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.

   

The Decaying South in "Bloodline"

River Lake Plantation 1938 

This past weekend, I read Gaines's "Bloodline" (1968) alongside Langston Hughes's Mulatto: A Tragedy of the Deep South (1935). Reading these two pieces together, one can see many thematic similarities even though they are ostensibly different genres and appear about thirty three years apart. I do not have time to touch on every similarity between each text. Instead, I just want to focus on one essential aspect that appears in each text, namely the appearance of the central white characters in each story. Both texts center around the return of a "mulatto" character who comes back to the plantation, either to move people to action as in "Bloodline" or to seek what is rightfully his and recognition from his father as in Mulatto.

Frank Laurent owns the plantation in Gaines's "Bloodline," a story that centers of the return of Copper Laurent to the quarters. Frank fears that Copper, who is his nephew from a relationship that Walter Laurent had with Copper's mother, has come back to rile up the inhabitants of the quarter and to start trouble. One must keep in mind that the story appeared in 1968, during the Civil Rights Era, and throughout Gaines's work, whites fear demonstrations occurring on their land and African Americans continually comment that the movement has not reached them yet. Typically, a student who has left the quarters and returns tells the inhabitants about the movement taking place. (Think of Jimmy Aaron in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.) Felix, the narrator of "Bloodline," even says, "They doing that [demonstrating] everywhere else, 'Mailia. Everywhere else but here" (161).

Over the years, Frank's grip on the plantation fades, representing the changing times that have made their way  into the Deep South. Felix describes "the last of the old Laurents" as feeble and struggling "to look hard" when those around him knew "that hardness had gone" (164, 165). The people who still live on the plantation and work in the big house notice Frank's decline and challenge his "rules" in small ways. For example, whenever Frank tells Little Boy and Joby to go down to the quarters and retrieve Copper, Little Boy looks in the corner to Miss Amalia and asks her if it she is all right with him forcefully bringing her nephew up to the big house to see Frank. The exchange is worth quoting at length:

"You're asking her if it's all right when I told you to do something?" Frank asked him.
"I wouldn't want to do nothing she might not--" Little Boy stopped again before he finished.
"Do like Mr. Frank say," 'Malia said, with her head down.
"Just a minute," Frank said. "Who the hell's running this place, me or Amalia?"
"I guess you, Mr. Frank," Little Boy said.
"You guess, nigger?" Frank said. "You guess?"
Little Bot lowered his head, but Frank kept on looking at him. Then all of a sudden his face changed. Like only now he re'lized maybe he wasn't running the place. Maybe somebody else was running it after all. Or, maybe nobody was running it. Maybe it was just running down." (emphasis in original 173-174)

These types of exchanges also occur between Frank and Felix. One could assume that Little Boy's deference to Miss Amalia does not occur because of Copper's appearance on the plantation; instead, he asks her blessing because he respects her and knows that the man he is about to confront is her nephew.

 Little Boy and Jorby fail to bring Copper back to the big house. In fact, Copper beats them up and ties them together with a chain. Furious, Frank tells Felix to gather up another group of men to go fetch Copper. Like Little Boy and Jorby, the group of six men fail to get Copper to return to the house. Ultimately, Frank must descend to leaving the big house in order to meet Copper; he rides out the quarters and speaks with Copper on the porch of Amalia's house. When he arrives, Felix describes Frank's movements as he extricates himself from the automobile: "The tall, sick, white man went in the yard with his head high. . . Frank stood before Copper, leaning on the cane and breathing hard" (203). Even though Frank's power deteriorates, he remains adamant that he will maintain control until he dies. He approaches the house "with his head high" and at the end of the story he convinces Copper to leave the plantation. However, Copper still reminds Frank that his time has come to an end. Copper looks down at a seated Frank, not on an equal level or up at him, and he informs him, "Your days are over, Uncle" (217). Frank knows that his way of life has come to an end, and he even mentions this at various points throughout the story. Felix's descriptions of Frank, and Frank's comments, illuminate the changing times taking place on the plantation in much the same way that the description of Colonel Thomas Norwood does in Hughes's Mulatto.      

On Thursday, I talk about Hughes's play and how it relates to "Bloodline," specifically in regards to the changing South and to the decaying plantation traditions. Until then, what are your thought's on Gaines's "Bloodline"? What other themes do you see in the story?

