Tea at Trianon: Porgy

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Porgy

How liberals portrayed African-Americans in the 1920's and 30's. From Reid's Reader:

Even if we accept Heyward’s rendition of black speech as authentic, there are those unnerving moments where his language turns patronising. Women are referred to as “negresses”, Crown is a “buck nigger”, and blacks grow “wool” on their heads. Porgy would in the afternoons “experience a pleasant atavistic calm, and would doze lightly under the terrific heat, as only a full-blooded Negro can.” (Part One) This sounds like the white Southerner’s stereotype of the cheerful, lazy black man, just a mite away from Stepin Fetchit.

And of course the novel’s blacks are credulous and superstitious. After burying the murdered Robbins in the graveyard, the superstitious mourners (including the presiding clergyman) have a race to get out of the graveyard, as they believe the last to leave will be the next to die. Porgy gets a “conjer’ woman” to cast a spell to make Bess well. When a buzzard lands on the roof after Crown is killed, Porgy thinks it’s the soul of Crown coming back to haunt him.

Which brings me to what I think is the most unpalatable aspect of the novel for modern readers. It is clear that DuBose Heyward sees black life in Charleston as quaint and colourful partly because blacks are unsophisticated and “uncorrupted” by education or the influence of Northerners. There is the clear implication that it is better for blacks to live their “simple” lives rather than become part of a complex modern city or civilisation. In short, Heyward really thinks that they should “know their place”. The novel caricatures the one black who has some advanced formal education - the “lawyer” Frasier, who offers cheap (and non-legal) divorces. (Read more.)