As I was reading the section about Mrs. Turner’s ideology, I was comparing her ideas to those of Emma Lou in The Blacker the Berry. Mrs. Turner and Emma Lou share the belief that those with lighter skin are better than those with darker skin, but Mrs. Turner seems to have a more pessimistic view of her own position within this hierarchy. Though Mrs. Turner is proud of those physical characteristics that she considers “set her aside from Negroes” (Hurston 134), she eagerly accepts a position of subservience to Janie because she admires her “Caucasian characteristics” (Hurston 139), and Emma Lou is never able to accept anything less than closeness to the “right kind of people.” Emma Lou experiences repeated moments of frustration when others consider her less desirable than women with lighter skin because she does not accept until the end of the novel that the system of racial hierarchy in which she believes places her in a lower position than she thinks she deserves to hold. On the other hand, Mrs. Turner very clearly defines her position within this racial hierarchy and acts accordingly: she believes that she must be subservient to people with Caucasian characteristics, like Janie, but that she ought to be “cruel to those more negroid than herself in direct ratio to their negroness” (Hurston 138). Emma Lou views herself as a victim of this colorist hierarchy, whereas Mrs. Turner actively alternates between subservience and cruelty to uphold the system she so firmly believes in, even though she understands that her physical characteristics prevent her from attaining the ideal that she worships. In her role as an active promoter of this colorist system, Mrs. Turner more closely resembled Emma Lou’s mother than Emma Lou. However, though Emma Lou believes, and rightly, that she is a victim of colorist prejudice, her own scorn of dark-skinned people and admiration for the “right kind of people” promote this system in the same way that Mrs. Turner’s alternately subservient and cruel behavior does.
Author Archives: cabshire
Emma Lou and Gwendolyn
I found the friendship between Emma Lou and Gwendolyn interesting because of the parallel upbringings of the two characters. Emma Lou’s conviction that lighter skinned people are the “right kind of people” comes from her mother’s belief system, and, similarly, Gwendolyn’s preference for darker friends and men comes from her mother’s insistence that this is the way in which to achieve complete interracial tolerance (198). Both of these young women are clearly the products of the values that their mothers instilled in them as children, and although they have different perspectives and goals, both Emma Lou and Gwendolyn in fact increase their color consciousness as a result of their attempts to fulfill their mothers’ solutions to the race problem. Although Gwendolyn is one of the only characters in this novel who actively attempts to eliminate color consciousness and interracial prejudice, Thurman highlights her inability to match her actions to her beliefs. When she becomes frustrated with Emma Lou’s preference for a light-skinned man, she displays prejudice against Emma Lou because of her skin color, stating, “There’s probably something in this stuff about black people being different and more low than other colored people. You’re just a common ordinary nigger!” (208). Furthermore, though she prides herself on her preference for dark-skinned men, Gwendolyn intends to marry Benson, the light-skinned man she did not approve of as a match for Emma Lou (213). These scenes highlight hypocrisy in Gwendolyn’s character; although she acts according to her mother’s beliefs, she proves unable to separate herself from interracial prejudice. Although the friendship between Emma Lou and Gwendolyn is fulfilling to both characters because it enables Emma Lou to feel accepted by the “right kind of people” and allows Gwendolyn the opportunity to prove that she does not have a “’pink’ complex, this friendship actually highlights the color consciousness of both women and provides a critique of Gwendolyn’s attempt to promote interracial tolerance.
“Harlem: The Culture Capital”
“Harlem: The Culture Capital” by James Weldon Johnson places the New Negro in an interesting position within society, as an outsider to creative production centered in a place like Paris, but as an insider within the new cultural capital of Harlem. The pieces in this collection aim to prove the cultural centrality of Harlem and of the artists living and working there. James Weldon Johnson describes Harlem as “the great Mecca for the sight-seer, the pleasure-seeker, the curious, the adventurous, the enterprising, the ambitious and the talented of the whole Negro world; for the lure of it has reached down to every island of the Carib Sea and has penetrated even into Africa,” and he highlights the centrality of Harlem within New York City, stating that Harlem “is not a slum or a fringe” (301). With these passages, the author establishes Harlem as a new cultural center for a new worldwide Negro community. This centrality is somewhat contradictory, therefore, because although Harlem is a center of creative production, the author also asserts that Harlem serves as this cultural center for a distinct Negro community.
Furthermore, James Weldon Johnson describes the complex relationship between Harlem and the rest of New York City: Harlem is a separate, “well-defined and stable” community, but he also states, “Harlem grows more metropolitan and more a part of New York all the while” (309). As the community in Harlem evolves, the neighborhood experiences “a constant growth of group consciousness and community feeling” that the author states is “typically Negro” (309). It is this quality that makes Harlem unique and enables this area to retain a separate identity from the rest of New York City. While Harlem is a cultural center, it is a different kind of cultural center and is central to a different kind of community. This distinction places the New Negro in a complex position, then, as a member of a distinct community that shares in worldwide events and artistic movements, but that operates around its own cultural center. This work presents the New Negro in Harlem as an artist holding a unique position between insider and outsider.
Unspoken Understanding between Clarissa and Septimus
Clarissa’s response to the news that a man killed himself surprised and confused me, but also helped me see the larger idea of unspoken understanding in this text and start to better understand the connection between Clarissa and Septimus. Though Clarissa knows very little about this man, I was surprised at how well she seemed to understand his motives for killing himself; she really hits the nail on the head when she muses that perhaps this man was a poet whose soul Bradshaw attempted to force (281). Clarissa understands, too, that “Death was defiance. Death was an attempt to communicate; people feeling the impossibility of reaching the centre which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded, one was alone. There was an embrace in death” (280-1). This “impossibility of reaching the centre” shows the way in which both Septimus and Clarissa are, in a way, outsiders to this society. I am still not sure if I understand exactly what this “centre” is—possibly the negative foundation of society that Holmes and Bradshaw represent?
Furthermore, the passage depicting Clarissa’s reaction to Septimus’ death ties in nicely with the earlier passage about Clarissa’s theory “to explain the feeling they had of dissatisfaction; not knowing people; not being known” (231). She theorizes that “since our apparitions, the part of us which appears, are so momentary compared with the other, the unseen part of us, which spreads wide, the unseen might survive, be recovered somehow attached to this person or that, or even haunting certain places after death… perhaps—perhaps” (232). I think that Clarissa’s reaction to Septimus’ death proves that her theory is correct. Clarissa fully understands Septimus’ decision to kill himself and she also benefits from the knowledge that a greater connectedness than that which she manufactures through her parties exists in the form of “an embrace” after death. This man’s death provides Clarissa with a newly optimistic outlook on life: “She felt somehow very like him—the young man who had killed himself. She felt glad that he had done it; thrown it away…. He made her feel the beauty; made her feel the fun” (283-4). Both Clarissa and Septimus have always appreciated the beauty of life and Clarissa recognizes that her position within society interferes with a greater value of human existence: “A thing there was that mattered; a thing, wreathed about with chatter, defaced, obscured in her own life, let drop every day in corruption, lies, chatter. This he had preserved” (280). Septimus serves as a sort of martyr for an Aesthetic recognition of beauty in life, and in doing so assures Clarissa that there is something of value beneath the corruption of the society to which she belongs.