Gaines, Ernest J. "Bloodline." Bloodline. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1976. 159-217. Print.

Mitchell S. Jackson's "The Residue Years"

I just finished Mitchell S. Jackson's The Residue Years (2013) which won the 2014 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. As usual, there is a lot that I could say about this work; however, I just want to focus on one specific scene, and while focusing on that scene, I hope that you get an understanding of Jackson's novel and pick it up for yourself. I would love to hear what you think of it in the comments below.

The Residue Years centers around the Thomas family, specifically the matriarch Grace and her eldest son Shawn (Champ). Grace and Champ narrate each chapter, and they alternate throughout the novel. At its core, The Residue Years explores issues regarding family, race, the American Dream, and poverty. Grace, who used to work a corporate job, has just gotten out of prison at the beginning of the novel and must continually check in with her court appointed social worker to finish her rehab program. Starting off strong, the daily grind that she has to endure to get a job, make it to that job, and just plain survive finally gets to her and she relapses back into her old habits, eventually landing up back in jail and rehab. Champ, on the other hand, is in college, and his professor tries to talk him into going to graduate school. All the while, he sells drugs and works--hard--to try and buy his family's house on Sixth Street (one of the houses he lived in with his mom and brothers when he was younger). Throughout, this is his goal, but a white, middle-class man named Jude cons him out of the money he wants to use for house, and Champ, like his mother, ends up in jail at the end of the novel.

The above does not tell the whole story. While reading, I couldn't help but think about Donald Goines's Dopefiend (1971) or Vern E. Smith's The Jones Men (1974) and their focus on the ravages of drugs and poverty on individuals, but that is a discussion for another day. One of the main conflicts in the novel involves Grace's desire to stop her ex, Ken, from gaining full custody of her two youngest sons KJ and Canaan. The novel concludes with Grace going on a bender only two days before the court date where she must appear to prove that she can raise the boys and see them. Earlier, Grace has Champ get the boys and bring them to her so they can enjoy a day at Multnomah Falls. There is nothing insidious about Grace's plan; she just wants her sons to know that she cares and to create an experience that they can share in support of her when everyone gathers in court.

Multnomah Falls

What struck me about this scene is not the fact that it takes place outside of Portland, OR, in a natural setting; instead, I was drawn to the trek the four visitors endured at the falls. About half way up the trail, Champ turns to his mother and asks her if everything is "cool." Looking at the falls, Grace gathers her boys to her and says, "There's nothing for you to be afraid of. All you have to do is tell the truth. . . Today's truth. . . . Remember this. . . . You, me, us--we can't ever get trapped by who we were. Who we were is not who we are. Who we are is right here (285). Even with all of her past flaws--leaving her kids home at night while she goes out to get high, missing important life events, and overall neglecting her kids at certain points--she wants that to be in the past. She strives to change her life and to straighten out; however, she gets sucked back in. That's why the last thing she says at the falls sticks with me. Champ suggests that they turn around, after already reaching the half way point, and head back down because everyone appears to be getting tired. Grace refuses, saying, "This is a good hurt. An earned hurt. We can't come this far and stop short" (285).

In many ways, Grace's assertion reminds me of one of my favorite Langston Hughes poems "Mother to Son," a poem where a mother tells her son that life is not a crystal stair. The smooth, easy path does not exist; rather, "It's had tacks in it, And splinters,/ And boards torn up,/ And places with no carpet on the floor--Bare." All the while, though, the mother tells her to keep going, around dark corners over cracks, even though he feels like he wants to turn around and go back down. Even though it's hard, the mother says, "I'se still climbin'." Like Grace, she continues, no matter the obstacle. Like Grace, she wants a life for her a son, a life that appears better than the one she had. Like Grace, she loves her son and gives his advice on how to navigate a world that keeps him down because of the color of his skin. While trying to maintain her upward assent, Grace falls though, a warning that the mother in Hughes' poem warns her son about. The mother tells her son that even though its dark he must not turn back; he must not start the descent because life gets hard; he must keep climbing.

