Plum Bun: A Novel Without a Moral

“This was a curious business, this colour. It was the one god apparently to whom you could sacrifice everything. On account of it her mother had neglected to greet her own husband in the street. Mary Hastings could let it come between her and her friend.”

Angela’s growing awareness that “colour” defines and distorts nearly everything about social relationships causes her distress: It can disrupt a happy marriage and spoil a friendship swiftly and mercilessly. She distances herself from this destructive marker.

“‘No, I don’t think being coloured in America is a beautiful thing. I think it’s nothing short of a curse,’ says Angela.” 

Angela does not possess racial pride—later described in Van Mier’s lecture—because her experiences with being Black have largely been negative. This creates the double consciousness that Fauset’s mentor W.E.B. DuBois described: Angela views herself through the lens of white society, which disapproves of and denigrates her Blackness; thus, she disapproves and denigrates herself (what modern readers recognize as internalized racism).

“She did not believe that black people were exactly human; there was no place for them in the scheme of life so far as she could see.” 

The novel describes the casual racism and ignorance that is a constant reality of the world in which Angela lives. While the attendant does not speak the thought aloud, the default dehumanization of Black people in general and Angela’s family in particular, carries with it dire consequences—everything from the death of Angela’s father to the lynching of Anthony’s father. If a Black person is not considered human, then their life is expendable.

“All the good things were theirs. Not, some coldly reasoning instinct within was saying, because they were white. But because for the present they had power and the badge of that power was whiteness […]. She possessed the badge, and unless there was someone to tell she could possess the power for which it stood.” 

Angela recognizes that the whiteness or Blackness of an individual’s skin confers no inherent superiority or genetic privilege, but sees whites claim most of the wealth and prestige available; thus, if she can be perceived as white, then there should be no reasonable objection to passing as white.

“I might marry—a white man. Marriage is the easiest way for a woman to get those things, and white men have them.” 

It is not only Angela’s race that impedes her opportunities and aspirations, but also her gender. She can only access status, power, and financial security by attaching herself to a man. Hence, Angela becomes a commodity—passing to attract the most advantageous prospect—and marriage becomes a transaction of sex and/or love in exchange for power and prosperity.

“But she could not explain to him [Roger] the picture which she saw in her mind of men and women at her father’s home in Opal Street,—the men talking painfully of rents, of lynchings, of building and loan associations; the women and of childbearing and the sacrifices which must be made to put Gertie through school, to educate Howard.” 

Angela implicitly acknowledges that the issues and struggles facing the Black populace are typically much more urgent and profound than what the privileged white people speak of at parties. It sets her apart; despite her appearance, which signifies belonging, her actual experiences don’t easily correspond with Roger or his social circle.

“Life could never cheat her as it had cheated that coloured girl this evening, as it had once cheated her in Philadelphia with Matthew. She was free, free to taste life in all its fullness and sweetness, in all its minutest details.” 

Angela continues to connect her performed whiteness to freedom: On the one hand, white people do have more access to status, wealth, and power; on the other hand, she fails to recognize that an identity founded on deception or double consciousness is incompatible with psychological and spiritual freedom.

“She thought of Anthony: ‘A woman could be her true self with him.’ But she had given him up.” 

Angela has already relinquished “her true self,” in part by letting go of Anthony. Instead of engaging in a relationship founded on honesty and mutual feeling, she chooses to play hard to get with Roger—a ruse to win his attention (if not genuine devotion)—in order to barter for marriage.

“And afterwards I can atone for it all. I’ll be good to all sorts of people; I’ll really help humanity, lots of coloured folks will be much better off on account of me.” 

Angela makes this promise to herself after snubbing her sister in front of Roger: It shows that she does, in fact, have a conscience, that she is bothered by her own inappropriate, even reprehensible, behavior. However, she still convinces herself that the debt owed—to her sister, to her fellow Black citizens—will be repaid, and her actions will be vindicated.

“[M]en paid a big price for their desires. Her price would be marriage. It was a game, she knew, which women played all over the world although it had never occurred to her to play it; a dangerous game at which some women burned their fingers.” 

Everything about her relationship with Roger, from noting she will repay the debt for her deceit, to demanding he pay for the privilege of her body, is transactional. She is bartering for her future with her virtue.

“[I]n the last analysis her purity was a matter not of morals, not of religion, nor of racial pride; it was a matter of fastidiousness.”

Angela decides that giving in to Roger’s desires is neither immoral nor undignified, but merely inexpedient in achieving her end goals of financial security and social standing. Without a moral argument or a strong sense of her own worth, it becomes easy to give in to him. It also makes it easier to justify her decision in the end.

“Now she was adopting a curious detachment toward life tempered by a faint cynicism,—a detachment which enabled her to say to herself: ‘Rules are for ordinary people but not for me.’” 

