Book Review Of Jane Addams’ Twenty Years At Hull House PDF

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Twenty Years at Hull-House...

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Book review of Jane Addams’, « Twenty years at Hull House »

In twenty years at Hull-House, Jane Addams explores and unravels the social challenges, indigence and abuses that pre-dominated the Industrial Revolution in the United States in the nineteenth century and reports the birth as well as the implications of the Settlement Movement during that era. The book includes eighteen chapters, illustrations and photographs that best illustrate the arguments and testimonies of the author while reporting her experiences and anecdotes at Hull-House. Jane started the early chapters with broad details of her early childhood and personal background, the role of her wealthy father in shaping her social and political views and the values that Abraham Lincoln inculcated in her. With the collaboration of Ellen Starr, Jane founded the Hull House in the slums of Chicago in January, 1889, because the latter had a desire to help the poor, the needy and the suffering and especially immigrants to integrate the American society. In the sixth chapter titled “Subjective Necessity for Social Settlement”, Jane examines and analyzes the reasons that goaded wealthy American people to get involved in the Settlement Movement and help the poor of their neighborhood and community. She distinguishes three main trends that acted as catalysts for this philanthropic social movement. Firstly, there was the desire to interpret democracy in social terms in America. Jane believes that educated young people were aspiring for universal brotherhood, that they were accomplishing little toward that social problem and that they had been denied common labor. As she points out in her analysis:” I think it is hard for us to realize how seriously many of them are taking to the notion of human brotherhood, how eagerly they long to give tangible expression to the democratic ideal.” Secondly, Jane identifies the impulse beating at the very source of Americans’ lives as a significant stimulator to engage in Settlement. American people were aware of the social maladjustments around them, yet found themselves in a typical quagmire on how to remediate

those social ills. Therefore, Jane believes that the social inactiveness that hung about Americans heavily pushed them to show empathy and tolerance toward immigrants. As she reports in her analysis:” We have in America a fast-growing number of cultivated young people who have no recognized outlet for their active faculties. They hear constantly of the great social maladjustment, but no way is provided for them to change it”. Since she lived a chunk of her life in England, Jane draws on her experience in England and advances a comparison on why it took longer for America to feel the pressure for Settlement. In fact, she blatantly asserts in her book that: “It is easy to see why the Settlement movement originated in England, where the years of education are more constrained and definite than they are here, where class distinctions are more rigid”. Since the reasons behind Settlement in England were more evident and transparent, Jane felt inclined to look deeper in America’s societal restraints that deferred and delayed the movement. Thirdly, Jane asserts that the Christian movement toward humanitarianism played a significant role in expediting the movement. In fact, early Christians believed in love as a cosmic force, and never considered other men as their foes or aliens. They were calling for unity of the purpose, humility and acceptance. Jane corroborates her claims by reporting that: “There must be the overmastering belief that all that is noblest in life is common to men as men, in order to accentuate the likenesses and ignore the differences which are found among the people whom the Settlement constantly brings into juxtaposition.” In conclusion of the chapter, Jane summarizes her analyzes by reflecting on the premise that: “Social Settlements is therefore identical with that necessity for tolerance, which urges us on toward social and individual salvation.” In that, for the Settlement movement to endure and thrive, residents should maintain the solidarity of the human race and the Settlement movement in itself must be open to conviction and preserve its sense of acceptance.

In the eleventh chapter titled “Immigrants and Their Children”, Jane transmits direct observations and anecdotes from her entourage. In that chapter, Jane draws comparisons and gives her impressions on mainly Italian and German immigrants, specifically women, and the Americanization of their children. For several years, Italians were frequent guests at the Hull House and strived to harmonize with and integrate the American society and culture. As evidenced by Jane: “An editor of an Italian paper made a genuine connection between us and the Italian colony.” The Germans, on the other hand, developed strong family connections with their English speaking children, but their pleasures differed and thus, they did not spend much time together. Nonetheless, the Settlement placed large and pleasant rooms with musical facilities at the parents’ disposal, and revived their almost forgotten enthusiasm by creating the Hull House Labor Museum that commemorated their past and heritage. As Jane’s chronicles develop, she focuses all her narrative on the relation of Immigrant mothers with their children. As their children Americanized, Italian mothers had troubles to keep up with the cultural gap. Therefore, Jane thought of creating a more blatant connection between immigrant women’s primitive activities and the current complicated machinery of the factory and making it available to the Immigrants’ children. She took that resolution after she met Angelina, an Italian daughter who was ashamed of her mother and her primitive work and who wound up discovering that at the Labor Museum; her mother was actually symbolized as “the best stick-spindle spinner in America." Jane also confirms her conviction by saying: “I intimated it was most unfair to judge her by these things alone, and that while she must depend on her daughter to learn the new ways, she also had a right to expect her daughter to know something of the old ways; that which I could not convey to the child, but upon which my own mind persistently dwelt.” In fact, after traveling in the United States and Europe, Jane became well familiarized with the patriarchal authority and confining religion that conditioned that mother to live in a secluded spot with her needle and the adversities that the

latter faced with immigration, estrangement and the sudden disappearance of those solid traditional habits. From another angle, the children have experienced a total rebellion and delinquency and totally resisted their parents’ authority and stringent religious rules. From the stories of the Polish boys who stole for their girlfriends and sisters, to the story of “Marcella the thief” who had to plunder extra money in order to go on a date, Jane denounces how the cultural shock that the children experienced versus the traditional habits and beliefs that their parents clung to engendered judiciary conflicts and infractions. This reading illuminate and explores the large theme of Immigrant women, the adversities that they had to surmount and the discrimination, work exploitation and subordination to which they had been subjected while in the United States. Twenty Years at Hull House further corroborates the hardships of Immigrant women, their relationship with their children as well as their stamina and valuable work contribution, especially in the industrial field and how they revolutionized the work progress despite being an almost forgotten segment of society....