What were we reading in 1911?
Each month of the Centennial year we will look at a notable book published during 1911, and give you a glimpse of what people were reading while Loyola Marymount University was just getting started.
Our fifth review in the series comes from Associate Professor Angela James. (For more information about the entire series, click here!)
The Quest of The Silver Fleece, by W.E.B. Du Bois
Among the works that formulate the “canon” in African American Studies, The Souls of Black Folk surely tops the list. One reason that particular book has been so central, as one among many groundbreaking books written by the author, is the manner in which it crosses disciplinary boundaries to provide a economic, historical, and philosophical understanding of the meaning of being black. Souls of Black Folk demonstrates a detailed and nuanced understanding of race and blackness in American society that remains unparalleled. As one who uses The Souls of Black Folk as a foundational text for nearly every class I teach, as well as for my own thinking about African Americans, I found The Quest for the Silver Fleece to be immensely interesting as a novelistic extension of that work. In this book, DuBois uses the conventions of the novel to explore, often in greater detail, how race is ‘lived’ by African Americans. He gives nuance to his famous insights about “the veil”, as well as examines with precision the economic and political interests served by race and racism in the period of post-emancipation and post-reconstruction America. I must admit that, though I did not expect to enjoy the novel as a “good read”, I did! DuBois’ use of the romance of Bles Alwyn and Zora to illuminate many of the central concerns of black people then and now was masterful. Further, the way in which he uses the vehicle of fiction to explore the complex psychological and economic issues related to race on both sides of the veil is compelling. DuBois is able to effectively communicate that there is at once an inner and outer reality of race, and that both must be acknowledged in order to chart a collective way forward.
To briefly summarize the plot, The Quest for the Silver Fleece is set largely in Tooms County, Alabama, but references and in fact, visits the world beyond. In particular, the story takes the reader to both New York and Washington DC, and the trips are well worth taking to explore the manner in which the pursuit of material and political gains warps the character of the Black middle-class. It is a story of how race is used to exploit labor. It is a story of how racial betrayal is motivated by individual aspirations and the willingness to put one’s self ahead of group concerns. It is a story of how racism perverts the aspirations and motivation of blacks and of whites. It is also the story of how gendered oppression makes difficult black male-female relationships, and how the healthy resolution of such is the key to community survival.
The story begins with a young man, Bles, whom is committed to formal education, and unwavering in his commitment to the individual and collective struggle for dignity and freedom. The heroine of the story is Zora, “child of the swamp”. While Bles represents the earnestness of the struggle, Zora represents soul and sprit of Black people unschooled. Her development, then, represents the possibilities of higher learning without losing the essence of those original strengths. Through her attainment of sophistication and formal knowledge (earned through her employment with a somewhat enlightened white woman), Zora is able to devise a plan to outsmart the southern aristocracy and create something of value for the community. The young romantics are initially drawn together by a shared vision of what they can together create (the silver fleece, a crop of beautiful and bountiful cotton). They are torn apart, however by the awful limitations on the dignity of Black men in the context of the plantation south. Our beautiful heroine, is forced to admit her “impure” past as a result of her unwilling use, and Bles explodes in displaced anger against her:
“You----you told me-----you were pure….”
“But Bles---you said ----willingly----if she knew---“
He thundered back in livid anger:
“Knew! All women know!”(169-70).
However, all women do not know. The burdens of race and gender are such that even the painfulness of a black woman’s own past, is sometimes usurped as simply an expression of racial domination which is an affront to black male masculinity.
The central problematic of the novel becomes the story of how these star-crossed lovers find their way to each other again through the morass of gender and racial oppression. Along the way, DuBois has lots to say about the inner workings of the racial bargains struck by northern industrialists and the southern aristocracy, as well as the trick which racism plays on white workers allowing their greater exploitation. In the end, the book is satisfying in its use of subplots to illuminate larger economic and social concerns, which are more nuanced then a more prosaic, academic delivery would allow. In particular, I found the idea which lies at the center of the novel, that finding a way through the difficult terrain of gender and race as a necessary precursor to community well-being, to be as relevant and intriguing in 2012 as I am sure it was in 1911.
(Want to read this book? LMU has copies available here and here. Or you can get a copy of the e-book here.)
