I think it's interesting that the main character in the book Katya (Katya) straddles classes. She is not quite on par with the Sudermanns, but she isn't of the same class as the Karpenkos either, so in some ways she can understand both of their worlds. There are all of these parallels in the book that come out of that structure. When Katya chucks the Sudermanns' cup down the well, she understands why Vera would want to sabotage her. But when she decides not to play with Vera because her shoes will get dirty, she feels the same superiority that Lydia Sudermann might feel towards her. This sense of empathy seems to fit with a lot of Mennonite values. The irony is that neither of the families on either end of the hierarchy can fully empathize with anyone else (though David Sudermann tries).
Class also seems to collide with freedom and capture in this book. When Katya confesses to Helena that she stole the cup, Helena tells her a story about how Helena freed a bird out of a similar spirit of envy when she was a girl. It's as though wealth and privilege are somehow freeing while poverty is captivity; by letting the bird go, maybe Helena aimed to also achieve the freedom of her wealthy friend. After Katya confesses that she stole the cup out of envy of the Sudermanns and their wealth, Helena reinforces her lower status by making her do even more work.
Though poverty is captivity in some sense, perhaps it also achieves the ends of martyrdom and eventual freedom in heaven. At one point in the book Katya speculates about the Bible passage that claims that the first shall be last and the last shall be first. Mennonites have typically emphasized simple living, seeing the humility of owning few possessions as a physical sacrifice for spiritual beliefs—much as other martyrs sacrificed their physical lives for their religious values. David Sudermann says, “I've come to think a person's willingness to die for a belief is in itself a vanity” (82). As a wealthier Mennonite, Sudermann has the luxury to criticize martyrdom; he is rich and doesn't see the value in physical deprivation that Mennonite views would traditionally champion.
That's interesting---I too sensed the class divide, but didn't really comprehend it until reading this post. Now that I put a finger on it, it did feel very different from all the literature we've read this semester in which the Mennonites are the poorer class (whether deliberate or not.) It felt a little jarring to have the Mennonites be regarded as a higher class when usually they're thought to be "lower" in terms of technology, wealth, and social shelteredness.
ReplyDeleteI think this parallels Annie's discomfort of Ted's essay we read earlier, and how it felt uncomfortable to have him "bragging" about his wealth. What is a wealthy Mennonite, and how does one integrate with the historical context of being humble and not necessarily privileged? It's an interesting perspective that Katya brings up.