After Angela embarks upon the affair with Roger, she abandons the pretense that she follows convention. Again, as with many of her actions, this has two effects: It relieves her of guilt or responsibility for her deceit in passing and in her flouting gender norms; it also reveals her transgressive character and marks her as extraordinary. The reader is to decide if that is for good or for ill—or perhaps both. After all, the author reminds us with her sub-title that this book is “without a moral.”

“The girls were bright birds of paradise, the men, her artist’s eye noted, were gay, vital fauns.” 

When Angela visits Jinny in Harlem, she notes the vibrant clothes and spirits. Here, color takes on positive connotations, as it frequently does during her forays into Harlem.

“Roger, her companion, had gone; she had been caught up in an inexcusably needless affair without the pretext of love. Thank God she had taken nothing from Roger; she had not sold herself, only bestowed that self foolishly, unworthily.” 

Despite the baldly transactional nature of the marriage agreement, Angela feels she has retained some level of ethical virtue and independence by not ceding to Roger’s wish for her to live in his “love-nest” or to take payment directly from him. While she was admittedly seeking financial security in the match, she has not stooped to outright prostitution.

“Now here [Virginia] was established in New York with friends, occupation, security, leading an utterly open life, no secrets, no subterfuges, no goals to be reached in devious ways.” 

Angela still denies that passing is at least partially to blame for her loneliness and isolation: Immediately after noting that her sister Virginia is living such an open life without secrets, Angela dismisses the idea that “her determination to pass from one race to the other” (243) could be responsible for her predicament.

“Although she rarely thought of colour still she was conscious of living in an atmosphere of falseness, of tangled implications.” 

As time passes, however, Angela begins to recognize that her choices are impacting her sense of self-worth; not only her decision to pass as white but her choice to pursue marriage to a white man as a means of accessing wealth and power. Her existence in New York is predicated on deception.

“And then she would surprise him [Anthony], she would tell him the truth, she would make herself inexpressibly dearer and nearer to him when he came to know that her sympathy and her tenderness were real, fixed and lasting, because they were based and rooted in the same blood, the same experiences, the same comprehension of this far-reaching, stupid, terrible race problem.”

Angela believes that as soon as she reveals her secret to Anthony, their bond will be cemented and their relationship set. She fails to anticipate that her deception—and his demurring—about their racial heritage carries significant consequences, and their love story will not play out so simply.

“Young as she was she felt like a battle-scarred veteran who, worn out from his own strenuous activities, was quite content to sit on the side-lines gazing at all phases of warfare with an equal eye.” 

Angela decides she will no longer pursue a mate, now seeing the marriage market as a battleground. Roger’s treachery and Anthony’s unwitting betrayal have turned her into a jaded soldier—a reaction that is the polar opposite of the naïve place where she began. To achieve maturity, she will need to find a psychological middle ground.

“Her mother’s old dictum recurred: ‘Life is more important than colour.’” 

Angela has decided to relinquish her quest for happiness, but she still yet believes that passing as white holds value for her. She deliberately misreads her mother’s dictum, thinking that “the material age in which she lived” (333) justifies her decision to pass. In this way, she equates “life” with wealth, rather than with honesty, authenticity, and self-worth.

“As for Angela she asked for nothing better than to put all the problems of colour and their attendant difficulties behind her.”

Angela contrasts what she sees as her practical abandonment of race with Anthony’s view that, in confessing the truth about his race, he is making no sacrifice. Indeed, Anthony’s principles lead him to sweep away the moral confusion caused by deception, while Angela’s has only swept it under the rug—the “problems of colour” are still there, just under the surface, waiting to be uncovered.

“Can’t you see that to my way of thinking it’s a great deal better to be coloured and to miss—oh—scholarships and honours and preferments, than to be the contemptible things which you’ve all shown yourself to be this morning?” 

Soon after contemplating Anthony’s views on his racial identity, Angela admits publicly that she is Black, goaded by the indefensible suggestions the reporters make regarding Miss Powell’s reasons for wanting the art scholarship. In one sweeping outburst, Angela recovers her sense of pride and asserts her moral superiority over the racist white reporters.

“Now here I land the position, hold it long enough to prove ability and the girls work beside me and remain untainted. So evidently there’s no blind inherent disgust to be overcome. Looking just the same as I’ve ever looked I let the fact of my Negro ancestry be known. Mind, I haven’t changed the least bit, but immediately there’s all this holding up of hands and the cry of deceit being raised. Some logic, that!” 

Returning to the theme that pervades Part 1, Angela expresses her exasperation with the hypocrisies inherent in racial discrimination: She hasn’t changed at all, except to embrace her Black identity, and there is no factual basis for the notion of inherent racial difference—yet, she still loses her job. 

“Just this side of him stood her former home,—how tiny it was and yet how full of secrets, of knowledge of joy, despair, suffering, futility,—in brief, Life!” 

Life is no longer the merciless, looming and laughing figure that Angela sketched in New York; instead, after reconnecting with her roots, embracing her Black identity, and returning home, Angela can see the fullness of life. This marks her coming of age, as she not only accepts but takes pride in who she is and where she is from.