In preparation for an A Level revision day, I have been revisiting ‘The Grapes of Wrath’. Steinbeck’s brilliant social analysis of the horrific impact the Great Depression had on the Joad’s, the Oklahoma citizens on a quest for a better life in California. The concept of family is an important theme in novels and in real life. Ultimately, the wrath of Covid 19, is destroying the very fabric of our family lives in ways that I would never have thought possible.
Ma Joad
When reading ‘The Grapes of Wrath’, what struck me, was that no matter how bad things got, how hungry they were, how despairing, how degraded they felt, they had each other. Ma Joad, became the lead of the family and kept up their spirits and organised their lives. When economic issues hit the family, it was the women who stood up and took the reigns and steered the family to safety. The prize was, that no matter how bad things got, they had each other and this is what they had to fight for. Ma Joad
“seemed to know, to accept, to welcome her position, the citadel of the family, the strong place that could not be taken. And since Tom and the children could not know hurt or fear unless she acknowledged hurt and fear, she has practiced denying them in herself.”
It is an insightful portrayal of the strength of the collective human spirit, and in particular, the importance of the matriarch in times of trouble.
Mighty Matriarchs
My own family has a strong tradition of northern matriarchs. Growing up, the feminist theories that explored male dominance in society, never applied to my own family. There was no pretence and no hiding of it, the women were always in control. Consequently, we have a large network of family members where we are all still close to each other, and we all get on. The shared belief system is strong and no matter what, family comes first. As a matriarch, and from a position of emotional strength, I can recognise the heightened status of Ma Joad:
“And from her great and humble position in the family she had taken dignity and a clean calm beauty. From her position as healer, her hands had grown sure and cool and quiet; from her position as arbiter she had become as remote and faultless in judgment as a goddess. She seemed to know that if she swayed the family shook, and if she ever really deeply wavered or despaired the family would fall, the family will to function would be gone.”
The importance of a strong female role model should never be underestimated.
The Wrath of Covid 19
Covid 19 has forced us the reflect on our lives. For me, the hardest thing to deal with has been not seeing my friends and family. In the short term, I could cope with the idea of not seeing my family. Social media made things easier. Nevertheless, the current imposition on our liberties truly hit me when I asked my – usually very accommodating- brother, if I could visit when I dropped my son off at university. His borough had just been put into severe restrictions and I had underestimated the consequences of breaking such ‘laws’. His response – ‘You can come over, but if I get a £600 fine, you can pay it.’
Fines for Seeing Family
What kind of society have we become, where even an outside visit in my own brother’s garden can result in an extortionate fine? We are both physically well, we would both follow the rules. What kind of society threatens their law-abiding citizens with a huge fine for merely meeting up with their own family? Especially within the context that we are both working full time. Plus, what is even more sinister, is what kind of society relies on neighbours reporting on their fellow citizens if ever such a situation arose? There are too many parallels to Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Russia, for my liking.
What have we Lost?
I understand that we need to protect the vulnerable – but at what cost? My father has not seen his son and his grandchildren for over 6 months, with the expectation that this could continue for another 6 months. He would never choose to be excluded from family life in his old age. Why target families and family life? In doing so many people have lost their lifeline, their emotional support, their reason for living. I truly despair that as a society we can work and we can go to school, but we cannot see out friends and family. If we do so, we are threatened with a criminal record and an extortionate fine. What happened to the 1948 Bill of Human Rights? Does this no longer apply? In a ‘free’ society should it not be our choice whether we take such risks? It should be our decision whether our emotional stability is more important than the threat of illness. Have we lost our sense of what it means to be free?
Fight for the Citadel
In the current circumstances, I cannot see my family for fear of criminalization and fines. This is a desperate state of affairs. Even in the 1930’s Depression, when families had lost absolutely everything, what held them together was their collective strength as a family unit. My genuine fear is that if our current situation lasts much longer, the fabric of our society will be eroded to the point of no return. We must fight to ensure that in fighting the wrath of Covid, we do not destroy our ‘citadel’, the family unit.