Significance Of Francie Nolen In A Tree Grows In Brooklyn

Francie Nolan begins the novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn as an innocent young girl living with her mother, father, and younger brother, Neeley, in a tenament neighborhood of Williamsburg. Her bright, observant nature allows her to be joyful despite her family’s poverty and her father’s drinking. While Francie grows older in the pages of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, she “comes of age” through her increasingly trying experiences as she loses her childlike innocence, but gains immense strength in character and wisdom. The heroine’s childhood is littered with hardship that prominently contributes to her maturation and transition into adulthood. Family relationships define a lot of who Francie is as she struggles with her aunt, Sissy,

Materially speaking, Francie finally possesses a sense of security in her future and her family’s future. Francie has kept a job, and her mother is marrying a relatively wealthy man as Francie prepares to travel to Michigan to pursue her education and fulfill her ambitions of attending college. At the end of the novel, her character development also becomes especially clear. When she confronts Charlie in his store—something she would never have done as a child—you see that she has developed not only confidence, but wisdom. She understands how Charlie cheats the children, but she can now appreciate why he does it. While Ben may not be as dear to her as Lee was, Francie comprehends the qualities that make him a person of good character that would support and care for her. Overall she has acquired great strength. Katie, her mother, even likens her children’s lives to the tree of hope after it is apparent that Francie is a sickly child, saying, “It’s growing out of sour earth. And its strong because its hard struggle to live is making it strong. My children will be strong that way,” (95) Her sentiment maintains its truth not just in Francie’s struggle to survive infancy, but throughout her struggle to survive and thrive across the entirety of the story. At the cost of suffering and her own innocence, Francie gains the wisdom, strength and endurance that will serve her in the future and allow her to not only survive, but grow in her