【연구논문】

Wallace Thurman’s The Blacker the Berry: Loving Oneself Enough to Be *

Selfish 1)

Yonghwa Lee (Incheon National University)

I.

Stressing self-acceptance as a major principle of the New Negro movement, Langston Hughes, one of the most prominent figures in the Harlem Renaissance, said, “We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame” (694). Considering that the most distinctive feature of the Harlem Renaissance was an overt racial pride, it is not surprising that Wallace Thurman’s treatment of color prejudice within the African American community in his 1929 novel, The Blacker the Berry, instigated considerable concern among the leaders of the New Negro movement. For example, though he acknowledges that intra-racial prejudice is an issue every African American writer must

* This work was supported by Incheon National University Research Grant in 2019. 100 Yonghwa Lee confront, W.E.B. Du Bois finds Thurman’s portrayal of his protagonist, Emma Lou Morgan, problematic in that her failure to achieve self-acceptance reveals the author’s own “inner self-despising” (250). Du Bois’s criticism of Thurman’s derisive attitude toward blackness in the novel assumes an autobiographical relationship between Thurman and Emma Lou,1) whose psychological contradictions regarding her skin color have even led some critics to regard the novel as an artistic failure. Thurman’s contemporary critic, Eunice Hunton Carter, for example, holds that Emma Lou’s story is merely a depiction of female exploitation and that given the importance of “literature by Negroes and about Negroes” (162), African American writers should aspire to the same high quality writing critics expect of white writers. Contrary to Thurman’s contemporary critics who found his treatment of intra-racial prejudice less than satisfactory, more recent critics have undertaken a reappraisal of his contribution to the Harlem Renaissance in terms of his racial consciousness if not his artistic achievement by emphasizing how Thurman consciously makes efforts to distance himself from his protagonist.2) While agreeing that

1) One significant similarity between Thurman and Emma Lou is found in their Western background. According to Gerald Haslam, Thurman was a Westerner “in terms of his candor, his egalitarianism, and his ultimate rejection of the hollow aspects of urbanization” (53), and Thurman’s Western roots expose themselves the most in The Blacker the Berry. See Wilfred D. Samuels and David A. Hales, “Wallace Henry Thurman: A Utah Contributor to the Harlem Renaissance” for a more detailed discussion of Thurman’s upbringing in the Western part of the country. 2) This is, of course, not to say that recent critics all take a positive view of Thurman’s position on the issue of race. Though she highly values Thurman’s deliberate efforts to transcend racial barriers and limitations in Wallace Thurman’s The Blacker the Berry 101

Thurman fails at times in his attempt to live up to his own aesthetic principles, Renoir W. Gaither seeks to reevaluate Thurman’s achievement as a writer in The Blacker the Berry by demonstrating how he effectively criticizes the black lower- and middle-class value system and the assimilationist stereotypes through the satirical irony of Emma Lou’s psychological contradictions. Granville Ganter also holds that Thurman’s choice of the gender of his protagonist “is both a deliberate test of his artistic powers and an attempt to envision the world from another person’s point of view” (88-89). Underlying Thurman’s emphasis on the need to investigate Harlem critically, Daniel M. Scott III similarly argues that “rather than being a reflection of Thurman’s anxiety over his own dark skin, Blacker becomes a text that deliberately interrogates several dimensions of identity in order to explore identity categories as staged in Harlem” (324). Focusing on Emma Lou’s departure from Alva and his deformed son, Alva Junior, at the end of the novel, this essay contends that Thurman envisions through Emma Lou a possibility of overcoming self-hatred. Considering the parallel between Emma Lou and Alva Junior—both are unwelcome to their parents and viewed as either “a

his works such as The Blacker the Berry and Infants of the Spring, Mae Gwendolyn Henderson argues at the same time that Thurman himself was not completely free from the destructive race complex which he thought was the main reason for the “lack of productivity and creativity among the Renaissance artists” (307). Daniel Walden similarly argues that Thurman could not transcend the preoccupation with his racial identity that hindered African American writers from producing great works in terms of theme and expression, although he believes Thurman’s failure is magnificent because of his conflicted belief in the “enduring quality of the literature of the Harlem writers” (209). 102 Yonghwa Lee tragic mistake” (31) or “the burden” (193)—her act of abandoning not only Alva but also Alva Junior might suggest that she is still a victim of self-hatred. Though he was born with both mental and physical disabilities, Alva Junior has been making some visible improvement under her care, and it seems curious how she can so readily give up on him after all the efforts she has put into him. One of the strongest motives for leaving Alva and his son is the thought that she should not risk losing her job, because her ability to find her place derives in part from the money she earns, and she is indeed being true to her resolution that “[i]n the future she would be eminently selfish” (217). By highlighting how Emma Lou’s “selfish” decision to protect her job is sharply contrasted by the utter impotence of Alva, who “merely live[s] for no purpose whatsoever except for the pleasure he could squeeze out of each living moment” (200) and thus precipitates his own demise, the novel suggests that Emma Lou’s “selfish” act of leaving both Alva and Alva Junior is the first step toward self-acceptance.

