No man is brave enough to face such a situation.
Part I on Pauline E. Hopkins, "Talma Gordon" (1900) with Charles Chestnutt, "The Wife of his Youth" (1898, 1899)
This week and next, I want to talk about two stories, both so fascinating that I will need two posts to do it in. Read together, these stories offer a strange Disney ride through the logics of caste, class, marriage. They also attempt to show how to navigate these false logics with integrity. These two stories are mysteries, so they reward re-reading. Go (re)read the two stories now so as to avoid spoilers:
“The Wife of his Youth” by Charles Chestnutt
“Talma Gordon” by Pauline E. Hopkins
I love to teach these two stories together because they have the same last move. It feels a little like a magic trick. Here’s the last line (the surprise ending) of each:
“Permit me to introduce to you the wife of my youth.” (Chestnutt)
“I shall have much pleasure in introducing you to my wife…” (Hopkins)
Both stories are set up as frame narratives, with the real bulk of the storytelling taking place inside another story, another setting, or in the case of Talma Gordon, a story-within-a story, with a deathbed confession inside the frame story and then another deathbed confession inside that story. So many disclosures and confessions happen inside the frame narrative that you forget that there is a narrator seated before an audience. Then up he pops again.
Scholars generally agree (although the who’s on “first” game is a losing game) that Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins (1859-1930) scored “the first African American mystery” when she published “Talma Gordon,” in The Colored American, “the widest circulating African American literary publication,”1 which she edited for a brief and prolific space in her forties. Most of her fiction appeared there first, one hit after another — including three serialized novels Hagar’s Daughter (1901), Winona (1902), Of One Blood (1902), and many editorial essays. Her focus on fiction was purposeful, as she famously wrote in the introduction to the print edition of her first novel, Contending Forces (1900):
“Fiction is of great value to any people as a preserver of manners and customs-- religious, political, and social. It is a record of growth and development from generation to generation. No one will do this for us; we must ourselves develop the men and women who will faithfully portray inmost thoughts and feelings of the Negro with all the fire and romance which lies dormant in our history, and as yet, unrecognized by writers of the Anglo-Saxon race.”
Most critics of Hopkins (writing about 100 years later) cite this paragraph as a mission statement. This is what literature is for: to capture the vibe, and preserve it for future generations to experience. And her writing does just that. Hopkins portrays a complicated set of “religious, political, and social manners and customs” around the lived experience of racial identity and the American caste system while maintaining a critical distance that appears, at times, to be taking the piss.
“Talma Gordon” opens with a gathering of 25 white men, “The Canterbury Club,” gathered at the home of Dr. William Thornton (“wonderful eyes… a wonderful man and a wonderful mind”), to discuss “Expansion: its effect upon the future development of the Anglo-Saxon throughout the world.” They mean to discuss what will become of the white race if U.S. expansion into other lands leads to intermarriage with other races. Here is where the story begins (by taking the piss):
“in spite of our prejudices against amalgamation, some of our descendants, indeed many of them, will inevitably intermarry among those far-off tribes of dark-skinned peoples, if they become a part of this great Union?”
“Among the lower classes that may occur, but not to any great extent,” remarked a college president.
My experience teaches me that it will occur among all classes and to an appalling extent, replied the Doctor.
“You don’t believe in intermarriage with other races?”
“Yes, most emphatically, when they possess decent moral development and physical perfection, for then we develop a superior being in the progeny born of the intermarriage. But if we are not ready to receive and assimilate the new material which will be brought to mingle with our pure Anglo-Saxon stream, we should call a halt to our expansion policy.”
The Doctor responds, in what appears to be a non sequitur, remember that triple murder in Gordonville? I know what happened.
And thus begins the story-within-a-story of Talma Gordon of Gordonville. Here’s a thumbnail — and really, if you haven’t read it yet, now is your chance! 20 minutes tops. You won’t regret it.
Her father, Captain Jonathan Gordon, has a temper, a mysterious past, and now, a second wife, “a woman with no fortune of her own.” Unlike her “tall, dark, and stern” big sister Jeannette, Talma is “a fairylike blonde in floating white draperies” with “genius and passion in her face.” She is shipped off to Europe to paint by her step-monster. Soon, stepmom brings a male heir into the picture, and Captain Gordon moves his little family into the tower of his villain’s lair/castle on the Massachusetts coast.
The Doctor meets Talma at her Japanese-themed pagoda party/homecoming. Earlier that evening, she and her father had “quarreled bitterly about her lover, a young artist she had met in Rome.” Her annuity is cut to a few hundred dollars a year, with the lion’s share going to baby Jonathan. And then, after the party, the tower of the castle is struck by lightning. When the fire is put out and the tower bedroom is again accessible, Captain Gordon, step monster, and baby Jonathan are found with their throats slashed. Talma is charged with murder. Her motive: love and/or inheritance.
