The Real Mary Antin: Woman on a Mission in the Promised Land

The majority of people who are interested in American Jewish History, and certainly all those interested in immigration history, have heard of a turn-of-the-century author named Mary Antin. However, despite this superficial name recognition, few people know what literary inventiveness this person employed in order to serve herself up as an appealing representation of the Jewish people and of the immigrant underclass that would be acceptable to the “American” reading public. If one has had the opportunity to read Antin’s book The Promised Land—a national best seller in 1912 that was considered to be the most popular immigrant autobiography of its time—it is unlikely that one ever questioned the authenticity of this story, for why on earth would an immigrant make up such a life? New research comparing the original manuscript of Antin’s autobiography and the published book suggests that we should reacquaint ourselves with this author in order to determine the full extent of her gift to Americans and to the Jewish people. This critical analysis shows that not only did Antin intentionally omit material that would either endanger her authority as a cultural mediator or negatively affect her readers’ opinions of Jews, but also that she constructed an identity for herself that would be attractive to a predominantly patriarchal Gentile country. As a Jew she had to navigate the assimilationist terrain, and as a woman she had to place herself squarely within the gender-coded framework of American society. Discrepancies between the original manuscript and the published version, what she chose to reveal and what to conceal shed light on the real Mary Antin.

“It is right that I should pick my words most carefully, and meditate over every comma,” wrote Mary Antin, “because I am describing miracles too great for careless utterance.” ¹ This idea, that every ink drop held import for the overall impression of her writing led me to a quest to better understand this American author. Antin immigrated to Boston from Polotzk, Russia, in 1894, and wrote The Promised Land sixteen years later, which was published first as a series in the Atlantic Monthly and then in book form by Houghton Mifflin. Antin’s physical experience as she navigated her way through the process of Americanization, her transformation of self from the “Old World” to the “New” and many of the emotions she described, epitomize the Jewish Eastern European immigrant experience as described by other immigrants of the same time period. Her contributions to our understanding of the Jewish Eastern European immigrant experience through ethnic literature are immeasurable. It is the way in which she tells her life story that makes her unique. Mary Antin was a woman on a mission. Antin’s writing had a specific goal: to convince the American public of the potential of the immigrant to become a solid American citizen. Understanding how far Antin was willing to go, and exactly what she chose to modify in order to realize her objective, is essential to fully appreciate this particular author.

In contrast with Abraham Cahan, author of Yekl and The Rise of David Levinsky, who resisted the temptation to modify his realist narrative for his readership, Antin did exactly that in order to sufficiently achieve her goal. As one scholar noted, Cahan refused to rewrite his realistic English version of the sweatshop novel Yekl to make it the “art” his editors suggested and instead he translated it into Yiddish, appealing to his own immigrant audience alone rather than to the larger American one. ² Both Cahan and Antin were mediators between the Jewish immigrant population and the dominant American culture, but of the two, Antin was the one who adapted her writing furthest to suit her cause. It was necessary for her to endear herself to the reader, whether Gentile or Jewish, which she hoped would endear all immigrants to the hearts of the American public during a time of heated anti-immigration sentiment in this country. As a female writer with a male non-Jewish editor, Antin was conventionally in a more accommodating...