Settlement houses first began appearing in the immigrant and
working-class districts of American cities in the 1890s. Over
the next four decades, immigrant men and women had a wide range
of experiences with settlement house reformers. Some immigrants
encountered the settlement houses as places of refuge and
caring; at other times, they found reformers to be arrogant and
patronizing. Born in Russian Poland around 1885, Anzia Yesierska
came to America as a young girl in the 1890s. She rejected the
traditional notions of womanhood and marriage dictated by her
Jewish immigrant family. She toiled in sweatshops and laundries
while she taught herself English and began writing. She married
twice but both unions were brief. In her first story, “The Free
Vacation House,” published in 1915, Yesierska painted the
middle-class reformers who tried to help the immigrant heroine
as meddling busybodies who disregarded her right to dignity and
privacy. How came it that I went to the free vacation house was
like this: One day t