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Critical Overview: Toni Cade Bambara's "The Lesson"

Miltona Mirkin Cade was born in 1939 and lived her early years in Harlem, New York City. As a child she changed her name to Toni, and took the name Bambara in honor of a West African tribe. After attending Queens College, she studied in France and Italy, and then got a master's degree from City College in New York City. She authored numerous short stories, collected in Gorilla, My Love (1972) and The Sea Birds Are Still Alive, Collected Stories (1977), novels such as The Salt Eaters (1980) and Those Bones Are Not My Child (published posthumously in 1999), and other works. She was influenced by African American oral tradition and, in particular, by her mother. Bambara died of cancer in 1999 at the age of 56.

"The Lesson" tells the story of an interaction between a group of poor city children and an older woman, Miss Moore, who is introducing them to the famous toy store, F. A. O. Schwartz on Fifth Avenue. The narrator, who speaks in street dialect, resents the imposition of "the lesson" imposed by Miss Moore in her pointing out to the children the various prices of the items. The sulky narrator, who would much rather be at the pool or doing almost anything else, finds herself becoming angry because of the class inequities seen in the contrast between the highly priced items, like a sailboat for $1,000, which the children realize are well beyond the financial reach of anyone they know, and what the prices for these items would buy for poor families like theirs. The "lesson" learned by the children might be summed up in the words of the narrator's friend, Sugar: "I think that this is not much of a democracy if you ask me. Equal chance to pursue happiness means an equal crack at the dough, don't it?"

Critical Approaches

Linguistic: A linguistic approach can be found in an article by Janet Ruth Heller: "Toni Cade Bambara's Use of African American Vernacular English in 'The Lesson'." (Style, 00394238, Fall 2003, Vol. 37, Issue 3). Heller examines Bambara's use of AAVE (African American Vernacular English) in "The Lesson." She points out how Bambara uses the dialect to identify the narrator as an African American child and also to underscore the difference between conventional characters and those marginalized. She analyzes the use of AAVE very carefully, noting, for instance, how "Sylvia uses verbs that mark the aspect of an action rather than the tense." Overall, Heller argues, the use of AAVE in "The Lesson" serves multiple functions: "[I]t conveys Sylvia's pride in her heritage, it develops the themes of social inequality, it links Sylvia to her community, and it expresses her untraditional toughness and self-confidence as a young woman. AAVE also embodies Sylvia's and Bambara's ability to question their society and to resist the pressure to conform to the dominant culture."

Biographical: Biographical criticism would examine the links between the narrator, Sylvia, and Bambara's own childhood in Harlem. Bambara traveled to Cuba and to Vietnam, examining the role of women in these cultures. A biographical critic might look at how these experiences link with Bambara's short stories, such as "The Lesson."

Marxist: Marxist critics would also be interested in Bambara's intense interest in class differences and economic oppression. The central theme of "The Lesson" revolves around social and economic differences that create an unjust