On the last page of the “Evaluation”, Ehrenreich asks, “Isn’t [guilt] what we’re supposed to feel? But guilt doesn’t go anywhere near far enough; the appropriate emotion is shame–shame at our own dependency, in this case, on the underpaid labor of others”(221). This passage struck me as it is one in which Ehrenreich directly addresses the audience. One key part of her statement here is that the audience, because they feel shame or guilt regarding the inequalities of poverty, is not itself impoverished. This is a large supposition. Although Ehrenreich acknowledges several working class people’s opinions regarding her novel in the afterword, she seems to navigate the majority of the novel with the assumption that the reader is more like less as she is. How might this assumption affect the novel? Would she have been less comical/offensive had she understood her audience differently?
Ehrenreich’s Target Audience
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