In "Bonheur d'Occasion" poverty is not an incidental factor: it is basic to the situation of every character in the book. Poverty transcends the individual and becomes the problem of a whole district, of the whole world, when it is traced to its source, the Depression. (p. 69)

The smell of poverty, the grime of poverty, the deprivation of poverty permeate the whole book and the dream of an upward ascension in society is the dream of an escape from poverty….

In "Bonheur d'Occasion" the working-people are individuals but they are also members of a working-class community. One has the sense of the existence of an industrial proletariat. Their lives and loves are closely interwoven with larger social forces which dominate and condition them—the Depression, the War. Their problems as individuals and their varied search for solutions cannot be separated from this larger framework….

Unemployment has left its...