In a dystopian society, a young widow is placed in a holding facility to spend her days learning home economics until she's chosen to be the wife of a new man.

A peasant woman's life of hardship after a marriage without a dowry portion means she'll do anything to ensure her cruel, miserly husband produces a portion for their beautiful daughter.

A mother struggles to provide her daughter with comfort in an unstable home as her husband constantly searches for new employment.

A Black mother enlists rootworkers to dole out revenge on a White woman whose merciless actions during the Great Depression caused her children to starve.

An unemployed man struggles to help an equally penniless, yet shockingly beautiful, young woman in her search for food and shelter.

A self-reliant but lonely woman becomes excited by the incidental visit of two boys in her apartment. When she unwisely lends them her long-buried trust and kindness, she quickly regrets it.

When a woman finds her purse stolen, she retraces the steps of her eventful day only to realize that the encounters, and her life as a whole, are empty and purposeless.

Once fired from her housemaid post with the MacFarland family, whose son she loved deeply, Lula Borrow falls into street-peddling, religious fanaticism, and direly ill health. Lula Borrow barely escapes her abusive husband, whose maltreatment kills one of their two children. Her sole reprieve is a housemaid post with the MacFarland family, whose son she loves deeply, and when she is fired she falls into street-peddling, religious fanaticism, and direly ill health.

When an impoverished man shows up to a wealthy woman's door in dire need of help, she gives him ten dollars and tries to send him on his way. The man insists that he return the next day to thank her husband for the money, but she isn't quite sure if things are as they seem.

A working class man who wants his children to have everything their rich friends have purchases "Semplica Girls" — girls formerly living in poverty who sign contracts to hang as ornaments in people's yards — for his older daughter's birthday. When his younger daughter frees the Semplica Girls, the family is plunged into financial disaster.