Jackson's novel traces Grace's attempts to rehabilitate her life and to not fall back into her old ways, but the environment grabs her and refuses to let her escape. The environment ensnares Champ as well, leading him into a life as a drug dealer even though he had (and lost) a D-1 basketball scholarship and decides to apply for graduate school. More could be said, as I point out earlier, but for now, I would like to leave you with one more observation. Thinking about Grace, I also couldn't help but think about characters like Aunt Charlotte and Tante Lou in Gaines's works. Both of these women sacrificed for Jackson and Grant respectively. While the situations of Grace and Gaines's characters differ, they are similar in certain ways. What do you think? If you've read Jackson's The Residue Years, what themes stuck out to you?

Jackson, Mitchell S. The Residue Years. New York: Bloomsbury, 2013. Print.

   

Arna Bontemps "Why I Returned (A Personal Essay)"

Arna Bontemps left Louisiana for California around the age of three. He talks about this movement in "Why I Returned (A Personal Essay)" which opens his 1973 collection of short stories The Old South. In many way, Bontemps reasons for returning can be seen in a similar manner to those of Gaines. While Bontemps came from a middle-class family and Gaines from a family of sharecroppers, both started their lives in Louisiana, moved away, then eventually either returned to their home state or to the Deep South. Bontemps, after going to New York, returned to the South teaching in Alabama (during the Scottsboro Boys trial) from 1931-1934. For the next two posts, I want to speak briefly about what Bontemps' essay says about African American literature and the "arts" and how it relates to not just Gaines' life but to the lives of many others as well.

Originally published in 1965, Bontemps' essay focuses on a major debate regarding African American literature that raged during the Harlem Renaissance regarding whether or not "art" should maintain its link to "folk heritage" or whether it should link itself to more Eurocentric forms of artistic expression. From the outset, it is clear which position Bontemps sided with. He applauds and quotes from Langston Hughes' "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain":

We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too. The tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs. If colored people are pleased, we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn't matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain free within ourselves. (958)

Bontemps' struggle to determine whether or not he should break with the "folk heritage" manifests itself in his father's and great-uncle's (Buddy) differing views on what to do with the South once they start their lives in California. Bontemps recalls dinner conversations where Buddy and his father brought up the South. When reminiscing about Louisiana, Bontemps' father would say, "Sometimes I miss all that. If I was just thinking about myself, I might want to go back and try it again. But I've got the children to think about--their education" (8). For Buddy, he would simply reply by saying, "Folks talk a lot about California . . . but I'd a heap rather be down home than here, if it wasn't for the conditions" (8-9). In some ways, both men miss their home in Louisiana, but due to differing circumstances both do not wish to return.

Bontemps' father had to think about his children. He continually approved of Buddy's ability to read and write well, but he disparaged Buddy for his "casual and frequent use of the word nigger;" for his love of "dialect stories, preacher stories, ghost stories, slave and master stories;" and for his belief "in signs and charms and mumbo jumbo" (9). Not wanting his son to look at Buddy for an example and to better his education, Bontemps' father sent him to a white boarding school for high school. He told his son, "Now don't go up there acting colored" (10). The tension between hanging on to the "folk heritage" of Louisiana and the South manifests itself in Bontemps' father and great-uncle. As Bontemps says, "In their opposing attitudes towards roots my father and my great-uncle made me aware of a conflict in which every educated American Negro, and some who are not educated, must somehow take sides" (11).

Portrait by Weinold Reiss

Bontemps concludes his essay by providing examples of African Americans staying or leaving the South, and he states, "The southern Negro's link with the past seems to me worth preserving" (23). In support of this statement, Bontemps talks about those who have migrated away from the South and now talk about "Soulville," "Soulbrothers," and "Soulfood." The South and its "folk heritage" serve as a source of inspiration and as means of connection with the past. Bontemps taps this in the in the stories collected in The Old South, and like Gaines, even though he may have, at times, tried to distance himself from the region, he kept returning, both physically and mentally. In the next post, I will delve more into Bontemps' relation to Gaines. I did not do this here, but this post will serve as a background to expand the discussion next time.



Bontemps, Arna. The Old South: "A Summer Tragedy" and Other Stories of the Thirties. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1973. Print.
Hughes, Langston. "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain." The Prentice Hall Anthology of African American Literature. Eds. Rochelle Smith and Sharon L. Jones. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2000. 955-958. Print.