Hurston begins the story with description of its setting that uses the same adjective repetitively: "It was a Negro yard around a Negro house in a Negro settlement." Such deliberate emphasis underscores the 'blackness' of the community (which is later named as Eatonville, Hurston's real-life hometown), defining how it is seen from the outside. Once the story gets underway, the characters' race is not mentioned, though it remains implicitly significant. "The Gilded Six-Bits" takes place in a community that is all black, thus racial difference is not much of an issue—quite an exceptional situation in the United States, especially during the race-conscious 1930s when Hurston wrote. Instead, Hurston addresses the issue of race through celebrating the integrity and cultural richness of the all-black community. Because she often chose such happily segregated settings, Hurston's black.....
This is a free excerpt of 135 words. This section contains 740 words. This
study guide contains 16,523 words (approx. 55 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Literature Guide with our The Gilded Six-Bits Access Pass.
