IN BEFORE 5!

What really fascinate me in this novel are the villains. More specifically, I'm fascinated by the villains who shock me most: Katy's grandparents. They refuse to help Ruth but gladly take her children when she's unable to efficiently and therefore financially care for them. This behavior suggests societal discrimination to me, to the fullest.

The Grandmother, or "old lady" as the narrator refers to, reveals her capitalist nature in chapter 57: "...now is the time to apply for Katy again; for, according to all accounts, Ruth is getting along poorly enough." She doesn't think to aid Ruth with money, or shelter, or, I don't know, advice? Instead, she wants to take Katy. She goes on to say that, "old Mr. Flake" approached Katy and asked her intrusive questions such as, "what business her father used to do, and what supported them now that he was dead, and if they lived all the time on bread and milk." She describes them as, "a few such little questions." These questions were very insensitive and incredibly intrusive, and therefore, would easily intimidate or frighten a young child like Katy. Still, the old lady just wants the dirt; she isn't worried about her grandchild's well-being. When she goes on to say that Katy replied to old Mr. Flake, "dignified as a little duchess," telling him, "Mamma does not allow me to talk to strangers," leaving with only a half loaf of bread, the Capitalist grandfather says, "Like mother, like child... proud and poor, proud and poor; that tells the whole story" (149). Katy wasn't being proud and poor, proud and poor, proud and poor; she was listening to her mother and buying what little she could.