Women's Folklore, Women's Culture

Rosan A. Jordan, Susan J. Kalcik

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780812293388
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Folklore & Mythology
• Index: Social Sciences

The essays in Women's Folklore, Women's Culture focus on women performers of folklore and on women's genre of folklore. Long ignored, women's folklore is often collaborative and frequently is enacted in the privacy of the domestic sphere. This book provides insights balancing traditional folklore scholarship. All of the authors also explore the relationship between make and female views and worlds.The book begins with the private world of women, performances within the intimacy of family and fields; it then studies women's folklore in the public arena; finally, the book looks at the interrelationships between public and private arenas and between male and female activities.By turning our attention to previously ignored women's realms, these essays provide a new perspective from which to view human culture as a whole and make Women's Folklore, Women's Culture a significant addition to folklore scholarship

• PART ONE •

WOMEN IN PRIVATE/
WOMEN WITH WOMEN

• 1 •

DIAL A STORY, DIAL AN AUDIENCE:
TWO RURAL WOMEN NARRATORS
IN AN URBAN SETTING

Linda Dégh

SITUATED ON Lake Michigan southeast of Chicago, Gary, Indiana, is one of the giant industrial cities in the United States (Moore 1959). Gary and vicinity accommodate the world’s largest steel mills, and almost all the residents of Gary work in the plants or cater to the needs of their employees. Besides the majority black population, there are about twenty sizable and another thirty smaller nationalities residing in Gary. Huge freighters and tankers ply the lake, thousands of trucks and automobiles congest the superhighways cutting across the city, and the network of tracks within the city run freight trains day and night. The wind blowing perpetually above the Great Lakes whirls black smoke and mixes yellow and purplish-pink poisonous steam into the air. It is an unlikely scene for peaceful traditional storytelling.

But “Aunt” Marge and “Aunt” Katie, both residents of Gary, are born village storytellers. What can they do, how can they make use of their talents, their fantasy, sense of humor, pleasure of narration, in this most unlikely spot of the world?

It was in the fall of 1964 when I first met them. I had ample opportunity to study the anachronistic manifestation of their many-sided gift within the limits of the industrial city. I was able to observe them as their houseguest and also as a participant in the communal life of the Hungarian ethnic enclave to which they belong. It was easy to explore their way of life on both workdays and holidays, and their contacts with the outside world as means of expressing themselves. Nevertheless, evaluating their oral folklore and their personalities required comprehension of their cultural environment, so I had to familiarize myself with the worldview, value system, and aesthetic standards of the ethnic community. The dominant Hungarian peasant tradition I knew had gone through considerable modification. Hence, the function and quality of the actual oral literature would have been difficult to understand without knowledge of the ambiguous, uneven, and variable processes of this modification.

Sociologists dealing with immigration to the United States have come to an agreement concerning the sequence of the stages of acculturation, assimilation, and integration. When immigrants, attracted to this country by economic opportunity, decided to stay for good, they settled in ethnic communities, but within these communities there have been unlimited variables due to ethnic, situational, and positional differences (Hough 1920:18–19; Moore 1959:356–357; Dégh 1966:551–552).

The history of the steel industry in Gary and in the neighboring steel cities belonging to the larger Calumet Region can be traced in the life history of the Hungarians and the other ethnic communities in the area. The pioneer group that transformed the marshland around the Little and the Grand Calumet rivers and on the sand dunes on the banks of the lake was composed of the masses of Southeastern and Central European peasantry (Handlin 1951:7–36; 1959:26–29). They were the builders of the industrial plants in which they acquired jobs, and they were the builders of the cities in which their dreams of comfortable living came true. Among the cities in the area, Gary was the last to be built, following the construction of the plants of the U.S. Steel Corporation in 1906. The company settled its employees close to the workshops and named the new city after Judge Elbert H. Gary, chairman of the board of directors (Moore 1959:254). Because the ethnic settlements were established on uninhabited land and could therefore develop more or less by themselves, they were able to retain their ethnic character.

