The Promised Land by Mary Antin
"The Promised Land" is an autobiographical work by Mary Antin that chronicles her journey from Eastern Europe to America, highlighting her experiences as an immigrant seeking freedom and opportunity. Antin reflects on her early life in Polotzk, Russia, where she felt constrained by her religion and gender, with limited educational prospects and societal roles dictated by her identity. After her father's business struggles led the family to relocate to Boston, Antin discovered a vastly different reality in America, where she embraced the freedom to pursue education and personal growth.
In Boston, she took advantage of the public schooling system, which opened new intellectual opportunities for her, and engaged with local cultural institutions, feeling a sense of belonging and equality that contrasted sharply with her earlier life. Antin's narrative conveys a message of hope and possibility for immigrants, showcasing her achievements and those of others as evidence of the potential for successful assimilation in American society. Throughout the text, she contrasts the oppressive conditions of the Old World with the liberating experiences of the New World, ultimately celebrating America as a land of opportunity where individuals can shape their own identities.
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Subject Terms
The Promised Land by Mary Antin
First published: 1912
The Work
The Promised Land is Mary Antin’s mature autobiography. In it, she tells the story of what she considers her escape from bondage in Eastern Europe and her finding of freedom in America. Early in the book, she compares herself to a treadmill horse who can only go round and round in the same circle. She sees herself in Polotzk in what was then Russia as imprisoned by her religion (Jews were allowed to live only in certain places in Czarist Russia and only to work at certain trades) and her sex (among Orthodox Jews in Eastern Europe, women were not permitted education beyond learning to read the Psalms in Hebrew).
After her father suffered a long illness and as a result failed in business, he went to America. His family followed him to Boston, where Mary grew up. In America, she felt that she had all the freedom she lacked in the Old World. She could get free secular education. The public schools of Boston, she felt, opened new intellectual vistas for her. She also had access to public libraries and settlement houses that provided her with cultural activities. Thus, she felt she had “a kingdom in the slums.”
She responded to America’s possibilities by doing extremely well in school and by publishing her first poem when she was fifteen. Her father proudly bought copies of the newspaper in which it appeared and distributed it to friends and neighbors, bragging about his daughter the writer.
She became a member of the Natural History Club of Boston, and through it, learned about the lives of its members who, she felt, represented what was best about America, a country in which she felt she was a welcomed participant. Visiting many of the members in their homes, she became convinced that she had true equality in America.
In her book, Antin says that if she could accomplish so much, so can all immigrants. She admits that her father, because of an inability to master the English language and because of bad luck, did not prosper in the New World, but she still remains optimistic about America and about the possibilities of total assimilation for America’s immigrant population. Whereas the Old World represents, for her, lack of freedom and a predetermined identity, she sees the New World as representing freedom and the ability to choose her own identity.
Bibliography
Guttmann, Allen. The Jewish Writer in America: Assimilation and the Crisis of Identity. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971.
Liptzin, Sol. The Jew in American Literature. New York: Bloch, 1966.
Tuerk, Richard. “At Home in the Land of Columbus: Americanization in European-American Immigrant Autobiography.” In Multicultural Autobiography: American Lives, edited by James Robert Payne. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992.