Upon reading both of these short stories, I tried to connect some sort of theme. Both stories managed to completely confuse me, mainly I questioned why I was reading them (why were the stories "important") and also I could never connect with the characters, which also added to confusion on the point of each story.
I decided to connect both of these stories with the concept of race and class. Both stories had a black servant of some sort that started out or ended up being a "plot point" in the story. Meaning, they brought the story forward in some way. In Theft, the janitress calls attention to the character of the woman, and makes us question everything we've learned about her so far. In some ways, she could be the woman's "revelation" because she actually accuses HER of theft, based on the fact that she has more than other people and she's beautiful (and white) so that mean she has an obligation to give to those less fortunate. We don't really concentrate on her character though, and even when she appears we just look more toward the main woman in the story.
In Magic, the servant girl is the teller of the story. It is her alone that we put trust in if the story is actually true or not. There is no outside narrator, so she is the only authority on the story she's telling. The only instance where we get an outside voice is when her Madame asks for more of the story. It is very interesting looking at the story from the point of view of the servant because I don't know her reasoning for telling the story. We know she's telling it to her Madame, but why? Why are we hearing it? Is there a lesson that I'm missing here?
So far, we haven't dealt with race in this class except when it pertains to the main characters. We have, however, encountered class issues (white trash especially). How does race change our perceptions? How does it change our perceptions when they are the moral voice and the upper classes are the fallen ones?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I just reread "Theft" and I discovered something I had not noticed before: Porter never actually states the janitress is black. We infer from her speech she is black because her diction is muddled at one moment with phrases like "don't never tell "musta been crazy." Are we not the ones discriminating this janitress by assuming she must be black if she uses bad grammar? The instance when the bad grammar is used, moreover, is when the janitress chases the lady up the stairs with the purse. She was in a frantic and most likely had no time to think about the way her sentences came out of her mouth. Every other time she speaks with precision and decent grammar. Yet because she slips into frantic and uses lower class diction, the reader automically classifies her as African American. Shame on me! To answer the posed question "how does race change our perceptions" I would answer: the lack of race is really what changed my perception. Porter must have excluded the direct reference to the janitress's skin color to set the trap for her readers. She dared us to stereotype people based on their occupation and the way they speak, and we succeeded terribly. I do wonder, however, why Porter would choose to stereotype this woman in the first place. She must have known we would think the janitress was black, but I'm sure most of her readers do not go back and reread her stories looking specifically for examples of racial tension. Did she really try to "trap" us into admitting our tendency to stereotype? Or is Porter just as guilty as us?
Post a Comment