The Gilded Age for African Americans — Zora Neale Hurston’s Point of View
In the early 20th century, Einstein’s theory of relativity on modernist authors was that literary analysis had to take into how different viewpoints could affect the perception of reality. In the social media age, we all still struggle with this question. How do we know what’s real on Facebook or Instagram? What words and images are carefully constructed to prompt us to make a given action.
For black history month, we consider how the 20th century African American anthropologist, activist and literary icon, Zora Neale Hurston looks behind the glitz of America’s gilded age to raise questions about reality.
Hurston’s short story, The Six Gilded Bits, is a critique of the gilded age — alluding to the saying “all that glitters is not gold”. This story that takes place in a small southern town removed geographically and economically from the glittery exuberance and opulence of stories like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby. Hurston’s short story, however, contains elements familiar in modernist writing. Love and money are sought after by characters who display relative and shifting positions on morality and the idea that nothing is permanent is conveyed. Saussurian theory of linguistics also provides theoretical foundation for Hurston’s use of Black American dialect to add subjectivity to the…