The Literary Gilt of The Gilded Six-Bits

 While no attempt to define a pattern in nature, human or otherwise, has ever been fully successful at escaping the inherent nuance and exceptions in the natural world (call that the persistence of nature in naturalism), Zora Neale Hurston certainly abides by her list of uniquely Black traits in art, in her essay “Characteristics of Negro Expression”. There are many works written during the Harlem Renaissance that contrast with Hurston’s claims that, for example, that Black literature is always “absent of the concept of privacy”, when we have read several poems describing the pain of hiding one’s suffering due to their Black identity.  However, the entirety of The Gilded Six-Bits and the writing that paints the story are highly decorated in the exact styles that Hurston had highlighted; namely Adornment or “the Will to Adorn”, “Drama”, the “Absence of the Concept of Privacy”; upon further examination, you can find much more hidden throughout. In fact, I was hard pressed to find an instance where a trait that she named in “Characteristics of a Negro Expression” wasn’t present within this story. In any case, Hurston is a master at adorning her writing; within her characters, the setting and the plot and the descriptions. 

The Gilded Six-Bits begins with a description of Missie May and Joe’s home; the wide walk is decorated with “quart bottles driven… into the ground on a slant” (Which would be a representation of the pattern of “Angularity” highlighted by Hurston as well), “homey flowers planted without a plan” grow, the yard is “raked so the strokes of the rake would make a pattern”, and “fresh newspaper [was] cut in fancy edge on the kitchen shelves” (1043). While Hurston described the will to adorn moreso as “gaudy” “gay” and “grotesque”, we both agree that the character Missie May decorated her home in way that represents a humble desire for beauty (3-4). This description conjures up an imagination of this house that is beautiful in and of itself, but as Hurston says, “Whatever the Negro does of his own volition he embellishes” out of “a feeling back of such an act is that there can never be enough of beauty, let alone too much” (4). 

From my initial analysis of the work, I would definitely agree that Missie May cleaned, organized and decorated as an act of love towards herself and her husband, manifesting as a “will to adorn”. However, this subconscious inclination that “there is never enough beauty” also informs the character’s behaviors themselves, in the story. When Joe parades Missie May around the ice cream parlor, this serves him as a way of accessorizing and displaying beauty— of course, this is informed by his jealousy of Slemmons, who is decorated by the infamous gilded six-bits. Slemmons himself has decorated himself with a string of a lies, as opposed to pearls— in contrast to his supposed backstory, he cannot afford those. Instead, he ornaments himself with ordinary coins coated thinly with gold and fables of wealth. Both readers and Hurston herself would probably characterize Slemmons as gaudy. 

Finally, Missie May and Joe embellish their life (especially before and after the couple recover from Missie May’s attempted/implied/coerced affair) with an adorable habit: Joe, coming home from shopping, throwing silver coins through the doorway and then hiding from his mock-angry wife who then goes through their practiced drama and finds him, wrestling his treats in an imitation of animosity, when really it is a pure manifestation of their whimsy and love. If we apply Hurston’s claim that Black people adorn due to “a feeling that there is never enough beauty” then we can infer that Missie May and Joe continue with their dramatic routine without tiring of it, because it brings beauty to their lives, and they can never get enough of it (4). In any case, I think we can all characterize The Gilded Six-Bits as thoroughly gilded— a great representation of Black Expression. 

An example of a gilded quarter (https://www.vcoins.com/en/stores/numiscorner/239/product/coin_united_states_kansas_quarter_2005_us_mint_philadelphia_golden/1516351/Default.aspx)