The Calumet Region became a mixing bowl, rather than a melting pot, of races and nationalities. Melting pot suggests a oneness of features and characteristics produced by a simultaneous amalgamation of different elements. This did not occur in the Calumet area. Instead, the movement of the population groups into the region during the first fifty years was such that each had the opportunity to make its presence felt. . . . The presence of so many nationalities and races produced a variety of flavors almost unique. (Moore 1959:244)

Both our storytellers were “charter members” of the Hungarian ethnic colony of Gary that has been dissolved now for some time. Both remember the initial hardships in the barren land and can tell when and in what succession the main buildings were constructed. The fate of the Hungarian community and other ethnic communities was shaped by the fluctuation of economic conditions. Depression, war boom, the importation of new workers, and other factors transformed the ethnic composition of the city. Broadway, the fifteen-mile-long main street and business district of Gary, is today inhabited almost exclusively by blacks. The folklorist who wants to visit more than one of his informants of European extraction during the day has to travel some fifty to eighty miles from house to house within the limits of the city.

Gradually, new cultural features accumulated in different layers on the dominant peasant heritage. In spite of outward appearance, the immigrant generation did not change its essentially peasant worldview and behavior. The commonly acknowledged attributes of the initial phase of immigrant readjustment, such as language learning, adoption of different food and dress habits, and acquisition of new technical skills (Willems 1955:225–226; Park 1950:138–151), remain imperfect up to this day and have not affected important cultural traits. The process of assimilation followed an uneven course, depending largely on the need for individual adjustment. At the time of their retirement, even those who were exposed to the impact of the dominant culture returned to the Old World lifestyle abandoned in early youth.¹ We can speak only of attitudinal changes, which affect mostly the material life of the immigrant generation. Yet these changes are extremely meaningful, since they react on the essential values of the subculture itself. Assimilation generally occurs with the first American-born generation, whereas integration becomes complete with the second.

The acculturation of the Gary settlers is the result of two parallel processes: the substitution of the urban-industrial way of life for that of the rural-peasant, and the accommodation of national minority groups to a multiethnic environment. Consequently, the form, role, and function of folklore underwent a basic transformation from its peasant model.

Mrs. Katie Kis and Mrs. Marge Kovács today live quite a distance from each other in neighborhoods to the east and west of Broadway. Mrs. Kis is eighty-six, and Mrs. Kovács is seventy-five. They came from the same Hungarian ethnic region and brought the same linguistic and cultural backgrounds to the United States. Like many other peasant immigrants prior to World War I, neither Mrs. Kis’s husband nor Mrs. Kovács’s father saw New York except for the landing port, Ellis Island. Typically, immigrants traveled by train directly to one of the industrial cities on the East Coast, where earlier immigrants helped them find places to live and work. Their jobs were in factories and mines. Meanwhile, the dream of making enough money to return and buy land in the Old Country faded because of the war and the Depression (Lengyel 1948:127). Our informants, Mrs. Kis and Mrs. Kovács, followed their elders and settled with their families in the Hungarian ethnic neighborhood of the newly erected midwestern industrial metropolis. Neither of them has ever seen any of the big cities, the skyscrapers, and the various technological wonders that are characteristic of urban America.² Having left the familiar environment of their home village, they sought protection in a neighborhood similar to what they knew. Mrs. Kis and Mrs. Kovács were next-door neighbors in the Hungarian community of Gary and were related by marriage. They belonged to the same Hungarian Protestant church (Church of Christ) that acted as the protector of the national identity and became the center of social activities for the group (Handlin 1959:77–84; 1951:117–143; Fishman 1966:15–16, 20–22).

As long as the Hungarian community did not exceed its original four-block area in downtown Gary, its population was not forced to learn English or to adjust to an urban way of life.³ When the steel-workers’ earnings became steady and the typical Hungarian peasant frugality and hard work bore fruit, the families prospered and the old community began to disperse. One by one, families moved to a healthier location in the “green belt” within the city limits, away from the congested, polluted streets. They built their comfortable homes according to the standard of respectable American workingmen: the three-bedroom type with a roomy basement, one bathroom, a screened or open porch, and a handsome garden. The homes were well equipped with modern conveniences. In such homes the “front room” has wall-to-wall carpet, and the kitchen is large and bright with big windows, built-in cabinets, a freezer, and other household appliances. Who would ever compare this home to that of a Hungarian peasant family? Yet this house represents the fulfillment of a peasant dream. It is roomier and certainly more luxurious than the house of the biggest farmer in the Old Country, but its interior arrangement and decoration and its functions are very much the same.

