Polly had a complicated relationship with the women, like Virginia, who worked for her. How did her relationship with these women influence Polly’s decision to work with Eunice? Do you think the women like Virginia felt like they were family to Polly?
I don’t know if Virginia or the other women viewed Polly as family. It seems like they might have had a positive relationship with Polly and might have had close if not family-like relationship. Polly certainly looked at herself as having an obligation to protect the women. Polly’s actions, including her collaboration with Eunice, seemed largely propelled by a sense of obligation to “her girls”. I think Polly was highly motivated to protect the women she employed.
It was probably difficult for the women who worked for Polly to see her as more than a boss. They recognized that she was a good boss and did her best to protect her employees. However, they still had no voice in who their customers were.
Polly faced devestating obstacles since she was basically abandoned by family. She had to do what most would not choose in order to survive. Her relationships were complicated because while she knew it was exploitive to “sell” these women, she tried to protect them whenever possible. She did not want her girls to be further used with the violence of their customers. It was a tight line to walk.
Polly and Virginia knew they were “like” family, but Polly was in charge. This probably had some effect on Polly’s relationship with Eunice because she had the in charge way of taking over, but Eunice also behaved that way. They respected each other, and knew that they could help each other, but they would never be close.
I think Polly’s strong desire to protect her girls and her realization that all the women in this business were being used by men and the mob is what drove her to help Eunice. I believe that her girls felt fortunate to work for Polly versus some of the other madams, but I cannot believe that they really felt like Polly was family to them.
Polly was essentially abandoned at a young age by her father. Then she was raped and abandoned again. She vowed to run a house where she took are of her girls. She was very protective. I think they felt that.
I do think that Polly wanted to see the good she was doing despite being in the skirt trade. This was one of the ways she could justify to herself continuing this work, though it’s hard to imagine her alternatives. I think that all of these women likely came from backgrounds where they didn’t have good role models for family and trust. I think an unstable family environment can lead to making these kind of life choices. Maybe a better question to ask is if Polly was the closest to family that Virginia had had.. Maybe that is the better question to ask.
It was interesting how Polly talked about how she wished she could have gone to school as Eunice did and how she protected her employee who was attending college. Interesting that it never occurred to her that after she made her money that perhaps she, herself, could have gone to school. I don’t know if she thought it was just too late or if she internalized everyone’s view that this was the best life she could ever achieve.
One would expect that Polly was in it for the money, but as you move further into the book, it becomes obvious that her relationship with her group was more of a protector and nurturer. She supposedly grew her business in the pursuit of a safer environment for the workers to get them out of the grips of pimps who would beat and abuse them in other ways. She realized at one point that the only way to protect her business, and the workers, was to cooperate. I read up on some of the actual background of these two remarkable “aces” and learned that things happened differently in real life. Polly did work with Eunice and together they broke the Luciano prostitution efforts, but Polly only got involved in the legal side when she was legally mandated to do so.
Polly viewed these women as her adult children and wanted to protect them. When Virginia disappeared, she couldn’t stop thinking about her. When Lucky infiltrated Polly’s business, she needed to protect her girls and her own reputation. I believe the girls felt Polly was always looking out for them prior to Lucky’s arrival. Polly had a better handle on the men that frequented her place and knew them.
I don’t believe the book gave me enough informaton about how her employees, aside from the Lion, felt about Polly. That wasn’t explored in depth.
But Polly definitely felt very protective of the women in her house. There is mention of how carefully she screened them, that she always strove to run as high class a house as possible (given the service she provided), and also went out of her way to accommodate the needs of one young woman who lived primarily with her family and only worked part-time for Polly in order to finish her education. She stepped right up to help Virginia, and couldn’t stop thinking and worrying about her.
Polly feels guilty when she recognizes and acknowledges the extent of her own self-interested reasons for helping Eunice. And, of course, it was natural for that to be part of her motivation. But it didn’t detract from the fact that she was also determined to help the women because of what she endured when she was young. She didn’t want any other woman to have to suffer the cruelty and instability that she experienced.