Her boyfriend Edward, “now famous in the art world” crosses the Atlantic to sit beside her in court. Among the witnesses called are sailors who admit to having sworn revenge against Captain Gordon, who it turns out, had been something of a pirate. Talma is found not guilty, heads back to Rome with boy artist and Jeannette, and they get a nice pension. Talma leaves the castle with the Doctor who turns it into a tuberculosis rehab center.
Fast forward, we learn that Jeannette has died, Talma has refused Edward, and now she is sick. She turns up at the Doctor’s sanitorium (aka her dad’s castle) for care and recovery. The Doctor, meddlesome fellow, cables Edward who makes the trip, this time — he thinks — to sit at Talma’s deathbed.
The Doctor reads Edward a letter (another story-within-a-story) that Jeannette wrote at her deathbed, which attempts to explain why their father and stepmother treated them so cruelly, and why Talma can’t marry Edward: her mother was mixed race.
I looked up at Edward when I finished. He sat, his face covered with his hands. Finally, he looked up with a glance of haggard despair: ‘God! Doctor, but this is too much. I could stand the stigma of murder, but add to that the pollution of Negro blood! No man is brave enough to face such a situation.”
“It is as I thought it would be,” said Talma sadly, while the tears poured over her white face. “I do not blame you Edward.”
“He rose from his chair, wrung my hand in a convulsive clasp, turned to Talma and bowed profoundly, with his eyes fixed upon the floor, hesitated, turned paused, bowed again, and abruptly left the room. So those two who had been lovers, parted. I turned to Talma, expecting her to give way. She smiled a pitiful smile, and said: “You see Doctor, I knew best.”
From that on she failed rapidly. I was restless. If only I could rouse her to an interest in life, she might live to old age. So rich, so young, so beautiful, so talented, so pure; I grew savage thinking of the injustice of the world. I had not reckoned on the power that never sleeps.
What a piece of work Edward is!
I’ll leave the summary here so that I don’t ruin the ending. I’ve probably already given away too much. But let’s sit with this a moment. What was that about “the power that never sleeps”?
In her monumental book Caste, Isabel Wilkerson explains that a racial caste system underpins American society, like a skeleton.
She gives us eight pillars, or parallels seen in the major caste systems, to recognize it by. This moment in “Talma Gordon” references the first four:
Pillar #1: Divine Will. Caste systems attempt to justify their subordination of segments of their population through divine will (such as with describing African Americans as descendants of the cursed son of Noah, Canaan) or the laws of nature.
Pillar #2: Heritability. Caste is assigned at birth and passed down to descendants. Hypodescent applies, or the practice of classifying a child of mixed race ancestry into the less socially dominant of the parents’ races. Sometimes called the “one-drop rule.”
Pillar #3: Endogamy. Caste attempts to restrict marriage to those within the same caste.
Pillar #4: Purity Versus Pollution In the caste system, there is “a fundamental belief in the purity of the dominant caste and the fear of pollution” from lower castes.
Edward’s departure shows his true colors (pun intended). He has sat proudly next to Talma as she was tried for murder, and learned her father was a pirate — he sits next to her with an actual communicable disease — he has crisscrossed the Atlantic for her— and suffered when she left him before he proposed — now, she appears to be dying and by marrying her he will be rich, rich-rich when she does — and still!
“‘God! Doctor, but this is too much.”
My students said that they thought this moment was so over the top that it must be Hopkins up to her tricks, presenting us a mockery of a man to pillory and throw tomatoes at. Likely so. Also, as we discussed in class, the primary readership of the original publication, The Colored American, is a Black readership in the year 1900, and so I imagine Edward’s perfidy did not surprise them. Edward, whose ethnicity is not mentioned, was following a “subconscious code of instructions” as Wilkerson called it.
Hopkins sits on this moment, gives Edward a chance to change his mind, and then he peaces out.
turned to Talma and bowed profoundly, with his eyes fixed upon the floor, hesitated, turned paused, bowed again, and abruptly left
Don’t you wish Shonda Rhymes would write the screenplay? Bridgerton-style?
The genius here, I think, lies in the contrasting reactions of the Doctor and Talma, who has hardly any lines in the story. Her lines are so understated that they might be overlooked. She says that she knew all along how he would react. Her quiet knowing wisdom makes her the only one who doesn’t go hysterical. Has she internalized his disdain? Perhaps. But her smile suggests otherwise.
The Doctor expects her to fall apart, and when she doesn't, he does. This small moment is an excellent transcript of the first time this white man has come up short against the hard wall of racism, and seen the caste system for what it really is, by the bones.
I had not reckoned on the power that never sleeps.
More next week!
See the Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins Society for a detailed biography: https://www.paulinehopkinssociety.org/biography/