Wanting to keep their home and their way of life, Joe and Violet must adapt to the rising price of their home. In an already poverty stricken area like Harlem, the rents turned people onto the streets. Landlords set rent as high as they wanted all that mattered to them is that people were willing to pay what they were asking, whether or not it was the people already living in the house. When they move into their house on Lenox they can afford the “fifty, sixty dollars a month,” but they are not prepared for the drastic climb in rent of the early 1900s that stemmed from the high demand of others who wish to live in the City (127). They have overcome the first challenges of the City, and are living part of their dream–until reality strikes again.Īs newcomers to the City, Violet and Joe are not, at first, aware of the high cost of living.

Life seems to have improved for Violet and Joe, and when they move to Lenox, they live in a home far larger than necessary for two people. Once he works his way up, he begins working at a hotel and as a waiter where he makes tip money “that dropped in palm fast as Pecans in November,” (128). Though Joe no longer must do hard labor on the fields, he now must resort to demeaning jobs, from cleaning fish to scrubbing toilets. The first reminder of the harshness of reality hits when they attempt to find decent jobs in the City. By placing all of their confidence in a place they had never been to provide them with excitement, money, and love, they set themselves up for disappointment from the beginning. Violet and Joe entered the City with, “fascination” that made them, “feel more like themselves,” before they had even met the City and its flaws. This is the first sign of the expectations of acceptance and love Violet and Joe hope to acquire in the City and this new life. Together, Joe and Violet were the perfect candidates for the alluring promises of the City because of their need to escape their painful childhoods, but also because of the lack of fulfillment they were receiving from their adult lives.Īs they head on a train to New York for the first time in 1906, “they stared out the windows for first sight of the City that danced with them, proving already how much it loved them,” (32). After Joe and Violet meet and marry, they work multiple hard-labor jobs like plowing and working in a sawmill. Similarly, Joe was abandoned by his mother, leaving him to search for fulfillment of his maternal void. Her family consisted of a mother who committed suicide and a father who was absent from her life for several months at a time. Violet’s rough childhood led her to look for hope and happiness in places far from her home state of Virginia.

Violet and Joe travel to New York in the hopes of a new beginning.

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