102-10. False loyalties: Pauline and the white woman

For my first post on our novel The bluest eye, I'd like to write about false loyalties. Recall that before she joined the Fisher family as a maid, Pauline Breedlove worked for another white woman (pp. 118-121). Although the family is quite dirty, in a literal sense, and she doesn't especially like the white woman, she is at least getting by - until Cholly turns up drunk demanding money. This precipitates a confrontation between Pauline and the white woman:

"She said she would let me stay if I left him. I thought about that. But later on it didn't seem none too bright for a black woman to leave a black man for a white woman" (p. 120).

Here we see Pauline's unwillingness to betray her own race - not because she loves Cholly or being black, but because she senses that black people have to stick together, and that white people cannot be trusted to help them out of their predicament. Although uneducated, Pauline has wise instincts. And unfortunately, she is right to be mistrustful; because she cannot bring herself to leave Cholly, the white woman withholds the $11 she owes her, money that will put food in the mouths of her children. This cruel conditionality serves to highlight the power inequalities between this middle-class white woman and the hapless Pauline, ones which the white woman seems entirely oblivious to:

"...she told me I shouldn't let a man take advantage over me. That I should have more respect, and it was my husband's duty to pay the bills, and if he couldn't, I should leave and get alimony" (p. 120).

This encounter predicts some of the difficulties of the third wave of feminism, which was once again largely led by white middle-class women. However, what differentiated this period of feminism was the growing chorus of voices from women of colour, oppressed by both race and gender, who argued that the mainstream women's movement at best failed to address and at worst marginalised their specific concerns. The white woman here naively assumes that all women are on equal footing - which is ironic since she employs the black woman - and sees Pauline's abusive marriage as something that can be ended with a simple personal choice. The gulf between the two women is endless.

And notice that the white woman never pays the money that is very nearly a matter of life and death for Pauline. For all her 'concern' about Pauline's self-respect, she ends up consigning her to a further round of suffering and misery. I was reminded of the land owner in "The man who was almost a man", which we read last semester. Many students were convinced that he 'loved' the black boy Dave; here we see the fickleness of such love. Black servants are 'loved' as long as they toe the line, do not talk back. The Fisher family 'loves' Pauline - but how long do you think their loyalty would last if it were in any way tested?

'N' by Cedric Favaro, licenced under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic