Sara’s Philosophical Honeymoon: A Reading of Chapter XVII, "My Honeymoon with
Myself"
By Tan Suan Fong
Unsurprisingly, the chapter entitled "My Honeymoon with Myself" proves to
be the shortest in the novel, concluding after a mere five pages. The honeymooner
in question is the feisty protagonist Sara Smolinsky, arriving back in her hometown
of New York in triumph. For a former indigent waif of the ghetto, her achievements
are Olympian: graduating from college, getting a job as a teacher, and winning
the thousand-dollar prize of a literary competition. The last achievement in
particular sets her up for a bout of conspicuous consumption and her rags are
banished in favour of fine serge suits. But Sara's "honeymoon" does not extend
only superficially to the (understandable) consumptive excess of newly weds.
It is a "honeymoon" in the truest sense, because Sara has found her soulmate,
and it is herself.
In the inimitable figure of Reb Smolinsky, Yezierska has created one of the
more plausible justifications for patricide. The self-professed "light of the
block" (48) proves surprisingly inept in affairs of commerce for such a learned
man, and is repeatedly conned by the more canny Americans he so despises. Even
his wife, poor old Mrs. Smolinsky, for whom Reb's term of endearment is "Woman!",
comes across as vastly more wise. One suspects however, that the roots of Sara's
disgruntlement lie not so much with her father's ineptness, than the almost
reptilian nature of him basing his attempt at selfish, personal fulfillment
on the hunched-over backs of his toiling family. Reb's family is run as a strictly
authoritarian affair, with personal choice restricted to a numbing degree, and
even affairs of the heart being directed by the rabbi-in-residence.
"Fish-fish-three times a day, carp, flounder, pike" complains Bessie, the
eldest of the Smolinsky sisters (105). But she is not venting childish frustration
at a boring diet, but at something rather more important. Against her will,
she has been betrothed to the recently widowed Zalmon, a boorish fish-peddler.
Berel Bernstein, the man she loves, is found wanting by her father - Berel refuses
to compensate Reb for "tearing the bread away from [his] mouth" (46). But Zalmon
is willing, and so the transaction is made.
Sara - headstrong, intelligent and diligent - witnesses how their father has
ruined the lives of her sisters, and when Reb has the chutzpah to berate Sara
over her "carelessness" in handling the measly sum of two cents, she snaps.
Blut-und-Eisen proves to be exactly that: "'I'm going to live my own life. Nobody
can stop me. I'm not from the old country. I'm American!'" (138) And so begins
Sara's odyssey as she goes in search of work, education and fulfillment, which
concludes six years later in her return to New York.
A cursory reading of "My Honeymoon with Myself" conveys the distinct image
of Sara engaging in an extended sequence of compensatory, consumptive triumphalism.
She travels back in suitable style - a Pullman - and luxuriates in her ability
to "order anything I wanted from the menu". No more "pinched pieces out of [a]
loaf" - bring on the "chops and spinach and salad" (237). The hedonistic appeal
of "damask curtains" and "silken soft linen sheets" then conspire to lull her
almost to sleep. "[M]y flesh relaxed so deliciously, it was a sin to fall asleep"
(238). The voluptuous tone meshes well with her newfound status; the ritualistic
splash of wealth by the noveaux riche in an attempt to compensate for past,
never forgotten poverty. If this were purely the case, then Sara would be not
very different from the yentehs; still a simple consumer, albeit of a higher
order of resources. To borrow a gastronomical analogy, she is no mere gourmand,
but a gourmet; a far rarer and more exalted creature altogether. The characterization
finds credence in her preference for older men, whose "ripened understanding"
she finds "raw youth" could not match (231). Like a good sommelier, this older,
more assured Sara is able to look beyond the nominal price tag of vintage and
adjudge it on the one true scale of value - critical, self-reflexive taste.
And so it proves when she shops for a new outfit. She chooses a plain serge
suit, one with "more style in its plainness than the richest velvet", and appropriate
in its "graceful quietness" (239).
The "honeymoon" then, far from being a superficial exercise of wealth, is Sara's
personal statement of fulfillment. In a philosophical sense, she has found her
soulmate - herself. She scornfully recalls the elation she once experienced
"at the thought that a man wanted me". No longer. "How much more thrilling to
feel that I had made my work wanted!" (241) If the mere desire to escape poverty
was what drove her, then arguably she would have married the wealthy businessman,
Max Goldstein. The fact that she did not speaks of her desire to be more than
another man's "piece of property" (199). Instead, she has achieved success on
her own terms; financial success having reinforced, but not undergirded her
personal fulfillment. Reb Smolinsky, for all his vaunted scholarship, fails
utterly in being anything other than a self-absorbed, blinkered man of the Old
World. To the Talmud he remains chained, to the omission of mere Earthly concerns.
Ironic then, that Sara can "lov[e] the broom with which [she] swept the floor,
the scrubbing brush, the scrubbing rag, the dust cloth" (241). These gross things
help to keep clean her "personal privacy", a "beautiful aloneness" uncluttered
by ossifying rigidity, a place where veneration is reserved for the efficacious,
the beautiful, the responsible and the rational.
Work Cited
Yezierska, Anzia. Bread Givers. New York: Persea Books, 1975.
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