II.

What grants Emma Lou the power to resolve in the end to “be eminently selfish” is her education, without which she would not have gained her job as a school teacher and her economic independence that comes with it. That is, despite her dark skin that proves a great disadvantage to her everywhere she goes, Emma Lou, at the same time, has the advantage of being endowed with various Wallace Thurman’s The Blacker the Berry 103 educational opportunities. Although Emma Lou’s “blackness of skin” causes her family “to regret, to bemoan, or to ridicule” (25) her, her middle-class family is able and willing to support her education even at a college level. Asserting that Emma Lou “would find a larger and more intelligent social circle” (34), Uncle Joe persuades Emma Lou’s mother to send her to the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and her mother and grandmother are satisfied with the prospect of Emma Lou “receiv[ing] a bachelor degree in education, then go[ing] South to teach” (35). It is, then, only partially true that “[w]hat she does inherit from her forebears . . . is the opinion that ‘class’ directly correlates to the shade of one’s skin” (Popple 412). There is no doubt that Emma Lou is an “alien member of the family and of the family’s social circle” (31) because of her skin color, but that does not necessarily make her belong to the lower class in terms of money. Though she quits after three years at the University of Southern California and begins to work as a maid in Harlem, it is her choice, and she is free to resume her education at any time, which she eventually does to her benefit. As Catherine Rottenberg perceptively notes, Emma Lou “is one of only a few fictional . . . black female protagonists from the Harlem Renaissance who does not end up dead (Clare Kendry), dying (Helga Crane), or about to be married (Angela Murray)” (61). Instead of meeting a tragic end for her exploration of sexuality in a manner unsanctioned by society, Emma Lou “makes a career for herself as a public school teacher, providing her with economic independence” (Rottenberg 61). Emma Lou is indeed an exceptional case as a black female protagonist in that she is endowed with educational opportunities to grant her 104 Yonghwa Lee financial independence, which was unavailable for many black people regardless of gender. However powerful it may be in determining one’s class in society, intra-racial prejudice is not entirely insurmountable, and fortunately for her, Emma Lou is given a tool with which she may attempt to overcome racial barriers. Until she fully confronts the truth about the contradictions in her view of skin color, however, Emma Lou uses her education merely to further reinforce her inferiority and superiority complex. Emma Lou’s family, of course, plays a critical role in the formation of her sense of inferiority. Emma Lou’s family is deeply embarrassed by her birth because a dark-skinned child in the family means going against their creed: “Whiter and whiter, every generation” (37). Her fair-skinned mother therefore considers her “a tragic mistake which could not be stamped out or eradicated” (31). Growing up in “the blue vein circle” (28) where a person’s worth is determined purely by skin color, Emma Lou internalizes her community’s belief that light-skinned people are “entitled, ipso facto, to more respect and opportunity and social acceptance than the more pure blooded Negroes” (28). Other than her skin color, Emma Lou has no reason to think of herself as inferior to those around her, but she firmly believes that she has neither intelligence nor wealth even though she “graduate[s] [high school] cum laude” (93) and is smart enough to be educated at college. Preoccupied only with forging a relationship with “the ‘right sort of people’” (50)—that is, light-skinned people—Emma Lou cannot think of the possibility of using her college education to improve her worth as a person and “find her place in life” (217). At the same time, when she encounters those black people who cannot be Wallace Thurman’s The Blacker the Berry 105 classified as “the ‘right sort of people,’” Emma Lou uses her education to feel superior. Her treatment of Hazel Mason, a black girl she meets at the University of Southern California, provides an efficient example:

“Tiresome ain’t no name for it,” she declared more loudly than ever before, then, “Is you a new student?” “I am,” answered Emma Lou, putting much emphasis on the “I am.” She wanted the white people who were listening to know that she knew her grammar if this other person didn’t. “Is you,” indeed! (40)

