. 'It ain't, Pa. An' that's one more thing a woman knows. I noticed that. Man, he lives in jerks - baby born an' a man dies, an' that's a jerk - get a farm an' loses his farm, an' that's a jerk. Woman, it's all one flow, like a stream, little eddies, little waterfalls, but the river, it goes right on. Woman looks at it like that. We ain't gonna die out. People is goin' on - changin' a little, maybe, but goin' right on.'
'How can you tell?' Uncle John demanded. 'What's to keep ever'thing from stoppin'; all the folks from jus' gittin' tired an' lyin' down?'
Ma considered. She rubbed the shiny back of one hand with the other, pushed the fingers of her right hand between the fingers of her left. 'Hard to say,' she said. 'Ever'thing we do - seems to me is aimed right at goin' on. Seems that way to me. Even gettin' hungry - even bein' sick; some die, but the rest is tougher. Jus' try to live the day, jus' the day.' "
On the stereo...

Lyric of Do Re Mi:
Lots of folks back East, they say, is leavin' home every day,
Beatin' the hot old dusty way to the California line.
'Cross the desert sands they roll, gettin' out of that old dust bowl,
They think they're goin' to a sugar bowl, but here's what they find
Now, the police at the port of entry say,
"You're number fourteen thousand for today."
Oh, if you ain't got the do re mi, folks, you ain't got the do re mi,
Why, you better go back to beautiful Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Georgia, Tennessee.
California is a garden of Eden, a paradise to live in or see;
But believe it or not, you won't find it so hot If you ain't got the do re mi.
You want to buy you a home or a farm, that can't deal nobody harm,
Or take your vacation by the mountains or sea.
Don't swap your old cow for a car, you better stay right where you are,
Better take this little tip from me.
'Cause I look through the want ads every day
But the headlines on the papers always say:
If you ain't got the do re mi, boys, you ain't got the do re mi,
Why, you better go back to beautiful Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Georgia, Tennessee.
California is a garden of Eden, a paradise to live in or see;
But believe it or not, you won't find it so hot If you ain't got the do re mi.