Taking the homes of Mrs. Kis and Mrs. Kovács as models, we find similarities to their Old Country homes. As in the Hungarian peasant’s home, the center is the kitchen, not only as a place where food is prepared and consumed but also as a place of relaxation for the members of the household and a favorite gathering spot for neighbors, relatives, and intimate friends. The heavy decoration of the kitchen walls is remarkable. Colorful ceramic plaques, plastic fruit, flying birds, framed artificial flowers, and other cheap ornaments from the supermarket replace the earthenware plates of the peasant kitchen. The embroidered prayers, the “house blessings” made by the lady of the house, are as popular as in the Old Country. The function of the living room is the same as that of the “clean room” of old. It is crammed with the most cherished knickknacks but is not used much. American in-laws, acquaintances, and other callers are seated here. Mrs. Kis still has the traditional chest of drawers full of trinkets on the top and surrounded by family photographs. Mrs. Kovács, on the other hand, has replaced the chest with a vanity that gives more room for family snapshots and keepsakes. Besides the objects in this “sacred corner,” the walls of the living room are decorated with pictures of her parents on their wedding day and of her father in his military attire, framed certificates of citizenship, and a faded wreath from her father’s grave. It is also interesting to note that the porch, like its Hungarian equivalent the “tornác,” serves as the farewell place where visitors are shown out and kept for a while, to emphasize hospitality.⁴ Outside the home is the garden, not the spotless smooth lawn of suburban American homes but the colorful carpet of flowers in front of the windows. It is a source of pride to grow a Hungarian flower garden, and the women are eager to get the seeds of the favorite geranium, petunia, mignonette, rosemary, rose mallow, and gillyflower. They order the seeds from the Old Country, and they exchange breeds with friends. The backyard, on the other hand, displays a touching holdover of the peasant vegetable patch, evidence of the tenacity of the traditional ethnic diet. The care of vegetables is normally in the hands of the master of the house. Since both the informants are widows, they tend and renew faithfully year after year the plant stock on the patch built by their husbands, giving away the excess of herbs and vegetables.

Mrs. Kis and Mrs. Kovács reside today in their comfortable homes completely alone. They have no financial difficulties, since their pensions and Social Security benefits cover their immediate needs. All the extras are well taken care of by their children and grandchildren. However, their lives are marked by isolation and solitude, largely because of the dissolution of the old ethnic community, the dissemination of the neighbor families, and their inability to adjust to this new environment. Those above the age of sixty who lived through their active years within the ethnic ghetto found themselves in a strange neighborhood at old age. The lively system of kinship and neighborhood contacts had been replaced by an environment in which there are neighbors whose customs and language they do not understand. At the same time, their old family ties had fallen apart. Their children prefer to speak English with their American-born spouses of diverse origin, and their grandchildren, as a rule, do not speak Hungarian at all. Meanwhile, the most prominent cause of isolation is the enormous distances within the city. It is difficult for relatives to spend their little spare time after working hours on the busy rush-hour highways in order to pay a short visit. The relatives of Mrs. Kis and Mrs. Kovács are more devoted than the average, but their visits are still usually limited to Sunday afternoons, except for occasional calls to deliver essential foods or medicine or to do some urgent repair.

Both the elderly women remain by themselves almost every day of the week and almost every hour of the day. Aunt Marge told me once: “Sometimes I do not talk to anyone for a whole week, only to myself.” The size of the city condemns them to solitude and to boredom. They do not own cars, as women of the immigrant generation; they never even learned how to drive a car. They are too old for long hikes, and even if they were able to walk there would be no place to go in the big noisy city full of unknown people. The ethnic church still stands in the old neighborhood, but the neighborhood itself is no longer Hungarian. Church services would be still available to them if there were someone to drive them there. Occasionally the minister does gather the senior members for the Hungarian language services, since their relatives participate in the English service—if they have not relinquished membership in the ethnic church entirely in order to increase their status by joining a more attractive suburban church.

All these facts suggest a ho...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part One Women in Private / Women with Women
• Part Two Women in Public
• Part Three Two Worlds/One World
• References
• Contributors