In spite of her status as an outcast in her family, Emma Lou’s family has allowed her to receive her education as much as she can, and thus Emma Lou owes her family “her grammar.” Nonetheless, to Emma Lou, who finds Hazel’s “flamboyant style of dress, her loud voice, her raucous laughter, and her flagrant disregard or ignorance of English grammar . . . inexcusable” (46), her knowledge of correct grammar is simply a source of superiority. Emma Lou believes that unlike Hazel, “she could easily take her place in a society of the right sort of people” because “she ha[s] come from a good family.” Emma Lou’s family can be considered good, but it is only in the sense that they provide her with an opportunity to be educated and thereby develop her intelligence. As far as her personality and character formation are concerned, Emma Lou’s family has done more harm than good, instilling in her a sense of inferiority/superiority, which is effectively shown in her treatment of Hazel. In specific, Emma Lou “classifie[s] Hazel as a barbarian who ha[s] most certainly not come from a family of best people” not because of her bad grammar but because of her “rough and pimply” 106 Yonghwa Lee face, her “kinky” hair, and her flat “nostrils” (43). Justifying her act of discriminating against Hazel in exactly the same way in which she herself is discriminated against by her family, Emma Lou remains ignorant of her psychological contradictions. Emma Lou’s psychological contradictions are most clearly displayed in a series of self-destructive relationships she forms with men after college, and here, it is helpful to examine how the eugenicist argument about race and gender figures in intra-racial prejudice. According to Laura Doyle, who draws on nineteenth-century biology and eugenics in her discussion of race and gender theory in Modernism and twentieth-century fiction, one of the major principles is the belief that “mental and moral characteristics are inherited just as physical characteristics are inherited” (11). The idea that character and intelligence as well as physical appearance have genetic qualities led to an assumption that there is a close relationship between one’s mentality and intelligence and one’s physical features, as people were trying to explain apparently “differential intelligence among human groups” (Doyle 13). This assumption accounts for the racism deeply embedded in eugenics. Doyle states that the belief in a “racial difference in intelligence” (16) led eugenicists to encourage procreation among white people, who were considered to be genetically superior, while discouraging procreation among non-white people so that genetically inferior people would not hinder the advancement of the whole race. Importantly, as Doyle notes, eugenicists’ emphasis on the importance of motherhood for the “fit” has promoted sexual as well as racial bias, reducing women’s role to reproducing class and race. It is on this account, Emma Lou’s mother Wallace Thurman’s The Blacker the Berry 107 so repeatedly laments her gender, and her grandmother “assure[s] her that she would never find a husband worth a dime” (34). As a site of the interdependence of race and gender, her motherhood is considered quite undesirable by light-skinned men. That Emma Lou only falls for light-skinned men who are unlikely to take her seriously demonstrates how the eugenicist view of motherhood is unconsciously yet deeply inculcated in her psychology. Emma Lou does not mind being exploited physically and financially by these men, believing she can enhance her chance to move up in social status by having children lighter-skinned than she is. Notably, in terms of social class or education, the men Emma Lou desires—Jasper Crane or Alva—have nothing to recommend themselves, and the complete incompetence and impotence of these light-skinned men attest to the fact that the eugenicist assumption about a close relationship between one’s physical features and one’s intelligence is quite ungrounded. Early eugenicists relied on “historical evidence” or statistics in order to validate a racial difference in intelligence. In Hereditary Genius, for example, Francis Galton, the father of eugenics, argues that the simple fact that white people have achieved more than non-white people according to the standard of white people proves that “the average intellectual standard of the Negro race is some two grades below” (394) the white race. Galton does not take into consideration the possibility that there might be other kinds of standards for measuring human achievements and that if white people have achieved any more than other races, it might be because they happened to be in power and consequently had more opportunities to develop their inborn abilities. Given how she has 108 Yonghwa Lee looked down on Hazel because of her vulgarity, Emma Lou is strangely blind to the implications of the fact that her beau, Alva, and his friends are not “what she could have called either intellectuals or respectable people” (156). Moreover, although Alva admits that he cannot marry her (not to mention the fact that he has absolutely no intention of marrying her) because he is legally married to two women, Emma Lou simply convinces herself that he is “the most interesting person she ha[s] ever met” (159). Her suspicion that Alva is only an alcoholic without any promising future cannot stop her from being exploited, either. Emma Lou does not even have “historical evidence” to support her belief in the genetic superiority of her beau, but she cannot give up on her preference for a light-skinned man, which originates from her self-hatred. Even after breaking up with Alva and beginning a new life by attending Teachers College, Emma Lou dates a “‘yaller nigger,’” whom she finds “colorless and uninteresting” except his “fair skin” (201). Preoccupied with the blackness of her skin, Emma Lou is incapable of recognizing the logical fallacy in her desire to overcome racial barriers through a relationship with a hopeless man like Alva, however fair-skinned he may be. Alva is a living proof that there is no logical relationship between one’s skin color and one’s social class, but Emma Lou simply refuses to see the truth and even risks her higher social status to take care of him and his son, Alva Junior. This is why Emma Lou’s decision to leave not only Alva but also Alva Junior is so significant in comprehending whether or not she has really learned to accept herself as she is. Looking after Alva Junior alone in Alva’s room, Emma Lou begins to wonder about her Wallace Thurman’s The Blacker the Berry 109 future and realizes how she is endangering her job as a school teacher for a man who introduces her to his friends “as Alva Junior’s mammy” (212). Serving as “a typical black mammy” without any kind of appreciation from Alva, Emma Lou is using the “economic independence” she has made great efforts to gain only to make “herself more enslaved and more miserable than ever” (212). Only after realizing this irony of her situation is Emma Lou ready to be truly worried about her future and make “plans for the future” (213), and she is finally beginning to break free from her past self that loved to wallow in self-pity. What adds to Emma Lou’s self-knowledge is the news that Benson, the “colorless and uninteresting” light-skinned man she used to date, is now married to her light-skinned friend, Gwendolyn. By reminding her of the ineffectiveness of the advice she receives from either white or light-skinned people who simply cannot understand what she undergoes, she realizes “[f]or the first time in her life” the need to “come to some conclusion about her life and govern herself accordingly” (216). That is, Emma Lou realizes for the first time how she has never undertaken a serious examination of the values or principles which have directed her steps in life. Her recognition of the need to do so is what gives her the courage to “fight against Alva’s influence over her” (218) and see Alva “not as he ha[s] been, but as he [i]s now, a drunken, drooling libertine” (221). Though there is probably still a long way to go until she sincerely “accept[s] her black skin as being real and unchangeable” (217), it is at least obvious that Emma Lou is serious about fighting to keep her economic independence, from which she hopes eventually to achieve “mental independence” (217). Leaving Alva Junior behind 110 Yonghwa Lee may seem a cruel and even selfish act, especially when she is fully aware that Alva, who is on the verge of death himself, will no doubt leave him to die. After a serious examination of her values and life principles, however, Emma Lou has decided to be “eminently selfish” (217) and thereby protect herself from herself as well as others, and she is being faithful to the principle she has found for herself.

