Francie Nolan, the child protagonist of Betty Smith’s classic, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, has been beloved by readers since the novel debuted in 1943.
For over sixty years, this “imaginative, alert, resourceful child” has captured the hearts of every person who gets to know her. I finished Book One of the novel, and I have easily found five concrete reasons to adore this admirable heroine.
1. She is an avid reader, and a proud bibliophile. Francie anticipates Saturdays for many reasons, especially since on that day she checks out two books from the local library. “The library was an old shabby place," Smith writes, but “Francie thought it was beautiful” (20). Smith explains that Francie thinks the library contains every book ever written, and Francie intends to read every book the library can offer her. As any serious reader would do, Francie begins her literary quest at the A’s, and works her way down from there. The journey is long, and “she had to admit that some of the B’s had been hard going. But Francie was a reader” (20), and she would not be stopped. Such commitment to and love of reading is exceptional in one so young.
2. She is an obedient daughter and a generally complaisant person. Personally, I am amazed that Francie is so agreeable when I look at her childhood in poverty-stricken Brooklyn. Francie always obeys her mother, working hard to please others. Her father, Johnny Nolan, is introduced to the reader in Book One. Smith says that “his children did not know that they were supposed to be ashamed of him” (32), but that Francie adores her father. As he catches a trolley to go to a job, instances which are few and far between for the alchoholic Johnny Nolan, Francie thinks that “no man had ever looked so gallant as her father” (36). Reason tells us that she has evidence enough to question her father’s behavior. But she doesn’t think of him any differently; instead, this respectful child loves her father unconditionally.
3. She has the ability to bear annoying situations/people. On Saturday, the subject of most of Book One’s chapters, Francie must complete many errands for her mother, and these try her patience. For example, in chapter one, her mother sends her to get the week’s bread from Losher’s. There, she observes a poor elderly man, and panics when she realizes that one day she will be old too. Smith details Francie’s childish fear of growing old, but the reader sympathizes with the poor girl nonetheless. She also has to deal with being teased by hypocritical boys in the morning, fighting over bread with another girl at Losher's, being cursed at by one butcher, and having to withstand the horrible puns of another butcher.
4. She is determined to be content. Francie is a dreamer, like her father, and she has goals that she wants to reach. But she also finds ways to make herself content, even when everything seems to be coming apart. She has a routine for reading, which makes her happy; she reads one book per day, and treats herself to two on Saturday. When “nothing tasted good” to Francie, “that was big pickle time” (43). On those days, she takes a penny to buy a pickle, which she doesn’t actually eat. Instead, Francie just enjoys the juice and nibbles on it. She realizes how valuable time with her family is, and loves listening to her parents’ voices at night. Francie’s determination to live a contented life symbolizes the Tree of Heaven that Smith describes in the first chapter: “no matter where its seed fell, it made a tree which struggled to reach the sky…the Tree of Heaven flourished” (3,4).
5. She has a sense of humor. Whether unconsciously or not, Francie’s sense of humor manifests itself in her thoughts and words. A product of the stereotypical Brooklyn childhood, Francie has familiar notions about others that she regards as legitimate aphorisms. She thinks about the differences between her neighbor, Flossie, and her Aunt Sissy in regards to men: “the difference was that Flossie Gladis was starved about men and Sissy was healthily hungry about them. And what a difference that made” (28). Through Francie’s visits to see Flossie’s dancing costumes, Smith shows a comical truth, that “poor people have a great passion for huge quantities of things” (39). Francie remembers her thoughts about old age (see reason number three), and regards the poor, old man at Losher's as having “obscene feet” (41). Her ways of thinking make readers laugh, and they are cleverly mixed with Smith’s penetrating realities about life in early twentieth-century Brooklyn.
