In a certain sense their situation is similar to that of those who emigrated to the border. As Kaplan explains, “journalists, reformers, and pulp novelists depicted the city as a new frontier or foreign territory to be colonized and explored and regarded its inhabitants – usually immigrants – as natives to be civilised and controlled” (70). The natives the Goodenoughs encountered were their neighbors, but the couple had no power or authority to control their roommates' behavior. Herrick details how the Goodenoughs were subjected to foul-smelling odors, loud footsteps from the apartment above, arguments from the apartments next door, and the sounds of "the spankings that the mother of the large first-floor family bestow[ed] on her." the youngest hope”