But, one thing Lutie forgot along the way, was that she was black and a woman, and as long as she worked long hours every day while being unable to look after Bub, he too may end up like her father and husband. Pizzini’s warning, “It’s best that the man do the work when the babies are young” (Petry 53) which led him to cheat on her and resulted in their separation, or in spite of her struggling to make ends meet while working at a laundry service, she still had hope. In spite of her husband’s inability to find a job, and her not taking heed to Mrs. Chandler, Lutie began to absorb and develop the same spirit, and also believed that anyone, including her, could be rich if they worked hard enough. Chandler one day expressing to his college buddies that America was the, “Richest damn country in the world…Hell! Make it while you’re young… Anyone can do it” (Petry 42). Lutie strongly believed in the idea of from ‘rags-to-riches’ after she had worked for the Chandlers for a year. Living in an unruly environment like that was unacceptable for Lutie, and she wanted so much more herself and her for son to have a successful future that didn’t involve the horrors of the living in poverty.Īs Lutie moved out of Pop’s home and onto 116th street, she believes this is a major stepping stone to a better life for her and her son. Lutie’s father, Pop, and his girlfriend Lil, live in a seven shared room apartment, and Lutie believes they both will negatively impact Bub, especially Lil when, “she thought of where she lived now…a place spilling over with Lil…drinking beer…giving Bub a drink on the sly getting Bub to light cigarettes for her…Bub at eight with smoke curling out his mouth” (Petry 10). She also lives in fear of ‘what-ifs’ and what may lie ahead of her in the future, which is apparent in the beginning of the novel when she wants to move from her father’s home. Lutie Johnson, a young black mother who is struggling to make ends meet and raise her eight year old son named Bub, cannot escape the violence, poverty, and racial dissonance of Harlem in the late 1940’s. Hedges dreamed of the American dream, they both lost hope, and conformed to their environment. The female characters of the Street once had their very own “American dreams”, but due to the oppressed community, their American dreams were snatched away. The street, in which the female characters of the novel live, acts as a captor that traps its inhabitants within the confines of an unruly environment and destroys any ounce of hope. Ann Petry’s The Street, a novel written in 1946, traces the struggles African-American women endured while chasing the American dream and living in Harlem’s racially oppressed environment.
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