the Old World, to the sisters and their men, who together represent the choices and opportunities that opened before the young generation of the Jewish emigrants in the New World.The father of the storyteller, Sarah Smolinsky, is an orthodox rabbi, Mosheh Smolinsky, with rigid old-fashioned conceptions, who cannot or simply does not make an effort to realize himself in America and spends his days poisoning lives of his family by preaching his useless "wisdom", marrying off his daughters to men they don't love and living off wages the daughters earn. Father's old-fashioned sexist views about women clearly represent the Old World with its outdated traditions, and life-crippling laws. Practically everything he preaches is contradicted by his actions and later proves to be false. For example, when confronted by his wife about unpaid bills, he preaches that money is not important and that spiritual life guided by God's laws should be a goal of every human. Yet, later, when the time comes to merry off his daughters, the only thing he cares about is money. He does not care about his daughters' feelings. Their desires and opinions mean nothing to him. He thinks that women are dumb and are not capable to pick a right spouse. He also thinks that they don't deserve to make a choice and their happiness in marriage is not important. He vies all women, including his Daughters and wife, as brainless slaves, who are born to serve their men. "It says in the Torah, only through a man has a woman an existence." he proclaims. So he sees the marriages of his daughters simply as business transactions between him and the highest bidder. The goal of the transaction is to provide the new husbands with servants and give him, the father, a material benefit in the future.He calls Sarah "hard heart" and blames her for deserting him, not working in his store, and not sending him part of her wages. He says that she is selfish, heartless, and does not rem...
