Considered a naturalistic novel, with its realistic prose, indifferent setting, and aesthetic web built around motifs, Ann Petry's The Street reads like a mid-century novel. noir version of Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser: a woman (Carrie is single; Lutie Johnson is saddled by a child) and her relationships with a series of men (using them in Sister Carrie; being used by them in The Street) either propel the social ladder upwards (Dreiser) or cause the rungs below it to fall (Petry). Petry's blatant protest against societal restrictions placed on women, particularly black women, is underscored by a more subtle depiction of the pervasive claustrophobia that physically confines Lutie. The various cramped spaces she occupies, her unsuitable apartment, the crowded buses, the crowded sidewalks, the crowded Junto define her social immobility and her bodily objectification. She searches for a spacious apartment which never arrives, so throughout the novel she is content to find other ways to expand her spatial presence. However, the constant threat of sexual assault and male power, aided by the use of objects, reduces these expansions and imprisons Lutie, who is unwilling to capitalize on her only object of value, her own body. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on 'Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned'? Get the original essay The novel's titular antagonist is, of course, the greatest enemy Lutie faces and, much like Jones, Junto and Boots, he treats her and everyone else as objects, lumping them together and deindividualizing them: "It was any town where they drew a line and said black people stay on this side and white people stay on that side , so that black people were piled on top of each other, squeezed, packed, and forced into the smallest space possible” (206). The line here, segregation, returns in The Street as that which spatially separates the safe from the dangerous, action from passivity, individuality from anonymity. The destruction of the lines removes the ill effects of crowds and makes them joyful, as the bustling streets of Harlem are a sudden relief from the crowded subway: "Escaped from the openly appraising gazes of white men whose eyes seemed to pass through her clothes for her long brown legs " (57). Even white men are objectified; while their "open" gazes may defy the restrictive space around them, they are reduced to "eyes," just as Lutie is defined by her legs and clothes, its only object of defense, becomes useless Nevertheless, as we will see later, sight is the most powerful sense of The Street it opens a space to men, often like an illusion, while women are stuck, like; Lutie here. providing individual movement within the anonymous block The streets of Harlem are a welcome change from the subway, and although racial homogeneity would seemingly further compromise individuality, the opposite is true, as pedestrians. ironically accumulate differences when placed in an environment of supposed similarity: “Here, they are no longer creatures simply labeled “colored” and therefore all similar. She noticed that once the crowd moved across the platform and began to climb the stairs toward the street, it grew larger” (57). It is this metamorphosis “The same people who had made themselves small on the train, even on the platform, suddenly became so tall that they could barely climb the stairs leading to the street together” (58) which defies the objectified labels and competition for street space is based on personal greatness rather thanshrinking of the public sphere. Metamorphosis occurs through immersion in a new, larger space, but for women it is clearly a dependent response. They need the helping hand of space and cannot create scale alone: Young women returning from dirty work, tired, depressed eagerly awaited the moment when they would change their clothes and head to the spaces courtesy of the Junto. They dressed hastily in their dark little rooms, so eager for the soft lights and music and pleasure that awaited them that they groped in their haste. (144) The Junta's "graceful space" is not simply an opportunity for rhyme although the space itself suggests a harmonious environment, but emphasizes the Junta itself as a meeting place. you women; they prepare for the evening as if trying to impress a man whose stature enhances their own. These "little dark rooms" are everywhere, and even though women don't like them, for Jones they represent the feminine spaces he is incapable of making. to invade as he toils in his own dark little space, the cellar. The compartmentalization of apartments is correlated with mailboxes, because a building contains many apartments and the postman's master key opens all the mailboxes at once: "The postman opened all the mailboxes at once, using a key that he had suspended from a long, strong chain. The sagging leather pouch that had been slung over his shoulder was filled with mail. He put letters in the open boxes, used the key again to lock them, and left” (290-1). Petry writes this as an episode of virtual intercourse; the postman's key (a traditional phallic signifier for one's ability to penetrate a lock; cf. "Rape of the Lock" which, although keyless, makes a play on words through its themes of castration), on a "long and strong chain", is able to open