The three characters, identified only by the
generic titles “The Woman,” “The Man,” and “The
Waitress,” speculate about whether or not there are
African Americans who resemble the bevy of Negro
characters in contemporary writing. The shabbily
dressed couple reappears in the second scene as
“faultlessly dressed” individuals. Schuyler suggests
that their improved self-presentation and apparent
material privilege is a sign of how well they have
profited from the market for black stereotypes.
Bibliography
Peplow, Michael. George S. Schuyler.Boston: Twayne
Publishers, 1980.
“Attic Romance”Florence Marion Harmon
(1929)
A short story by FLORENCE MARIONHARMON
that appeared in the second annual edition of the
African-American and Boston-based literary maga-
zine, the SATURDAYEVENINGQUILL.
The plot centers on a lonely artist who tries to
deal with his feelings of attraction toward his
neighbor. Janet Murray, an artist, moves into the
top floor of Carleton Chambers. Her downstairs
neighbor is completely annoyed by her presence.
Not only does she wear vivid colors that distract
him, but the smell of her cooking prevents him
from “forget[ting] the existence of the green-
smock girl.” He eventually makes her acquain-
tance by going up to borrow some lace that he
hopes to use in one of his art projects. He begins to
give in to his interest in her. However, it is only
when he happens to pass her door and see her pos-
ing dramatically before a “tall, dark young man
sprawled in her most comfortable chair,” that he
realizes his feelings. When he finds out later that
the man is Murray’s brother and not a suitor, the
artist asks her out to dinner immediately. He also
requests that she wear the “ravishing evening
gown of green velvet” and the “huge green feather
fan” that she donned and paraded before her
brother. Murray demurs, and the story closes as she
insists that they concentrate on their newfound in-
terest and celebrate the present moment.
Harmon’s story and its focus on romance, the
professional woman, and the power of domesticity
contributed to ongoing debates about the evolving
role of women during the Harlem Renaissance.
Her representation of a woman whose pursuit of
art does not detract from her desirability or her in-
terest in social relationships does much to under-
score the realities with which women and men of
the day were contending.Aubrey, John
An unidentified African-American student and
writer at Williams College used this pseudonym.
Scholars have yet to identify Aubrey, who attended
the same school as STERLINGBROWNand ALLISON
DAVIS. Aubrey’s “VIRGINIAIDYLL,” a tragic short
story about an impoverished African-American
family in the South, appeared in the April 1931
issue of OPPORTUNITY.Aunt Sara’s Wooden GodMercedes Gilbert
(1938)
The first and only novel published by MERCEDES
GILBERT, an extremely talented and multifaceted
woman who enjoyed successes as an actress, play-
wright, composer, and songwriter. In his introduc-
tion to the novel, LANGSTONHUGHEShailed the
realism of Gilbert’s work and described it as “an
authentic everyday story of thousands of little fam-
ilies below the Mason-Dixon line, bound to the
soil by poverty and blackness, but living their en-
closed lives always in the hope that someday some
one of them may escape the family group and go
on to higher things.” Hughes recommended the
novel and assured readers who enjoyed ZORA
NEALE HURSTON’s JONAH’S GOURD VINE that
they would find this novel appealing. Despite
Hughes’s enthusiasm, the book garnered few re-
views and disappeared into relative obscurity until
it was republished in the 1980s.
Set in the rural town of Byron, Georgia, this
local-color novel traces the unfortunate and ulti-
mately dissolute life of a cherished child named
William. The only son of the now-widowed Aunt
Sara and the figure to whom the title’s term
“wooden god” applies, William is a mulatto and the
illegitimate son of Aunt Sara and one of her white
employers. His half brother, Jim, the son of Sara and
her husband John Carter, is a farmer. Gilbert’s narra-
tive about William, the favored but ultimately un-16 “Attic Romance”