In the short story “Carter” (1921) Don Marquis is likewise concerned with one of the many mulattoes who in fiction tragically yearn “oh to be white, white, white!” After “passing” for a short while in New York, he returns to Atlanta, resolved to live and die among Negroes. He arrives there at the time of a riot, and witnesses “the conflict which was forever active in his own nature.” He is happy when he is taken for a white man of the better class by his own white half-brother, but is plunged into misery when, dying, he is re-identified as “a yaller nigger.” Carter’s abjectness, and the flattery of whites are laid on a bit too heavily. Although the story abounds in clichés about mulatto character, it does approach Negro life, especially the Atlanta riot, with seriousness.
John Bennett’s Madame Margot (1921) is the legend of a golden Creole who, in order to keep her ivory daughter from dishonor and betrayal, “to keep her white to all eternity,” sells herself to Satan. Margot’s sultry beauty turns to grotesqueness. As old Mother Go-go, in the dirty Negro quarters, black now instead of ruddy gold, she is claimed by the devil. An other-worldly romance, Madame Margot, for all of its imaginative remoteness, conveys something of what women like Madame Margot knew in bitter actuality.
Summary. The tendencies seen in this chapter are diverse, ranging from the race-glorification of Negro apologists to social realism by important American novelists. At times, as in the case of the tragic mulatto, the work seems conventional, but in the main we notice that authors are beginning to take the Negro seriously, revising earlier stereotypes, and breaking the ground for later realism. The work that they did is little known, but it is important in the evolution of the Negro character in American fiction.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Why are the weaknesses of the Negro apologists to be expected?
2. Why do novels of the “talented tenth” fail to overthrow the plantation tradition?
3. Why are novels by southerners included in this chapter?
4. In what respects is Gertrude Stein’s story traditional?
5. What similarities are in all of the stories of mulattoes written by white authors?
6. Compare DuBois, Chesnutt, and Johnson.