all the boxes simultaneously, the male fantasy of sexual omnipotence and omnipresence "push[s]" his missives inside, and is able to lock them away from anyone's contact before leaving the stage. Cave dweller Jones can only dream of such space conquest, the ability to control small, analog chambers from a single place of command. Her assault on Lutie, “dragging her toward the cellar door” (235), is an attempt to deny her mobility, much like locking the mailboxes: she has grabbed the railing. His fingers tore her hands away. She twisted and writhed in his arms, supporting his feet, clawing at his face with her nails. He ignored her frantic efforts to get away from him and pulled her closer and closer to the cellar door. She kicked him and the long skirt wrapped around her legs so she stumbled closer to him. She tried to scream, and when she opened her mouth, no sound came out; and she thought it was worse than any nightmare, because there was no sound in it. There was only his face next to hers, a frightening, distorted face, eyes glaring, mouth open, and his tense, sweaty body pushing her ever closer to the half-open cellar door. (236) The subjects, grammatically or to the reader's eye, of the staccato sentences are usually parts of the body, his fingers, his arms, his feet, his nails, and the final demonic image of Jones' face as the aggressor and victim again are objectified, like in the subway. Yet Jones still has the upper hand as the environment betrays Lutie. The railing offers no protection and his clothes once again prove useless for defending himself. His silent cryrecalls Edvard Munch's "The Scream" in which the overflowing lines suggest the immersion of the subject in a hostile environment that the observer of the silent painting cannot understand. Likewise, Jones' open mouth is paired with the gaping cellar door, the looming threat of rape, and Lutie's silence renders the reader as helpless as she is. Yet Lutie finds her voice, and it is the only instrument that seems to offer a way out of the street and out of the cellar: "She screamed until she could hear her own voice screaming senselessly in up the stairs, stopping on landings, turning corners, going down hallways, gaining volume as she began to climb the stairs again” (236). Her voice, as a part of herself that emanates externally in waves and echoes, can extend beyond her personal space. The female musicality of the voice is a factor of action throughout the novel; Mrs. Hedges thwarts two different attacks, that of Jones and that of a pack of boys on Bub. She says to Lutie, "'Shut up? You want the whole place to wake up?'" (237) and Petry describes the swelling power of her voice: "Her rich, pleasant voice filled the hallway, and at the sound of This one, the dog furtively moved away, its tail between its legs” (237). Her “rich, pleasant voice,” here performing a sort of castration of the dog, returns twice during Bub’s attack: “‘You heard me, you little bastards,’ she says in her rich, pleasant voice. 'You get out of there. block, Charlie Moore. Mrs. Hedges’ rich, pleasant voice carried far beyond the sidewalk” (347-8). Of course, Lutie hopes that his own pleasant voice will literally translate into wealth. Her singing temporarily obscured her social and spatial position: “The music swelled behind her and she began to sing, weakly at first, then her voice became louder, clearer, because little by little she forgot the men in the room. orchestra, even forgot that she was there at the Casino and why she was there” (222). The repeated word “there” is crucial; the phrase does not require the first instance, but its superfluous entry makes the presence and its temporary obliteration the center of Lutie's singing, just as when Lutie sings a note so low and so sustained that "it was impossible to say where she had stopped” (148). ), rather than when it stopped. The note is defined in spatial, not tonal, terms. Lutie's musical escape is temporary due to the absence of objects to manipulate; she, and not a physical instrument, is the manipulated object, the “lute”. Her attempts to earn money from singing are constantly thwarted by men who use the items for their own benefit and attempt to take advantage of Lutie as an object. She waits in the “small waiting room” of a singing school (318) and enters a room whose inventory runs continuously on nine lines (319). Like Junto, the portly Mr. Crosse, the owner of the school, dominates the room not only by his obesity but also by making himself visible without objectifying himself to the social gaze: "She was quite close to the office before she could see this that was happening. looked like the man sitting behind, because his feet obstructed his view” (319). Junto is much more powerful as he magnifies his presence with an inversion of the traditional trope of the male gaze; Lutie always looks at him through reflected mirrors, rather than the other way around, but he transcends objectification: “She looked at him again and again, because his reflection in the mirror fascinated her. Somehow, even at this distance, his stocky figure managed to dominate. the whole room” (146). The mirrors, which make "the Junto an enormous room" (146), create an illusion of enlarged space that Boots later capitalizes on in her room: "there were too many mirrors for her to see him.

