Caldwell, Mary Ellen. "A New Consideration of the Intercalary Chapters in The Grapes of Wrath." Markham Review, 3 (1973), 115-119.
The intercalary chapters in The Grapes of Wrath are chapters which do not directly advance the story of the Joad family but which offer increased depth and broader significance to the novel by giving background, discussing issues of the time, and offering an external perspective on the Depression. Critical opinion long held that the novel lacked continuity, but now it is seen as having a unity.
The author states first that the novel has a close unity which she will demonstrate. She carries this through by discussing each of the thirty chapters in the novel, showing how they follow a regular pattern of alternation between impersonal and panoramic accounts of conditions or social forces and the Joad story proper.
She next notes that there are interruptions to the pattern of regularly alternating chapters at key points in the novel and considers why this is so, generally because the chapter that breaks the pattern opens a new phase in the novel.
Finally, the author finds that overall, her analysis shows that the structure of the book involves the working out of a consistent plan of alternating social and economic observations with chapters of the narrative.
Mitchell, Marilyn L. "Steinbeck's Strong Women: Feminine Identity in the Short Stories." Southwest Review, 61, No. 3 (1976), 304-315.
Mitchell stats that most writers of the first half of this century concentrated on characterizations of men and the problems and motivations of men because most of these writers were men, but exceptions in treatment of women were John Steinbeck and D.H. Lawrence, each of whom tried to give women more dimension in their works. Steinbeck's efforts have been largely ignored. His most famous work is The Grapes of Wrath, and this is not one of those works where he demonstrates his greatest sensitivity to...