There
is something to offend nearly everyone in H.S. Whitehead’s Sweet Grass (1929). Readers
will find considerable male chauvinism, ethnic stereotypes, racism, and class
warfare—in just about that order. It
will be helpful to have on hand a Dictionary
of Archaic Racial Designations to decode terms like zambos, mulattoes,
octoroons, and mestizos. Titrations of
non-Caucasian blood once mattered greatly in the assignment of individuals to
various social classes—an odious prejudice that was still current less than a
century ago, and still operative in some respects today.
Then,
as now, the human race seems neurologically primed to categorize its various
members on the basis of superficial physical differences, in order to establish
identity and a sense of security in the world.
The attempt to divide oneself from the
other is not limited merely to racial characteristics; gender, nationality,
religion, politics and social class can also be effective, especially in
combination. Anxiety is much reduced
when we know exactly who we are, and who we aren’t. At least it is until we have close encounters
with people who aren’t like us.
On
the surface, Sweet Grass seems
intended as a parable about the supernatural consequences of miscegenation. A fastidious young Danish man, recently
transplanted to the tropical island of Santa Cruz, begins to think of marriage,
or at least the steps that might lead to that arrangement. But is he ready for commitment and
conventionality? “At first he had
wondered, vaguely, how other men met this primal urge,” Whitehead writes.
Yet
all around him are the progeny of European intercourse—on various levels—with the
local population. The fragrances of the
island and especially that of the “sweet grass” seems a powerful sensual
metaphor for the attractive beauty displayed by island women of color. It is no accident that “sweet grass”—probably
Muhlenbergia capillaris var. filipes— is the title of the story and is
referenced often throughout. Sweet grass
was used to make highly ornate baskets by Africans who were enslaved and
brought to the West Indies.
One
sleepless night, Cornelis, the young Dane, gets out of bed and goes downstairs
to sit on the veranda. In the moonlight,
he spies a fifteen year old girl, returning from a late night stroll along the
ocean.
Then
the girl recognized him, her sudden smile revealing white, regular teeth set in
a delicate, wide mouth, a mouth made for love.
In the transforming magic of the moonlight her pale brown skin showed
like cream.
“Bathing in de sea,” she murmured
explanatorily.
He
beckons to her; she approaches him and they—gasp!—embrace. But propriety
instead rears its ugly head, and Cornelis pushes the girl away, marching her
off the property. It is the most active
and decisive measure Cornelis takes for the remainder of the story. Regrettably, the girl happens to be the
daughter of the local mamaloi or witch-woman,
but more about this later.
Horrified
at his lack of self control, Cornelis promptly marries Honoria Macartney—of the
“fighting Irish” Macartney’s—a woman of the local gentry who is guaranteed to
possess the “domestic virtues”. She is a
very suitable woman, of good
stock. However, the young man had
earlier described her in these terms:
“Somehow,
to Cornelis, these young ladies of the planter gentry were not alluring,
vital. The most attractive of them, Honoria
Macartney, he could hardly imagine beside him perpetually. Honoria had the dead-white skin of the
Caucasian creole lady whose face has been screened from the sun since infancy.”
It is impossible not to recall the old Loving Spoonful lyric: "Did you ever have to make up your mind?
Say yes to one and let the other one slide…"
Thus
Whitehead expresses some ambivalence in the tale, which allows it to rise above
superficial racism. Safely married, the
hapless Cornelis soon begins to experience unusual dermatological symptoms, and
later on, dire indications of heart failure.
At this point in the story the perspective shifts from the male point of
view—Cornelis’ unfulfilled sexual longing—to that of his indomitable new wife,
Honoria. She believes that men are all
alike. She’s right. “How often had she heard her mother, and
other mature women, say that!”
Honoria
is determined to figure out the cause of her husband’s symptoms, which seem to
have intensified not long after a local “brown girl” named Julietta began
working in the household. Julietta of
course is the fifteen year old that Cornelis had spurned on the veranda one recent
moonlit night. At one point one of her
husband’s white shirts goes missing. It is suspected that this personal item is
now being used in some sort of black magic.
Honoria lines up all the household servants and makes this chilling
threat:
“The
master’s shirt is to be returned this night,” commanded Honoria
imperiously. “I shall expect to find
it—on the south gallery by nine o’clock. Otherwise”—she looked about her at
each expressionless face—“otherwise—the fort.
There will be a dark room for every one of you—no food, no sleep, until
it is confessed. I will have none of
this in my house. That is all.”
Until
this juncture, Sweet Grass reads like
a tepid soap opera, almost a comedy of manners.
However, with Honoria’s threat we are reminded of the darkness of racial
oppression and subjugation, taken as routine in these islands at the time. Though she knows or suspects her husband of
dallying with Julietta, Honoria will stand by her man. She will also stand by the colonial powers
and traditions she represents.
In
the final pages of the story, Julietta is found to be complicit in a Vauxdoux
“obeah”—a vengeful curse—placed on her husband.
Honoria marches the girl up the hill for a final confrontation with
Julietta’s mother. Interestingly, it
falls to the woman to preserve white privilege, power and social class on this
seductive and mysterious tropical island.
Alas, men are all alike.
Sweet Grass originally appeared in the July
1929 issue of Weird Tales, alongside verse by Robert E. Howard, (“Forbidden Magic”), Edmond Hamilton’s “interstellar
patrol” novella Outside the Universe,
and E.F. Benson’s The Wishing Well,
among others. Whitehead’s story is
unique in literature of this kind in featuring women—three of them!—as relatively
strong and powerful characters, albeit stereotypes. Unlike his other stories—the ones that
feature the bemused, smug, Carnacki-like character of Gerald Canevin—this one
is told in the third person. The author’s
perspective is a bit more distant, allowing for a little more ambivalence, and
even some timid questioning of the island’s status quo.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thank you for your interest in The R'lyeh Tribune! Comments and suggestions are always welcome.