III.

Regarding her husband, Thurman, Louise Thompson said, “I never understood Wallace. . . . He took nothing seriously. He laughed about everything. He would often threaten to commit suicide but you knew he would never try it. And he would never admit that he was a homosexual. Never, never, not to me at any rate” (172). Although Alva never threatens to commit suicide in the novel and Thurman’s skin color is not as light as Alva’s, Thurman seems to bear a greater resemblance to Alva rather than to Emma Lou. Just as Alva never bothers legally to obtain a divorce from his first and second wives, Thurman was not officially divorced from Thompson even after they separated after only six months of married life. Also, Thurman’s own drinking problem is mirrored in Alva, and just like his author, Alva is probably going to die from heavy drinking. That said, it is also undeniable that there is some important autobiographical parallel between Thurman and Emma Lou. Emma Lou’s Western background and her college education obviously have a great impact on her life in Harlem, and Thurman’s detailed and objective portrayal of some Wallace Thurman’s The Blacker the Berry 111 of her experience both in the West and in Harlem seems based on his own experience and observation. In understanding how and why Thurman figures himself in both Emma Lou and her abusive boyfriend, Alva, it is helpful to look at his reason for choosing to write about intra-racial prejudice. Pointing out that “[a]ll people seem subject to prejudice,” Thurman stresses the irony that “even those who suffer from it the most” are subject to prejudice and tend to oppress those who are even more helpless. In his relentlessly honest description of his female protagonist’s pathetic attempts to belong to “the right sort of people,” Thurman betrays both disgust and deep sympathy for her. On the one hand, Thurman mercilessly exposes and criticizes Emma Lou’s psychological contradictions. At the same time, Thurman sympathizes with and even shows some respect for her endeavors to make a difference in her life, an asset he himself did not possess too much of as a self-indulgent young artist. Unlike Alva, who mindlessly pursues a decadent and immoderate life, Emma Lou makes various attempts to improve her situation and status, even though her self-hatred leads her to be exploited in an abusive relationship with a man like Alva. Emma Lou’s redemption from her self-hatred can come only when she realizes its detrimental effects on her life and learns to love herself enough to be “eminently selfish,” and this kind of realization cannot be given from outside. By granting Emma Lou an opportunity to engage in a serious self-examination and resolve to sever ties with a character who bears some likeness to himself, Thurman demonstrates a possibility of fighting against the color prejudice found both inside and outside oneself. 112 Yonghwa Lee

