Rewriting

Polytropic Identities

in the Postmodern African American Novel

Chapter VIII

“Speak up, Ike, an ‘Spress Yo’se‘f”

Sentimental Romance Revisited in Ntozake Shange’s

Betsey Brown

The Female Quest: “Paving the Way”

Dana Heller has pointed out that by means of “questing, a woman dares to reinvent herself” (1990, 1). Stressing not only the importance of domesticity and family, but also the significance of heroic action, black sentimental romance is a mode in which the female protagonist can redefine herself. In this light, this section centers upon Harper’s, Fauset’s, and Shange’s depictions of their heroines’ liberating adventure and the way in which they avoid the traps of a patriarchal and racist system.

Harper’s Iola and Fauset’s Angela are classic examples of tragic mulattas who strive to keep their purity and remain “good girls,” in spite of the unfriendly system that labels them as objects of desire. Both Iola and Angela have to beware white male characters whose courtship offers them either marital security or financial stability. While Iola totally rejects the possibility of passing for white, Angela is dramatically enticed by the advantages of racial transgression.

In Harper’s fin de siècle blueprint, a “lady-like” mulatta who can easily pass for white has the option to betray her racial belonging in exchange of social prosperity. Twice Iola refuses Dr. Gresham’s marriage proposal. Speaking about race as an “insurmountable barrier” between herself and her white suitor, Iola draws attention to the fact that she would never accept willingly to deny her African American inheritance: “I have too much self-respect to enter your home under a veil of concealment” (1893, 117). Harper takes pains in describing Iola as a heroic woman, “young in years, but old in sorrow” (1893, 59), as disclosed in Dr. Gresham’s mixture of sentimental and scientific discourse:

Yes; and that puzzles me. She is one of the most refined and lady-like women I ever saw. I hear she is a refugee, but she does not look like the other refugees who have come to our camp. Her accent is slightly Southern, but her manner is Northern. She is self-respecting without being supercilious; quiet, without being dull. Her voice is low and sweet, yet at times there are tones of such passionate tenderness in it that you would think some great sorrow has darkened and overshadowed her life. Without being the least gloomy, her face at times is pervaded by an air of inexpressible sadness (1893, 57).

Harper reconsiders the boundaries of sentimental romance and disclaims a static role for her character.¹¹ Iola’s refusal of conjugal safety in favor of her mother’s race initiates “a feminized quest toward a self-naming or self-mapping” (Heller 1990, 93). The slave narrative scenario focused on the search of the absent maternal figure is reenacted here in connection with an ideal of racial advancement.¹² Finally, Iola’s domestic bliss is strongly related to her self-fulfillment as a social activist who “casts [her] lot with the freed people as a helper, teacher, and friend” (1893, 114). As she gets married to a mulatto doctor and they go to live in the South, their marriage does not simply mark the beginning of a settled family life, but mostly of an existence dedicated to social activism, placed on the altar of racial uplift.

Forty years later, the avatars of the tragic mulatta reemerge in Fauset’s Plum Bun. Moving away from the safe paternal home in a black district of Philadelphia, Angela starts her quest as an artist in New York. Unlike Iola, Angela denies her black belonging and changes her name from Murray to Mory to efface all signs of her former identity. She dearly craves for the privileges b(r)ought by marriage to a white man:¹³

If she were to do this, do it suitably, then all the richness, all that fullness of life which she so ardently craved would be doubly hers… only it would be fun, great fun to capture power and protection in addition to the freedom and independence which she had so long coveted and which now lay in her hand (1990, 88).

Gabrielle Foreman points out that there is a lot at stake in Fauset’s novel so easily overlooked by critics. Thus, Fauset’s aim is double, as she employs “the language of the sentimental romance to articulate a stunning invective against white male power” (1990, 651). While Fauset uses the conventional plot of the sentimental romance, her “discourse of love works to veil her exploration of how the dynamics of power hierarchies function. The plot is a skeleton which Fauset fleshes out through her exploration of hegemony” (Foreman 1990, 652). Race is no longer considered a biological factor, but a social construct, and, as Angela’s inner monologue subtly discloses, the white skin color can function as an empowering shield: “She was happier; she was living on the crest of a wave of excitement and satisfaction which would never wane, never break, never be spent… She was young, she was intelligent, she was white” (1990, 87-88).

Fauset also makes us aware of women’s oppression as an interracial problem at the interface of race, gender, and class. Indeed, Angela’s passing for white does not suffice, and the possibility of marriage to the rich Roger Fielding is denied to her. Stealing inside another racial identity is not enough, and class becomes the main issue. At this stage, Angela’s quest is a surrogate adventure, since she is caught in the very net she has tried to avoid by coveting freedom through male protection. This is the moment when she realizes that only by means of artistic expression she can transcend her objectified social status. Like Edna in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Angela has a natural gift for painting that becomes her elevated refuge.¹⁴ This creative impulse makes her free, able to move away from a prejudiced New York to a less prejudiced Paris, and pursue her artistic career. Finally, Angela’s love affair with Anthony (a mulatto artist) can take place only after her self-empowerment as an artist, and even so their future marriage is uncertain and the end of the novel is open-ended.

Significantly, the main idea of female liberation can be intertextually traced in Shange’s novel by drawing comparisons with Harper’s and Fauset’s texts. If Iola’s quest culminates with her role as a social activist and if Angela finds self-fulfillment as an artist, in Shange’s Betsey Brown the activist/artist images are conflated. Betsey wants to become a dancer, a singer, an artist, whose mission is to change the face of the world and destroy the white semiotics of power:

She’d just wanted to see the world. Marry a Negro man of renown. Change the world. Use white folks’ segregated restaurant tables to dance on, and tear down all the “Colored Only” and “Colored Not Allowed” signs. She wanted to be somebody. She wanted to be Miss Elizabeth Brown out in the world, not in a house full of children still learning their tables and long division (152).

Initiated by her morning ritual of ascension, Betsey’s inner quest reaches its climax when she decides to run away from home, to escape from the conventional circle of her family, perceived as alienating: “I don’t belong here,” writes Betsey’s note (143). Her crisis is generated by her difference from the others (both from her family and from the white people). Her private language of freedom is set in tension with various dominant discourses. As Elizabeth Fox-Genovese affirms, “since emancipation, black women have been torn between their independent relation to the dominant culture and their people’s relation to it” (1990, 199). Fox-Genovese’s remark suits Betsey’s feeling of being caught between her own liberating thoughts and her community inferior position in a town dominated by white hegemonic forces.¹⁵