Perkins is an associate professor of English at Prince George's Community College in Maryland. In the following essay, she examines Bellow's study in "Leaving the Yellow House" of how one woman copes with feelings of displacement.

Nobody truly occupies a station in life any more. There are mostly people who feel that they occupy the place that belongs to another by rights. There are displaced persons everywhere.

Earl Rovit in his article on Saul Bellow in American Writers determines that these words spoken by Eugene Henderson in Bellow's highly acclaimed novel, Henderson the Rain King, "could have been spoken by almost any of Bellow's characters, or, for that matter, by Bellow himself." Rovit finds that a major theme in Bellow's fiction is how we cope with a sense of alienation and displacement. This is also the case with Hattie Simms Waggoner, the heroine of Bellow's short story...