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05. Yonghwa Lee.Hwp 【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.
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