Essay / Considered a naturalistic novel, with its realistic prose, indifferent setting, and aesthetic web built around motifs, Ann Petry's The Street reads like a mid-century novel. noir version of Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser: a woman (Carrie is single; Lutie Johnson is saddled by a child) and her relationships with a series of men (using them in Sister Carrie; being used by them in The Street) either propel the social ladder upwards (Dreiser) or cause the rungs below it to fall (Petry). Petry's blatant protest against societal restrictions placed on women, particularly black women, is underscored by a more subtle depiction of the pervasive claustrophobia that physically confines Lutie. The various cramped spaces she occupies, her unsuitable apartment, the crowded buses, the crowded sidewalks, the crowded Junto define her social immobility and her bodily objectification. She searches for a spacious apartment which never arrives, so throughout the novel she is content to find other ways to expand her spatial presence. However, the constant threat of sexual assault and male power, aided by the use of objects, reduces these expansions and imprisons Lutie, who is unwilling to capitalize on her only object of value, her own body. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on 'Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned'? Get the original essay The novel's titular antagonist is, of course, the greatest enemy Lutie faces and, much like Jones, Junto and Boots, he treats her and everyone else as objects, lumping them together and deindividualizing them: "It was any town where they drew a line and said black people stay on this side and white people stay on that side , so that black people were piled on top of each other, squeezed, packed, and forced into the smallest space possible” (206). The line here, segregation, returns in The Street as that which spatially separates the safe from the dangerous, action from passivity, individuality from anonymity. The destruction of the lines removes the ill effects of crowds and makes them joyful, as the bustling streets of Harlem are a sudden relief from the crowded subway: "Escaped from the openly appraising gazes of white men whose eyes seemed to pass through her clothes for her long brown legs " (57). Even white men are objectified; while their "open" gazes may defy the restrictive space around them, they are reduced to "eyes," just as Lutie is defined by her legs and clothes, its only object of defense, becomes useless Nevertheless, as we will see later, sight is the most powerful sense of The Street it opens a space to men, often like an illusion, while women are stuck, like; Lutie here. providing individual movement within the anonymous block The streets of Harlem are a welcome change from the subway, and although racial homogeneity would seemingly further compromise individuality, the opposite is true, as pedestrians. ironically accumulate differences when placed in an environment of supposed similarity: “Here, they are no longer creatures simply labeled “colored” and therefore all similar. She noticed that once the crowd moved across the platform and began to climb the stairs toward the street, it grew larger” (57). It is this metamorphosis “The same people who had made themselves small on the train, even on the platform, suddenly became so tall that they could barely climb the stairs leading to the street together” (58) which defies the objectified labels and competition for street space is based on personal greatness rather thanshrinking of the public sphere. Metamorphosis occurs through immersion in a new, larger space, but for women it is clearly a dependent response. They need the helping hand of space and cannot create scale alone: Young women returning from dirty work, tired, depressed eagerly awaited the moment when they would change their clothes and head to the spaces courtesy of the Junto. They dressed hastily in their dark little rooms, so eager for the soft lights and music and pleasure that awaited them that they groped in their haste. (144) The Junta's "graceful space" is not simply an opportunity for rhyme although the space itself suggests a harmonious environment, but emphasizes the Junta itself as a meeting place. you women; they prepare for the evening as if trying to impress a man whose stature enhances their own. These "little dark rooms" are everywhere, and even though women don't like them, for Jones they represent the feminine spaces he is incapable of making. to invade as he toils in his own dark little space, the cellar. The compartmentalization of apartments is correlated with mailboxes, because a building contains many apartments and the postman's master key opens all the mailboxes at once: "The postman opened all the mailboxes at once, using a key that he had suspended from a long, strong chain. The sagging leather pouch that had been slung over his shoulder was filled with mail. He put letters in the open boxes, used the key again to lock them, and left” (290-1). Petry writes this as an episode of virtual intercourse; the postman's key (a traditional phallic signifier for one's ability to penetrate a lock; cf. "Rape of the Lock" which, although keyless, makes a play on words through its themes of castration), on a "long and strong chain", is able to open all the boxes