Poverty: Structural Constraint or Moral Failing?

In our discussion of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn it was apparent that few of us are used to reading about poverty in a contemporary urban context. In the book, a loosely-fictionalized memoir of author Betty Smith's own experience growing up in a poor section of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Francie continually confronts her impoverished situation. Her day to day escapades are often rooted in scrounging for scrap metal, pleading for deals from local shopkeepers, and dreaming of a world without the constraints of finances.

Francie's story has a happy ending, though it stands in sharp relief to the stories of countless others that Francie encounters in her Brooklyn: those who, despite their best efforts, cannot rise above the grip of poverty.

Smith depicts poverty as a structural obstacle, ever resistant to success and there to inundate whole families for any misstep - a lost job, an unexpected pregnancy, an ill-timed death. Though Smith does attribute a certain amount of agency to individuals, Francie's escape from Brooklyn is not wholly a Horatio Alger rags-to-riches celebration of pluck and talent. Certainly Katie's insistence that her children devote time and attention to reading from a young age bettered their chances, but it was largely Lady Luck who saved the Nolans: Katie's resilient beauty into middle age and the kindness of an old tavern-keeper are equal parties in their survival.



From here our discussion traveled down several avenues exploring the relationship between the novel and depictions of poverty. We discussed the age-old debate between agency and circumstance, trading points and counter-points about whether individual talents and persistence are enough to overcome systemic and institutional barriers to social mobility. This conversation took place in the foreground of a larger comparison between the path through poverty that Smith depicts and that described in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead.


Rand's assertion that individuals are responsible for their own circumstance is one of the central tenets of her philosophy. The structural constraints of poverty can be overcome through hard work and sacrifice, commitment to one's values, and intiative. A maxim under Rand's objectivist philosophy is that the poor must assume responsibility for lifting themselves out of poverty. In fact, Rand attributes outcome entirely to choice - if a poor family remains poor into the future, it is a product of their own poor choices.

Though Smith shares Rand's esteem for hard work and moral fiber, she does not make a moral valuation of outcome. Instead, she shows that in many poor neighborhoods, the path out of poverty is more difficult than hard work. Katie pushed herself to the brink of collapse, but it was the eye of Sergeant McShane that secured their future.

According to Brookings, roughly 20% of American children grow up below the poverty line, an threshold that many experts feel is set too low. In actual fact, over a quarter of Americans grow up in families that struggle to make ends meet. Poverty is a fact of life for millions of Americans, which begs the question - is poverty, as Rand would contest, a product of some moral failure of individuals to rise above? Or is it, as Smith describes, a suffocating reality that, despite the best efforts of individuals, may or may not ever be lifted?