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Living Standards
Course Connections | Outside Connections
In Kentucky: Living off of the Land
In the novel The Dollmaker, the Nevels family resides on
a rented farm. While they work on the land, they must give half of their
goods to their landlord.
Gertie and her son Reuben dream of one day owning the Tipton Place where
they will own their own land and home and be able to keep everything that
they are able to grow.
While the live in Kentucky, they have little in the way of modern conveniences, yet seem completely content with how they live. As they live on a farm, the majority of their food they themselves grow. Gertie gathers the eggs that they eat each morning. There are exceptions such as the meal that she buys at the local general store, but the bulk of their food is made in the home. They do not have any electricity in their home. They salt their meat in order to store it over long periods of time. Gertie would store her vegetables in a spring or a cool house in order to keep them cool. She would place them in the ground or in nearby water in order to preserve their freshness. Life in Kentucky seems to revolve around the nature and the ground. They eat what they can grow and/or make themselves and use the land around them to meet any other needs that might develop.
In Detroit: Learning to Adjust to Changes
Life changes drastically for the Nevels family upon arriving in Detroit.
Before in Kentucky, Gertie was the main provider for her family through her
skills as a farmer. Now though, Clovis is the chief provider through the
wages he earns working at the Flint Factory. Gertie must use the money he
earns at the factory in addition to the ration stamps she has saved in Kentucky
in order to provide food and goods for her family. Gertie faces challenges
in Detroit such as determining the freshness of food and produce which she
herself does not grow. Thus, she finds herself repeatedly duped into buying
produce that is past it’s prime or meat that is mainly fat.
While in Kentucky Gertie relied on natural resources in order to preserve
her food, in Detroit she has the Icy Heart. Clovis takes the money that
Gertie has saved for their return to Kentucky and uses it to buy her a
mammoth, second-hand refrigerator where she can store all of their food.
The problem with this being that it freezes all of her butter and destroys
the majority of the food. The refrigerator ultimately reduces the quality
of the products it is meant to preserve.
In Detroit: The Affect of Poverty on Urban Standards of Living
When Clovis is forced to strike with the other
union men towards the end of the novel, Gertie struggles to put food on
the table. The strike forces
the Nevels family to go into great debt as they open accounts at the various
stores where they purchase goods. Many other families in their neighborhood
open account at different stores in different towns, in order to avoid hitting
the cap at the local stores. While this system allows them to continue providing
food for their children, it ultimately put them into greater debt than before.
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Trilobites: Progress as a Way Out
In Pancake’s story, “Trilobites” we see how Colly does not want his mother to sell his father’s farm though he cannot work it. Unlike the characters in The Dollmaker, they do own the property. Unfortunately though, they cannot earn enough money from the farm in order to survive so the mother wants to sell the farm and move to where she can work in a factory in order to support herself. Meanwhile, Colly would be able to work the farm, but lacks the ambition and interest in doing so.
“Trilobites” often discusses the railway and how that’s how Colly’s father had ridden out of the town. The railway for many in Appalachia was their connection to the rest of the world. It was how one could get in or out of the community. Additionally, the image of the railway seems to represent the progress and development that seemed to have overtaken the rest of the country. The fervor for this being evident in Colly’s mother who wishes to go work in a factory where she believes she’ll be able to make enough money to support herself and afford a better life.
The Salvation of Me: Improving Upon Older Products
In Pancake’s “The Salvation of Me” the best example of the standard living is exemplified by both the automobile, which the protagonist is certain is his ticket out of the town and to the big city of Chicago, and the radio, which he listens to at night fantasizing about what a city like Chicago must be like. Here though, the narrator opts to buy a used car and fix it up with his friend rather than purchase a new one as that seems more resourceful and practical. While he dreams of a bigger life, he acknowledges the limitations of his current one.
Cold Mountain: Resourcefulness Determining the Quality of Life
Ada and Ruby in Cold Mountain exist like the Nevels did before moving from Kentucky, in that they use the land and natural resources in order to survive. They cook that which they can eat and then sell or trade everything else. The two women learn to be completely resourceful from the land in order to survive during the Civil War. They ultimately become very successful.
With regards to standards of living the greatest transformation occurs with the character of Ada in the novel as she goes from having many material possessions and being -
unhappy and hungry, to having very few, yet being able to feed herself and survive. After all, it’s her prized piano which fetches for the two women the majority of their food at first. Ada ultimately comes to embody the change in standards of living of one who goes from being wealthy in a prominent city to one who lives a simpler life in Appalachia. The greatest example of this being when she takes the fancy party dress she had worn during a different time and uses it to make scarecrow in the yard in order to keep the birds away from the garden.
River of Earth: Survival as the Standard
Standards of living are much different in the novel River of Earth where Alpha in the very beginning of the novel burns down their home in order to chase out the unwelcome guests. The family then proceeds to move into a root cellar where they are able to live comfortably and keep enough food on the table for their children. In this novel, the family lacks the appliances and luxuries seen in The Dollmaker and other later novels. They seem to be just scraping by on what the father can earn as a miner. One of the children dies during the novel as the family cannot bring in enough food to feed the youngest and keep him healthy. Here life seems to be more about surviving, than living comfortably. Alpha would rather have her family live in a root cellar if it means that each of her children will be fed with a roof over their head.
Storming Heaven: Dichotomies of Class, Community and Opportunity
Standards of living fluctuate greatly in the book, Storming Heaven. Miles Bishop, brother of the protagonist Carrie Bishop, lies at one of end of the spectrum with the great wealth he has amassed as a middle-manager for a mining company. He lives in a fancy home with electricity and a multitude of appliances and cars, all at the expense of the miners who struggle beneath his watch.
