Some Questions for Later

I just reviewed A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, a novel about growing up in poverty in the early 1900s, published in 1943. I've also recently read David Copperfield and Demon Copperhead. I had to read them together because the latter is a retelling of the former and I wanted to have the proper background to appreciate that. (Reviews will follow, eventually.) 

David Copperfield is classic Dickens, with plenty of cruelty, humor, and optimism. Demon Copperhead is similar -- but so much grittier. The reading experience is completely different. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn falls between them in a publication timeline, but is much more like Dickens in tone.

What's the difference between past poverty and present poverty, anyway? Was past poverty really more genteel? (I'm thinking Little Women here, too.) Was there a greater community feeling that made it less ugly? Did they have more hope back then that things would improve if they just worked hard at life? Do the alienations of modern life make poverty worse? 

Or is the difference simply realism -- meaning the writing style, rather than the facts? Are we more willing now, in modern writing, to dwell on or simply include the details of, for example, scavenging through garbage? Was a death by consumption less gruesome and sad than a death by drug overdose -- or is there a layer of judgment there, as well?

What else accounts for the different vision presented by these books?

This quote from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn seems worth noting here:

    Growing up spoiled a lot of things. It spoiled the nice game they had when there was 

    nothing to eat in the house. When money gave out and food ran low, Katie and the 

    children pretended they were explorers discovering the North Pole and had been 

    trapped by a blizzard in a save with just a little good. They had to make it last till 

    help came. Mama divided up what food there was in the cupboard and called it rations

    and when the children were still hungry after a meal, she's say, "Courage, my men, 

    help will come soon." When some money came in and Mama bought a lot of groceries,

    she bought a little cake as celebration, and she'd stick a penny flag in it and say, "We 

    made it, men. We got to the North Pole."

    One day after one of those "rescues" Francie asked Mama: 

    "When explorers get hungry and suffer like that, it's for a reason. Something big 

    comes out of it. They discover the North Pole. But what big thing comes out of us 

    being hungry like that?"

    Katie looked tired all of a sudden. She said something Francie didn't understand at the

    time. She said, "You found the catch in it."

Definitely food for thought, and maybe a topic to explore in a future review.