The First Seven Years

Feld, a Polish immigrant, shoemaker, and father who lives in New York, is the protagonist of the story. He is a dynamic character who is forced to surrender his single-minded focus on material success as the measure of a good life.

At the start of the story, Feld sees himself as a pragmatic man who wants his daughter to get an education or marry an educated man so that she will have greater status and a more financially secure future than what Feld has been able to offer her as a struggling tradesman. Feld is forced to shift from this perspective when his daughter rejects Max, a man Feld believes to be good husband material because he is studying to be an accountant.

Feld’s sense of himself as a practical man is eroded further when he has two epiphanies—that Sobel, his poor assistant, has managed to woo his daughter with nothing more than books and margin comments and that it would be wrong to stand in the way of love between Sobel and Miriam, though life with Sobel almost guarantees constant financial struggle for his daughter. In the end, Feld’s evolution of a character occurs because he recognizes the importance of living an upright life, valuing knowledge for its own sake, and centering life on relationships with others.