Works Cited

Carter, Eunice Hunton. “Review of The Blacker the Berry.” Opportunity 7.5 (1929): 162-63. Doyle, Laura. Bordering on the Body: The Racial Matrix of Modern Fiction and Culture. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994. Du Bois, W.E.B. “Review of The Blacker the Berry, by Wallace Thurman.” The Crisis 36.7 (1929): 249-50. Gaither, Renoir W. “The Moment of Revision: A Reappraisal of Wallace Thurman’s Aesthetics in The Blacker the Berry and Infants of the Spring.” College Language Association Journal 37.1 (1993): 81-93. Galton, Francis. Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry into Its Laws and Consequences. Gloucester: The World Publishing, 1972. Ganter, Granville. “Decadence, Sexuality, and the Bohemian Vision of Wallace Thurman.” MELUS 28.2 (2003): 83-104. Haslam, Gerald. “Wallace Thurman: A Western Renaissance Man.” Western American Literature 6.1 (1971): 53-59. Henderson, Mae Gwendolyn. “Portrait of Wallace Thurman.” Remembering the Harlem Renaissance. Ed. Cary D. Wintz. New York: Garland, 1996. 289-312. Hughes, Langston. “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain.” The Nation 122.3181 (1926): 692-94. Popple, Naomi. “Imagining Freedom in a Post-Emancipation ‘Pigmentocracy’: Wallace Thurman, Toni Morrison, and Tupac Shakur.” Journal of Black Studies 46.4 (2015): 404-14. Rampersad, Arnold. The Life of Langston Hughes: Volume I: 1902-1941, I, Too, Sing America. New York: Oxford UP, 2002. Rottenberg, Catherine. “Wallace Thurman’s ‘The Blacker the Berry’ and the Question of the Emancipatory City.” Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal 46.4 (2013): 59-74. Samuels, Wilfred D., and David A. Hales. “Wallace Henry Thurman: A Utah Contributor to the Harlem Renaissance.” Utah Historical Quarterly 81.4 (2013): 345-67. Wallace Thurman’s The Blacker the Berry 113

Scott III, Daniel M. “Harlem Shadows: Re-Evaluating Wallace Thurman’s ‘The Blacker the Berry.’” MELUS 29.3/4 (2004): 323-39. Thurman, Wallace. The Blacker the Berry. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996. ______. “Negro life in New York’s Harlem: A Lively Picture of a Popular and Interesting Section.” The Collected Writings of Wallace Thurman. Ed. Daniel M. Scott and Amritjit Singh. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2003. 39-62 Walden, Daniel. “‘The Canker Galls . . . ,’ or, The Short Promising Life of Wallace Thurman.” The Harlem Renaissance Re-examined. Ed. Victor A. Kramer. New York: AMS, 1987. 201-11.

이용화 인천대학교 부교수 논문투고일자: 2020. 06. 10 심사완료일자: 2020. 06. 24 게재확정일자: 2020. 06. 27 114 Yonghwa Lee

Abstract

Wallace Thurman’s The Blacker the Berry: Loving Oneself Enough to Be Selfish

Yonghwa Lee (Incheon National University)

This essay examines how Wallace Thurman envisions through Emma Lou a possibility of overcoming self-hatred and moving toward self-acceptance in his novel, The Blacker the Berry. Focusing on Emma Lou’s departure from Alva and his deformed son, this essay contends that her “selfish” act is the first step toward self-acceptance. Describing his dark-skinned protagonist’s pathetic attempts to belong to light-skinned people, Thurman mercilessly exposes and criticizes Emma Lou’s psychological contradictions. Simultaneously, however, Thurman sympathizes with and shows some respect for her endeavors to make a difference in her life. Emma Lou’s redemption from her self-hatred can come only when she realizes its detrimental effects on her life and learns to love herself enough to be selfish. By granting Emma Lou an opportunity to conduct a serious self-examination and resolve to sever ties with Alva, Thurman demonstrates a possibility of fighting against the color prejudice found both inside and outside oneself.

Key Words intra-racial prejudice, self-hatred, self-acceptance, self-examination