The women in the Nolan/Rommely clan exhibit most of the strength and, whenever humanly possible, control the family's destiny.Is this an accurate appraisal of the way things are in the novel? Francie observes more than once that women seem to hate other women ("they stuck together for only one thing: to trample on some other woman"), while men, even if they hate each other, stick together against the world. Is this a fair criticism? Which characters are the most convincing? The least? Some critics have argued that many of the characters in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn can be dismissed as stereotypes, exhibiting quaint characteristics or representing pat qualities of either nobility or degeneracy.How and why have our society's perceptions of poverty changed - for better or worse - during the last one hundred years? But they also display a remarkable self-reliance (Katie, for example, says she would kill herself and her children before accepting charity). In a particularly revealing chapter of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Francie's teacher dismisses her essays about everyday life among the poor as "sordid," and, indeed, many of the novel's characters seem to harbor a sense of shame about their poverty.
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