Twenty Years at Hull House · Chapter
First Days at Hull House explained
Jane Addams and Miss Starr search for a neighborhood in Chicago to establish Hull House, facing skepticism and criticism but ultimately opening the settlement.
What happens
Jane Addams and Miss Starr search for a neighborhood in Chicago to establish Hull House, facing skepticism and criticism but ultimately opening the settlement. They engage with neighbors, providing services like nursing, childcare, and burial preparation, while also organizing clubs and classes for children and older residents. The chapter highlights the reciprocal nature of social relations and the challenges of bridging cultural and class divides.
Themes in this chapter
Social Reform and the Settlement Movement
The founding of Hull House exemplifies the settlement movement's goal of addressing urban poverty through community engagement and reciprocal social relations.
Immigration and Cultural Assimilation
The chapter highlights the isolation of immigrants, such as the Italian woman unaware of local roses, and the tension between pioneers and 'foreigners' in the neighborhood.
Education and Self-Improvement
Hull House provides clubs, classes, and handicraft training for children and older residents, emphasizing the importance of supplementary education and social development.
Characters to notice
- Jane Addams
Narrator and co-founder of Hull House, actively searching for a neighborhood and engaging with residents.
- Miss Starr
Co-founder of Hull House, joins Jane Addams in Chicago to implement their settlement plan.
- Thomas Davidson
Renowned scholar who criticizes the settlement plan as 'unnatural,' but later acknowledges its advantages.
- Koerner
German poet whose songs are sung at an anarchist Sunday school visited by Addams.
- Professor Davidson
Later acknowledges the benefits of group living in settlements, working with young men in New York.
Key passages
“I recall one old man, fiercely American, who had reproached me because we had so many 'foreign views' on our walls, to whom I endeavored to set forth our hope that the pictures might afford a familiar island to the immigrants in a sea of new and strange impressions.”
An elderly American criticized the foreign art on Hull House's walls, but Addams explained that the pictures could comfort immigrants amidst unfamiliar surroundings.
Illustrates the cultural tension and Addams' diplomatic approach to bridging immigrant and native-born communities.
“If it is natural to feed the hungry and care for the sick, it is certainly natural to give pleasure to the young, comfort to the aged, and to minister to the deep-seated craving for social intercourse that all men feel.”
Just as feeding the hungry is natural, so is providing joy to the young, solace to the elderly, and fulfilling the universal need for social connection.
Reflects Addams' philosophy that social services are a natural extension of human compassion.
“The old settler guest, taken off his guard, replied, 'I see; they feel as we did when we saw a Yankee notion from Down East,'—thereby formulating the dim kinship between the pioneer and the immigrant, both 'buffeting the waves of a new development.'”
An old settler unexpectedly recognized that immigrants' feelings of strangeness mirrored pioneers' reactions to new Yankee ideas, highlighting a shared experience of navigating change.
Shows the unexpected common ground between pioneers and immigrants in facing new environments.