A Motley Sorority

Boxcar Bertha

I feel particularly drawn to Boxcar Bertha’s early account of life as a hobo before the Great Depression. We have read so much literature about the “new” migratory culture of the 1930s, and in many ways it was new. The Depression forced more people to travel for work; cars were more prevalent; leisure travel was just becoming popular with the middle class. However, at the start of the work, Bertha says she has “been a hobo for fifteen years, a sister of the road…which has increased its membership so greatly during the depression” (7). Obviously, then, some form of a nomadic society was already in place before the Depression hit.

Moreover, the description, “a sister of the road,” grabs me. As Bertha herself says, “there were few women hoboes those days…only two I remember” (11). Female wanderers were therefore few and far between, and yet Bertha still describes them as being part of a “motley sorority” (7). In many ways, the lack of women on the road probably brought the few that were out there closer together.

Bertha’s mother also seems to experience a huge amount of freedom and independence that the majority of the women at the time would never have even dreamed of. She decides who she wants to be with, who she will or will not marry, where she goes, what business she runs; she is an incredibly autonomous women. She also clearly seems to understand her place in the world in relation to the men around her. She tells her daughter: “Bertha, as long as you can keep men clean and well fed and love them a little, they’ll be perfectly satisfied. They’re all babies. They need to be looked after. Teach them to depend on you. But never let them make a slave of you” (9). Mother Thompson had a very clear view of the world, one that Ma Joad also shares even if she doesn’t articulate it quite as clearly. Both these women understand on a very basic level that the day to day operations of women really made their men function.

Bertha’s childhood view of life as a hobo also offers a rare picture among the literature of the 1930s. She enjoys her life! And as she says, she has never known anything different. Someone getting arrested was an everyday occurrence; someone going hungry was a common theme. I find myself pitying her and yet admiring her. She may be a fictional character, but she has strength and courage that I wish I could emulate.