simultaneously, the male fantasy of sexual omnipotence and omnipresence "push[s]" his missives inside, and is able to lock them away from anyone's contact before leaving the stage. Cave dweller Jones can only dream of such space conquest, the ability to control small, analog chambers from a single place of command. Her assault on Lutie, “dragging her toward the cellar door” (235), is an attempt to deny her mobility, much like locking the mailboxes: she has grabbed the railing. His fingers tore her hands away. She twisted and writhed in his arms, supporting his feet, clawing at his face with her nails. He ignored her frantic efforts to get away from him and pulled her closer and closer to the cellar door. She kicked him and the long skirt wrapped around her legs so she stumbled closer to him. She tried to scream, and when she opened her mouth, no sound came out; and she thought it was worse than any nightmare, because there was no sound in it. There was only his face next to hers, a frightening, distorted face, eyes glaring, mouth open, and his tense, sweaty body pushing her ever closer to the half-open cellar door. (236) The subjects, grammatically or to the reader's eye, of the staccato sentences are usually parts of the body, his fingers, his arms, his feet, his nails, and the final demonic image of Jones' face as the aggressor and victim again are objectified, like in the subway. Yet Jones still has the upper hand as the environment betrays Lutie. The railing offers no protection and his clothes once again prove useless for defending himself. His silent cryrecalls Edvard Munch's "The Scream" in which the overflowing lines suggest the immersion of the subject in a hostile environment that the observer of the silent painting cannot understand. Likewise, Jones' open mouth is paired with the gaping cellar door, the looming threat of rape, and Lutie's silence renders the reader as helpless as she is. Yet Lutie finds her voice, and it is the only instrument that seems to offer a way out of the street and out of the cellar: "She screamed until she could hear her own voice screaming senselessly in up the stairs, stopping on landings, turning corners, going down hallways, gaining volume as she began to climb the stairs again” (236). Her voice, as a part of herself that emanates externally in waves and echoes, can extend beyond her personal space. The female musicality of the voice is a factor of action throughout the novel; Mrs. Hedges thwarts two different attacks, that of Jones and that of a pack of boys on Bub. She says to Lutie, "'Shut up? You want the whole place to wake up?'" (237) and Petry describes the swelling power of her voice: "Her rich, pleasant voice filled the hallway, and at the sound of This one, the dog furtively moved away, its tail between its legs” (237). Her “rich, pleasant voice,” here performing a sort of castration of the dog, returns twice during Bub’s attack: “‘You heard me, you little bastards,’ she says in her rich, pleasant voice. 'You get out of there. block, Charlie Moore. Mrs. Hedges’ rich, pleasant voice carried far beyond the sidewalk” (347-8). Of course, Lutie hopes that his own pleasant voice will literally translate into wealth. Her singing temporarily obscured her social and spatial position: “The music swelled behind her and she began to sing, weakly at first, then her voice became louder, clearer, because little by little she forgot the men in the room. orchestra, even forgot that she was there at the Casino and why she was there” (222). The repeated word “there” is crucial; the phrase does not require the first instance, but its superfluous entry makes the presence and its temporary obliteration the center of Lutie's singing, just as when Lutie sings a note so low and so sustained that "it was impossible to say where she had stopped” (148). ), rather than when it stopped. The note is defined in spatial, not tonal, terms. Lutie's musical escape is temporary due to the absence of objects to manipulate; she, and not a physical instrument, is the manipulated object, the “lute”. Her attempts to earn money from singing are constantly thwarted by men who use the items for their own benefit and attempt to take advantage of Lutie as an object. She waits in the “small waiting room” of a singing school (318) and enters a room whose inventory runs continuously on nine lines (319). Like Junto, the portly Mr. Crosse, the owner of the school, dominates the room not only by his obesity but also by making himself visible without objectifying himself to the social gaze: "She was quite close to the office before she could see this that was happening. looked like the man sitting behind, because his feet obstructed his view” (319). Junto is much more powerful as he magnifies his presence with an inversion of the traditional trope of the male gaze; Lutie always looks at him through reflected mirrors, rather than the other way around, but he transcends objectification: “She looked at him again and again, because his reflection in the mirror fascinated her. Somehow, even at this distance, his stocky figure managed to dominate. the whole room” (146). The mirrors, which make "the Junto an enormous room" (146), create an illusion of enlarged space that Boots later capitalizes on in her room: "there were too many mirrors for her to see him.

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