Uprising

Throughout Uprising, Margaret Peterson Haddix explores the theme of socially-coded spaces, areas that are forbidden to women and people of different classes. When Pietro disappears, Bella wants to inquire about him in the bars he frequents. She is prohibited by Signora Luciano, who claims that entering such spaces will destroy Bella’s reputation. When Bella learns that Signor Luciano has stolen her money, she similarly perceives the bank as a space for men she cannot trust.

Jane frequently expresses her sensation of being imprisoned, chauffeured among a small list of approved upper-class feminine spaces: her room, tea parties, and dances with fellow socialites. She is forbidden to visit masculine spaces such as her father’s study, or politicized, lower-class spaces such as the Triangle strike. Even when Janes does visit the strike, she encounters certain rules of engagement, ways that upper-class women are expected to behave differently from the lower-class strikers. She is literally given a list of rules that implies the police will treat them differently if they are arrested. The Vassar organizer quantifies this difference with “us” versus “them” language, explaining that the police have been very respectful of “us,” but not toward the “poor factory girls” (116).

Haddix augments her discussion of social rules with examinations of spoken language and communication barriers. These barriers are prevalent in The Triangle factory, where workers speak Yiddish, Italian, and a variety of other languages, and are expressly forbidden to talk to each other during the work day. Factory bosses use language to make workers feel inferior, as when Signor Carlotti insults Bella’s Italian dialect. Yetta suspects that the factory bosses also try to enhance divisions between workers by spreading false rumors about Italians to Yiddish speakers and vice versa. Haddix demonstrates, however, that the girls often find ways to communicate with each other that extend beyond spoken language, as when Yetta holds up her shirtwaist for Bella to observe her sewing patterns. Uprising also includes numerous instances wherein the girls read each other’s facial expressions and body language.

Uprising also illuminates the ways illiteracy serves as a major obstacle for immigrants. For months, Bella remains unaware of her family’s situation because she cannot read the letter sent from her village. Similarly, Bella does not directly receive information about her job, as Pietro serves as a go-between with Signor Carlotti. Thus, when Bella and Yetta work with Jane to improve their English skills, they take an important step toward asserting their independence. By gaining confidence as English communicators, they eliminate the need for a go-between and begin to speak for themselves. 

Uprising illustrates how women’s struggles are frequently diminished, dismissed with platitudes about all women being the same. When a group of law students approaches Yetta at the strike, they assume she is lying about her factory’s work conditions, that her parents and boyfriend support her while the factory pays “funny money” (82) for non-essential purchases. By hiring prostitutes to attack female picketers, the police similarly suggest that all women are alike. At the strike, a policeman looks back and forth between Yetta and a prostitute, proclaiming, “You’re a striker, aren’t you?…[t]hen I can’t see much difference” (90).

Women of Jane’s class are comparably written off as having little value beyond their procurement of a wealthy husband. When Jane threatens to fire Miss Millhouse, she laughs, calling Jane “just a bit of fluff” that her father is going to marry off, claiming that’s “all a girl is worth” (162). This unilaterally-diminishing language ultimately helps Jane to recognize her own struggle in the strike. When Yetta tells Jane that the factory owners lock them inside during their shift, Jane sees an issue she can “relate to…[b]eing locked in was like being caged” (120).