Living the Not So American Dream

The American Dream is a freedom that the United States supposedly offers to all who come here.  The early 1900’s was a time that saw much immigration to the United States.  Immigrants believed that America provided the opportunity for greater monetary wealth and material prosperity than could have been achieved in their native countries.  The American Dream was definitely falsely advertised to immigrants because they were not handed the American opportunities, which they had all fantasized about.  The United States was clearly divided between American citizens and immigrants who strived but failed to imitate the life that was considered the American Dream. 

Kathy Peiss’s “Cheap Amusements” truly said it best, “Dreams for sale: Division Street clothing shops offered working women inexpensive versions of high-fashion designs.”  Immigrants were considered part of the working class and everything within their lives was a cheaper version of what well off Americans owned.  Whether it be clothing, cosmetics, housing or food, immigrants just could not afford the best of what America was offering.  The concept of the American Dream implied wealth and luxury not poverty and hardship, which was what immigrants actually found when they came to America.  They tried to cover up their lack of money by consuming economical American products that mimicked the riches they longed to have.

The picture attached to Kathy Peiss’s dreams for sale quote sums up what immigrants could have expected when they were fortunate enough to go shopping in America.  It was an industrial like scene on a one-way street of the Lower East Side.  It was crowded, very close to the road, which was full of traffic and the ceiling was metal bars.  This was definitely not a luxurious shopping trip.  Items were cheap and immigrants just wanted to make sure they were buying products that would make them fit in with America.  They felt that buying low-priced American goods with their hard earned American money would help them gain the wealth to live the coveted American Dream. 

On the contrary to the Division Street clothing shops were department stores like Marshall Fields.  Marshall Fields was an iconic department store and was famous for its beauty.  The pictures depict high and decorated ceilings with comfortable seating and plenty of room to shop.  The store soon became known as  a “Marble Palace” due to its costly marble face.  Shopping in stores like Marshall Fields was extravagant and belonged to the people who were truly living the American Dream.  Immigrants could not afford to spend money at such a high-class establishment.  Stores of grandeur like Marshall Fields may have existed in America but immigrants who came with hopes of wealth did not have the means to purchase the merchandise.

In Kathy Peiss’s “Making Faces: The Cosmetics Industry and the Cultural Construction of Gender, 1890-1930”, she speaks about the three different cosmetic markets that existed during the 1920’s.  There was the mass market, which had low-priced cosmetic lines that were sold in drugstores.  This line targeted the working-class and lower-middle class women.  This would be the only kind of cosmetics an immigrant could have afforded to purchase.  There was the ethnic market, which was for African American women and ethnic women.  The third market was the class market, which all American citizens wished they could have afforded.  The products in the class market were only sold in department stores and exclusive salons like Elizabeth Arden.  Wealthy and upwardly mobile middle-class women could buy these products and the rest of America including immigrants were left trying to buy cheap imitations from the mass and ethnic markets.

Kathy Peiss goes on to discuss how the “mass-market manufacturers stressed the makeover as a route to upward mobility, arguing that a woman’s personal success relied on her appearance.” (P.385)  Obviously mass market manufacturers just wanted to sell their products but working class women like the immigrants came to truly believe the statement that the better they looked the more successful they would be.  Immigrants believed that if they spent their hard earned money on products that were similar to those being sold in class markets, then they themselves would be the ones shopping in salons and department stores one day.  It was a dream and false hope that these companies were selling.  The amount of immigrants who actually experienced social mobility were few and far between.  Most spent their lives trying to support their families in a country that they were always trying to figure out where they really belonged.

Anzia Yezierska’s novel Bread Givers illustrates the life of a typical immigrant family living in New York’s Lower East Side.  The financial struggles that they faced consumed their lives in America.  A family with parents who lived charmed lives in Russia move their four daughters to the United States and realize that the American Dream is no easy task to live in the 1920’s.  The Smolinsky family consists of Reb, Shena, Sara, Bessie, Mashah, and Fania.  Reb is the father, an out of work Orthodox rabbi and also the head of the Smolinsky household.  Shena is the mother who is in awe of her husband’s holiness but whose life in America is filled with heartache because of the poverty that they face.  A woman who had it all in Russia now was forced into begging for money, doing any job that came her family’s way and hardly eating.  Sara is the youngest daughter who is the only member of the family who after much hard work and criticism achieves some semblance of a normal American life.  Sara’s sisters all had arranged marriages and went on living discontented lives in America.

 Sara Smolinsky tells her family’s story of struggles, the hardships that filled each day and the desires they all had for a wealthy American life.  As immigrants who moved to America, they only watched others live the life that they came to America for.  In Sara’s opinion, Mashah was the sister who could assimilate the most to the American lifestyle.  She worked only when she had to and would give up eating to buy  inexpensive beauty products and clothes.  To Mashah, living in America meant trying to fit in with what Americans cherished.  At this time American consumerism was very popular and Mashah would use the little money she had to replicate the products Americans were buying.

“Her clothes were always so new and fresh, without the least little wrinkle, like the dressed-up doll lady from the show window of the greatest department store.” (p.4)  This is how Sara would describe the clothes that Mashah owned.  Mashah had to skip meals to afford the beauty products and clothes she purchased.  She was using all of her inner power to try to look American by making her outer appearance look well off.  People living the American Dream did not have to starve themselves to purchase the items they desired.  As an immigrant, luxuries were hard to come by so sacrifices had to made if they wanted to look like an American consumer. 

“And from that day, the sight of her toothbrush on the shelf and her white, fancy towel by itself on the wall was like a sign to us all, that Mashah had no heart, no feelings, that millionaire things willed themselves in her empty head while, the rest of us were wearing out our brains for only a bite in the mouth.” (p.6)  Mashah saved her food money so she could purchase a toothbrush and a wash towel while the rest of her family used their money on food.  Mashah bought products that Americans took for granted and that were part of their daily lives.  In the Smolinsky family the only way to buy unnecessary items was by not eating.  Mashah again showed the sacrifices she made in her life to feel more like an American.  If she was living the American Dream, she would have been able to buy the finest merchandise for herself and still be able to eat.

Mamma Smolinsky was explaining to Mashah that America does not have as beautiful things as they had at home in Russia.  Mashah answered her by saying, “If you only had the money to go to Fifth Avenue you’d see the grand things you could buy.” (p.33) Mashah was explaining that their family just did not have the means to buy the products Americans could afford from fancy stores.  If they had money in America then their lives would have been much different and much more grand.

Starting a new life in America was truly a difficult task for immigrants.  They came with hopes and dreams for a life full of riches and were usually disappointed when they realized that life will never exist.  They worked long hours at tiring jobs just to put food on their tables and pay rent.  They tried to imitate the lives that Americans were living by purchasing cheap versions of the products Americans consumed in hopes of one day being able to buy the expensive luxurious products.  For most, that day never came and they realized that they had lived their entire lives trying to imitate Americans,  wondering when they too would reach the American Dream that they had seen and heard so much about.