Langston Hughes's "Mulatto: A Tragedy of the South" and Gaines's "Bloodline"

Ambassador Theater
Playbill for Hughes's Mulatto

Last post, I wrote about Frank Laurent being a representation of the decaying South in Ernest J. Gaines's "Bloodline." Today, I would like to continue that conversation by showing how a similar image can be seen in the character for Colonel Thomas Norwood from Langston Hughes's Mulatto: A Tragedy of the South (1935). Like "Bloodline," Hughes's play takes place on a Southern plantation and involves a mulatto character, Robert, returning and starting to create trouble for the owner of the land, Colonel Norwood. In this case, though, Norwood is Robert's father with Cora, an African American woman who works in the house and has been Norwood's mistress, moving into the house when Norwood's wife passed away. Norwood and Cora have four children together, and Norwood refuses to recognize any of them. He does, however, continually try to support them by providing them with educational opportunities on the property (building a school and staffing it) and allowing them to go North to attend school, even helping to pay for their education there. While he does these things, he refuses to completely recognize them as his progeny, always referring to them as "Cora's kids." Robert, home for the summer, resents this, and the play centers around him seeking recognition from his father.

The character list for the play describes Colonel Norwood as "a still vigorous man of about sixty, nervous, refined, quick-tempered, and commanding" (2). Norwood does embody all of these qualities throughout the play, but I would also say that he becomes a representation of the plantation past losing its grip on the present. At the very beginning of the play, we see Norwood becoming frustrated when he experiences the same things that Frank Laurent does in "Bloodline." Norwood questions whether or not he actually has any control over his house. after ringing for his servant Sam and having to wait for him to arrive, Norwood intones, "Looks like he takes his time to answer that bell. You colored folks are running the house to suit yourself nowadays" (emphasis added 5). After Sam arrives, Norwood asks about the delay; Sam simply says that he was helping Sallie, one of Norwood and Cora's children, with her bags. This leads Norwood to explode: "Huh! Darkies waiting on darkies! I can't get service in my own house" (5). This brief exchange mirrors that of Little Boy and Frank Laurent discussed in the last post. Norwood notices that he does not have the same power he once did.

Part of the conflict surrounding Norwood's recognition of Robert revolves around Robert's arguments that he should be able to enter the house through the front door and Norwood's staunch refusal to allow him to do that. Robert does enter and leave through the front door, and when he goes to the front door and encounters Norwood walking in the front door, the two square off. At the beginning, Norwood only "points toward the door at the rear of the house" when he tells Robert which door to walk through (19). Robert refuses, and he confronts his father, remaining adamant that he will leave through the front door, not the back door. The stage directions during this confrontation are important:

The COLONEL raises his cane to strike the boy. CORA screams. BERT draws himself up to his full height, taller than the old man and looking very much like him, pale and proud. The man and the boy face each other. NORWOOD does not strike. (19)  

As the two continue to square off, Norwood becomes rattled and tells Robert  "(In a hoarse whisper) Get out of here. (His hand us trembling as he points)" (19). Norwood goes from being confident and strong to weak, and as the stage direction says later, filled with "impotent rage." Norwood must look up to Robert in the same way that Frank Laurent does with Copper. He does not have anymore power over Robert or the rest of the people who reside on his plantation.

When Norwood enter for what will become the final confrontation with his son, he looks "bent and pale" (21).   He starts towards Robert and "[s]uddenly he straightens up. The old commanding look comes into his face. He strides directly across the room towards his son" (21-22). This movement causes Robert to become afraid yet still defiant, and when he rises to his full stature, "the white man turns, goes back to a chair near the table, right, and seats himself" (22). Norwood knows that he cannot intimidate Robert with his physical appearance, so he decides to sit and tell Robert what he has done for Cora's children. Robert remains standing, again the tableau resembles the scene between Copper and Frank in "Bloodline." When Robert attempts to leave by the front door, the symbolic threshold of the play, Norwood steps between his son and the door. The two tussle, and Robert grabs his father by the throat, choking the life out of him. Robert symbolically kills the old South that Norwood represents, but in the process, he condemns himself to death as well. The play ends with white men chasing him into the house. He retreats upstairs and shoots himself in a bedroom.

There is a lot, and I mean a lot, more in this play and in Gaines's story. I have not even touched on Cora's thoughts regarding her relationship with Colonel Norwood. The way she describes it appears similar to the relationship between Pauline and Bonbon in Of Love and Dust. Their relationship also contains residual elements of slavery when a slave master could do whatever he wanted to do to his "property." In this way, we could read Hughes and Gaines in relation to someone like Harriett Jacobs. Finally, I do not completely discuss the progeny that arise from the relationships in these texts. Their position, as has been seen some, is precarious at best, existing not as a Creole community but as illegitimate children that the white fathers will never acknowledge, no matter how much people know. Lansgton Hughes tackles this aspect in the play and in his poem "Mulatto." The video below is Hughes reading the poem.

What other items should we discuss with these works? What other works could we examine in correspondence with them? Let us know in the comments below.

Hughes, Langston. Mulatto: A Tragedy of the South. Five Plays by Langston Hughes. Ed. Webster Smalley. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968. 1-35. Print.