At the other end of the spectrum lies Rondal Lloyd who grew up as the child of a miner. At a young age, Rondal was forced to enter the mines with his father under the pretense of helping his father to work off his debt, but ultimately to keep his father company during the long days underground. Their family struggles to get by on the little money his father brings home. Rondal as a child would entertain himself by reading the newspapers that his mother had tacked to the walls.
When all of the miners in Storming Heaven begin to protest the condition
in the mine and demand a union, they live in tents on a field. Then, the
standard of living becomes more about survival than anything else. Their
possessions are comprised of their cots, blankets and tents. Families have
little else as the mining company possessed their homes and other belongings
as punishment for protesting.
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Historically Standards of Living in Urban Situations
According to Dr. Patricia O’Connor, some 2 million people left the Appalachian
region for Northern cities between 1940 and 1965. Between 1950 and 1960 the
population in Appalachia fell 3.4 percent (Gitlin xxiii). With families
arriving in Northern cities in droves, the cities went about providing subsidized
housing for the families of those who worked in the factories or fought in
the war. Providing cheap housing for families with little money soon became
an easy way for many landlords to make some extra money by providing slum
conditions to their tenants.
“That apartment now, the plaster was all fallin, the windows broke, door locks couldn’t lock the door, the furniture wasn’t fit for a dog to live in or own, the couch wasn’t fit for a dog to lay on, much less a human bein have to sit down on it. You had to have the table propped up, no chairs to the table. We had to come in, set down, eat like a bunch a dogs in the livin room (Gitlin 118).”
Other problems facing those who were living in such inner city slums were factors like led paint on the walls and lacking adequate furnishing for the homes. While many cities mandated a maximum lead content in interior paint, many of the landlords at that time period would just paint over old paint in order to save money, ultimately causing the old paint to eventually chip and fall to the ground (Gitlin 81). Additionally, city welfare offices and housing projects would provide furniture for the families in subsidized housing. Each family was entitled to certain belongings depending on the number, age and sex of each family member (Gitlin 258).
Government Aid Determining One’s Quality of Life
When the Union strikes and Clovis is forced to stop working for a long-stretch in the novel, one sees how Gertie must attempt to tighten an already very tight household budget. The family goes into debt when they begin opening accounts at the various stores that they must shop at. Many families during these hard times were forced to go on welfare in order to survive. Often though the food stamps wouldn’t even make a difference. “They gave me a card to get the food stamps, was $122 for food stamps and I only got a $125 check. I couldn’t get it, that’s all. I couldn’t take that $125 and buy food stamps with em, which I know would mean a lot more food for the kids. That only leaves me with three dollars and I owe the milk man twenty-five (Gitlin 247).” While many people in the large cities needed to own appliances and cars in order to proceed with their daily lives, all of these “luxuries” came at a cost that many families could simply not afford.
Standards of Living Historically in Appalachia
The standards of living in Appalachia depended greatly on the line of work the father, or man of the home was in. Families that farmed were able to get by on the food that they could grow themselves. Often in Appalachian literature appears the term “chicken money”, referring to extra spending money that women would earn from the money they could get from selling the eggs that their chickens produced. Ultimately, the farming allowed families are large amount of control over their lives as they could do for themselves.
For mining families, the standard of living was different. After all, miners
lived in mining towns which was more or less a planned community organized
by the mining companies. Therefore, the miners were paid in a scribe that
could only be accepted at the company store where they would be forced to
buy all of their food and goods. Daddy worked and we got what they call 
commodities.
That wasn’t getting a check, you know, it was just going up and getting food
(Gitlin 69).” Many miners were in great debt to the companies as they would
lose their wages for medical charges and other various expenses that the
companies forced them to incur. Ultimately, the company could keep them working
by keeping them in debt.
Many families in the region, whether mining or farming, lived in a more rustic way during this time period. For most households, there wasn’t any electricity or modern appliances. “I just wish I had the privilege to take you out to West Virginia and show you what kind of barns people’s livin in. I don’t call em houses. Well, out in Ohire they got better barns for their stock than we got houses to live in in West Virginia (Gitlin 95)”. While the living situations may seem rustic to an outsider, for those in the region they seemed normal as this is how people in the region had always lived.
Minority Struggles and Living Standards
While Caucasian families migrating to Northern cities faced low-quality, public housing problems, the worst houses went to African-American families. In Detroit many African-American families lived in such horrible conditions with their homes infested by rats and vermin that the Federal Workers Agency (FWA) and the Detroit Housing Commission (DHC) allocated more than 200 families to better housing units around the city (Crawford).
The problem with relocating 200 plus families to various neighborhoods throughout the city is that integration was forced in multiple neighborhoods. Many white households felt that they were forced to accept minority households into their communities which threatened their comfort level and feel of security (Crawford).
Struggles with Poverty
A 1990 census shows that those in the Appalachian region, in particular West Virginia, are the second lowest income group in the United States after Native Americans. As a result of poverty levels within the region, those from Appalachia are more likely than any other group to live in the poorer regions of large cities when they migrate from the region. While those from the Appalachian region are accomplicing more academically, they are still struggling for financial success due to the decline of the steel, auto and manufacturing industries. As the cost of living increases and Appalachian family size remains the same, than many working-class, urban Appalachians will fall into poverty (Bean 73-5).
-Leslie Baldwin
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