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Kiss of Death
In the time before the United States had instituted any social service infrastructure, society’s most impoverished residents were cordoned off in brutal “poorhouses.” Poorhouses forced dozens of men, women, and children to share meagre portions of food, to live in cramped conditions, and to sleep on iron cots. In the novel, Mama’s lifelong fear of the poorhouse haunts Lyddie, and helps explain her ability to sympathize with the fictional character Oliver Twist, himself raised in a poorhouse.
Poorhouse/Poor-Farm Quotes in Lyddie
The Lyddie quotes below are all either spoken by Poorhouse/Poor-Farm or refer to Poorhouse/Poor-Farm. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 10 Quotes
The child was in some kind of poor house, it seemed, and he was hungry. Lyddie knew about hungry children. Rachel, Agnes, Charlie—they had all been hungry that winter of the bear. The hungry little boy in the story had held up his bowl to the poor house overseer and said:
“Please sir, I want some more.”
[…] She fought sleep, ravenous for every word. She had not had any appetite for the bountiful meal downstairs, but now she was feeling a hunger she knew nothing about. She had to know what would happen to little Oliver. Would he indeed be hanged just because he wanted more gruel?
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Poorhouse/Poor-Farm Term Timeline in Lyddie
The timeline below shows where the term Poorhouse/Poor-Farm appears in Lyddie. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1
...the faithful when the end comes.” Besides, Mama knows it’s either Aunt Clarissa’s or the poor-farm.
(full context)
Chapter 10
Betsy’s story is about a boy in a poorhouse named Oliver Twist, who is always hungry. When the boy begs for food (“please sir,...
(full context)
Chapter 13
...refuses to listen to the protestors. Lyddie, embarrassed, recalls all she has been through: the poor-farm and Agnes and the bear.
(full context)
