I was little surprised to read that not only does Wright think Hurston failed to write about white oppression but that she goes a step further by entertaining white people, catering to exactly what they want to hear about black life. I can understand how Wright was upset about the book's purpose but I disagree that it was made for white people. The story focuses almost entirely on African-Americans albeit in a racism-free environment.
He hates how Hurston supposedly illustrates black stereotypes which is extremely hypocritical. Prior to writing the novel, Hurston spent a great deal of time living and documenting the lives of Eatonville's citizens. She then does them justice in the novel by giving them the same humanistic characteristics that white people have: ability to think, feel, and love. Wright's objection is most likely to the dialogue but Hurston clearly structured it based on the recorded speech of real citizens. Wright does exactly what he hates in his own book, Native Son. His main character is a static black male defined only as the product of white oppression.
In my opinion, protest novels do little to advance a group of people. While writers like Wright focus on angrily blaming white people for black suffering, Hurston took a different approach by trying to show that black people are the same humans on the inside. I think it would've been significantly more effective to have a balance of both types of literature during this tumultuous time period.
I totally agree with you here. It seems pretty hypocritical that Wright would accuse Hurston of creating simple-minded, white-friendly characters with "minstrel show masks" of laughter and love and heartbreak when his protagonist, Bigger, is not much more than a shell of a character only able to feel anger, guilt, and hate. Although a character like Bigger, with his violent tendencies and actions, might be a little harder to digest for white readers of the time, I think he still appeals to another negative stereotype/image of a black man in the mind of some white readers: an unintelligent, impulsive brute of a man with very little ability to reason or capacity for civility (perhaps a "half-human black ape" as the character Buckley refers to him).
ReplyDeleteThe dialogue is part of what irks Wright, but it isn't just the representation of black English dialect--it's the dynamic in which it's deployed, with the characters (especially in the porch scenes, or on the muck) as "clowns" who act out buffoonish roles for (implicitly) white consumption, and who seem oblivious to racial injustice. We don't see an actual "minstrel dynamic" in the novel itself--the "performances" are for each other's enjoyment--but Wright is keenly aware of the white reader who will be chuckling at Sop-de-Bottom and Motor Boat's antics. Just as he was aware that his own creation, Bigger Thomas, would upset many black critics, who would see him as confirming a range of negative stereotypes of young urban black males. (But that didn't stop Wright--in fact, it seemed to energize him. But he doesn't cut Hurston the same slack.)
ReplyDeleteI think that what excuses Hurston in my mind is that she is anthropologically depicting what she witnessed. If she saw people like Stew Beef and Bootnyny then she sees no reason not to depict them, and I think that it is good to depict what she saw. That being said, I do not know if the dynamic between the white boss and the black workers in the muck was actually what she depicts, and that makes it more questionable. I appreciate that Hurston does not rage about the racial prejudice and injustice, bu simply lets us see for ourselves. And for me, the scene with the black and white bodies being buried in different ways is incredibly powerful, and all the more so because we see racism so ignored earlier. It is as if even when she tried to block out racism and not depict it, it was so ubiquitous that it was actually impossible for Hurston to not let some slip into her novel, and that fact is perhaps more shocking to me than if she had written a protest novel like Native Son. The fact that all novels must talk about racism means more than the fact that a protest novel talks about it a lot, because a protest novels whole purpose is to for example discuss racism, but a love story would hope not to, and the fact that that is impossible says more about the existence of racism and racial struggles than a protest novel that is clearly going far out of its way to show these tensions.
ReplyDeleteIn a way, I wish that Wright hadn't even critiqued her in the first place because I feel like I have to choose a side. I wouldn't say he was acting rash, but I do sense a bit of jealousy from him -- he had to write in the "black" style, but she gets to do it however she wants. I think her book and dialogue is completely fair, but maybe Wright feels like he lost something in his novel by focusing so much on the protest angle.
ReplyDeleteI actually think that protest novels are important, and that books like Invisible Man and Native Son need to be here. They do convey the type of racial struggle that actually happened, and so I think they're honest. But Hurston's type of novel is also important, and I actually think it goes well with the protest novels. Its' skew is more gender focused, and that illustrates something on its own. They can exist in peace together!