"The Fat of the Land"

Yezierska, the author of “The Fat of the Land” contrasts the past and present to add to the meaning of her story themed after the struggles of an immigrant mother raising American children. The author uses vivid characterizations of Hanneh and setting to contrast Delancey Street Hanneh to Riverside Apartment Hanneh and to convey the personal struggles of one immigrant mother to her readers.

The author begins to build her story by setting young Hanneh’s predicament on Delancey Street. Young Hanneh complains to her wise, neighbor Mrs. Pelz about the injustice she repeatedly faced. “Woe to me” cries and ungrateful and seemingly self-centered Hanneh as she continues to rattle off her problems to Mrs. Pelz in and emotional “outburst” (American Mosaic 190). Young Hanneh complains about the rent, her children, getting cheated by the butcher, and trying to keep her children fed. Wise Mrs. Pelz assures her that her children will one day earn wages and as a result Hanneh will be living of the “fat of the land” (American Mosaic 191). Hanneh’s predicament of being a single immigrant mother of six children living in a tenement propels the author’s tale.

Twenty-years later the author brings us to Hanneh again except she is far from her life on Delancey Street and living in a brownstone on Eighty-Fourth. Mrs. Pelz enters Hanneh’s home and a “whiff of steam heated warmth” swept over her in contrast to Hanneh’s broken stove on Delancey Street (American Mosaic 190,194). Hanneh feels like a prisoner; she feels she has no freedom to be herself and “so long as there is no servant around”, Hanneh and Mrs. Pelz may eat as they like (American Mosaic).

The plot of the story becomes further complicated as we learn the resentment Hanneh feels towards her children, as well as the resentment her children feel towards her. Fanny in particular does all she can do to take the “Delancey Street” out of her mother. Hanneh “felt her heartache” when she was shut out of her children lives (American Mosaic 197). Hanneh learns that she has not been invited to Benny’s play and she pleads with them “Do I count for a person in this house?”(American Mosaic 198).

Hanneh ends up being even further removed from her children to Riverside Apartments where she tries unsuccessfully to live more free. Hanneh believes after an argument with Fanny that returning to Delancey Street will somehow help her regain what is lost. Hanneh shows up at Mrs. Pelz door and tells her “it is our choked thoughts and feelings that are flaming up in my children and making them great in America” emphasizing that they were children of immigrants not just Americans. The story subsides as Hanneh makes her way back to her Riverside Apartment and realizes she had “outgrown” Delancey Street because of the life she lives now (American Mosaic 203).

Mano, Barbara Roche Rico and Sandra. American Mosaic. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001.