The Street by Ann Petry
"The Street" by Ann Petry is a significant novel that explores the harsh realities faced by African American women in urban settings, specifically in Harlem during 1944. The narrative centers around Lutie Johnson, a woman who leaves her unstable home life in Jamaica, New York, seeking a better future for herself and her eight-year-old son, Bub. Instead of achieving the American Dream, Lutie finds herself in a tenement plagued by economic hardship and the threat of male aggression. The novel addresses critical themes such as single parenting, sexual oppression, and the struggles of latchkey children, illustrating the compounded challenges of race, gender, and class that African American women endure.
Lutie's experiences highlight the pervasive sexual politics of her environment, where she becomes a target for various male figures, each representing the systemic issues that affect her life. The harsh depiction of her struggle not only sheds light on personal trauma but also serves as a broader commentary on the societal conditions that marginalize African American women. Ultimately, "The Street" is both a portrayal of individual defeat and a profound statement on the resilience and moral responsibilities shouldered by women within their families and communities. The novel stands as a poignant reflection on the intersectionality of identity and the often painful realities of life in Harlem.
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Subject Terms
The Street by Ann Petry
First published: 1946
The Work
The Street portrays the economic plight of African Americans in Northern cities. Themes of the novel include the problem of latchkey children, single parenting, and sexual oppression. This novel is perhaps the first written by an African American woman that probes the triple threat to African American women of race, gender, and class.
Much of the action of The Street takes place on 116th Street in Harlem in 1944. The central character, Lutie Johnson, leaves an unemployed womanizing husband and a nice frame house in Jamaica, New York. She moves to Harlem with her eight-year-old son, Bub. Lutie moves to the city to realize a comfortable life. Instead of an independent and prosperous life in New York City, Lutie finds herself living in a tenement. The janitor, William Jones, is a sociopath who lusts after Lutie. A major presence on the street is Mrs. Hedges, who runs a whorehouse. Qualified for clerical or secretarial employment, Lutie can find only menial work in a laundry. Instead of ownership of a piece of the American Dream, Lutie finds herself trapped in a nightmare.
Lutie becomes fair game for males. William makes advances and tries to molest Lutie. Junto, the white business partner of Mrs. Hedges, tries to seduce Lutie. Boots Smith, a musician in a bar that Junto owns, charms Lutie with visions of a better life with him. Boots lures her to his apartment, where he attempts to rape her. In an effort to ward off Boots’s rape, Lutie kills him. Vowing revenge on Lutie, William tricks Bub into stealing and gets him in trouble with the law. Disillusioned and defeated, Lutie abandons Bub and runs away to Chicago.
Sexual politics drive the novel and rest on a concept that African American women are sexual prey. Negative sexual imagery of Lutie and by extension of all African American women is held by black and white males and by white females. A mixture of race and gender politics pushes Lutie over the edge. Lutie represents all the walking wounded of 116th Street and all of Harlem’s downtrodden residents. The Street is not merely a graphic portrayal of what it means to be female and to be poor; it is also a story of protest and defeat. The Street presents the African American woman as the center of the family and the community. She shoulders the moral responsibilities of the race.
Bibliography
Bell, Bernard W. “Ann Petry’s Demythologizing of American Culture and Afro-American Character.” In Conjuring: Black Women, Fiction, and Literary Tradition, edited by Marjorie Pryse and Hortense Spillers. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985. Bell attempts to free Petry’s work from stifling, traditional comparisons to the works of Richard Wright and Chester Himes, two of Petry’s notable contemporaries. He contends that these longstanding comparisons overshadow and misrepresent Petry’s talent and that, in contrast to Wright and Himes, Petry moves beyond a mere naturalist vision in order to probe pervasive cultural myths and the intricacies and complexities of character.
Christian, Barbara. Black Women Novelists: The Development of a Tradition, 1892-1976. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980. Christian places Lutie Johnson, the protagonist, within the tradition of the “tragic mulatta,” the beautiful and ill-fated heroine commonplace early in the tradition of African American women’s fiction. Christian sees the novel as exposing the falseness of governing American myths in addition to exposing the inevitability of crime given the hostility of urban environments for African American communities.
Crescenzo, Michele. “Poor Lutie’s Almanac: Reading and Social Critique in Ann Petry’s The Street. ” In Reading Women: Literary Figures and Cultural Icons from the Victorian Age to the Present, edited by Janet Badia and Jennifer Phegley. Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 2005. Examines the social significance attributed to the act of reading and the representation of the reading subject in Petry’s novel.
Hernton, Calvin C. The Sexual Mountain and Black Women Writers. New York: Anchor Press, 1987. Hernton praises Petry as the first African American writer to portray strikingly and forcefully the multiple oppressions facing African American women. Junto, Jones, and Boots Smith are explicated in the essay as oppressors of Lutie, and Min is contrasted to Lutie in their roles as victims of the multiple oppression facing African American women. Hernton singles out the novel as a pioneering example of the “womanist/feminist protest” that would later emerge from African American women novelists.
Pryse, Marjorie. “’Pattern Against the Sky’: Deism and Motherhood in Ann Petry’s The Street. ” In Conjuring: Black Women, Fiction, and Literary Tradition, edited by Marjorie Pryse and Hortense Spillers. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985. Pryse explores the significance of the novel’s references to Benjamin Franklin in order to consider the determinist, or deist, narrative world in which Lutie Johnson struggles. Having established the nature of the narrative world, Pryse then considers the characters who provide visions of the community in which Lutie Johnson lives. Pryse’s footnotes provide important bibliographical data concerning earlier criticism on The Street.
Washington, Mary Helen, ed. Invented Lives: Narratives of Black Women, 1860-1960. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1987. Discusses Petry’s development of the female characters in her novels.