Book Club Suggestions

The Featherbed has already been selected for readings by a number of book clubs. If your club is interested in doing a reading, the following questions may be of interest to you to guide your discussion.

1. In The Featherbed, Rebecca and her mother disagree on whether or not “history and the heart” should be connected. Children of Holocaust survivors and other survivors of war and violence often refuse to discuss the painful events of their past. Why do they remain silent? Does their silence help or hurt?

2. Rebecca’s grandmother gives her mother a featherbed as a present when she leaves her village in Russia. This featherbed is passed on to Rebecca when she marries. Featherbeds were often given as part of a woman’s dowry, and were frequently one of the only comforts immigrants brought from the old country. They were light, easily compacted, and one could wrap other belongings inside of them. While nowadays we use them to add extra comfort to our mattresses, they used to be used as the mattress itself - a little softness and warmth over a hard wooden bed frame, or on a cold floor.

In this novel, what does the featherbed represent?

3. At a certain point in the story, it becomes clear that some of Rebecca’s diary entries are written with a specific purpose in mind. What is the author saying about personal disclosure and truth?

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4. Sylvia claims to believe there’s nothing wrong with prostitution, and that running a brothel of her own would give her financial and social independence. Rebecca is sceptical of her convictions, but Sylvia accuses Rebecca of being prudish and judgemental. Do you believe Sylvia? Are there circumstances where prostitution might be liberating?

A debate rages around this issue in progressive circles. Some believe that were it not for social stigma surrounding the sale of sex, society would find ways to make prostitution safe and dignified. Others believe selling sex is intrinsically exploitive and that therefore the sex trade itself will always be exploitive.

5. Rebecca’s friend Hattie claims that being married prevents her from being taken seriously as an individual, and from tapping her creativity. She declares that reading Emma Goldman’s autobiography Living My Life inspired her to leave her husband. When Anna disagrees with her, Hattie counters with the statement, “Other people hold you back, even if your husband doesn’t. No offence dear, but if you were married, you’d notice that right away.” Is Hattie making excuses for her lack of success as a writer, or was there truth to her statement. Is there any truth to her statement in today’s world?

Note: Emma Goldman was a world-famous anarchist, feminist, and advocate of birth control and “free love”. While not morally opposed to promiscuity, her definition of free love was not about sex, but rather the freedom for women and men to love who they wished. “How can love be anything but free?” she wrote. Before her autobiography was published by Knopf in 1931, Living My Life was printed in serial form earlier that year, translated into Yiddish, in the Jewish Daily Forward. At the time, it was widely read and commented on.

To find out more about Emma Goldman’s life and writings, visit The Emma Goldman Papers Project website, housed at University of California Berkeley, at: http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/

6. As the story progresses, we see that Mr. Zussel and Ida Eisenstein/Weiss/Gutstein play a more significant role in Rebecca’s life than one might expect. What might the author be trying to say in developing these minor characters?

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