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.So as the play begins, his chil-dren E.J., Mirah, and Lilacs nervously discuss how their father is behind withhis dollar money again, and how they will probably have to move to a differentparsonage for yet another time (228).In this sense, the play is autobiographi-cal for Graham: her father was a minister for the African Methodist EpiscopalChurch whose politically inflected sermons mixing religion and civil rights, aswell as his placement of self-sacrifice over bourgeois respectability, got him introuble with its bishops.Thus the young Graham also had to move from placeto place, from Seattle to Louisiana to the industrial cities of the Midwest, as thebishops kept sending her father away to unenviable parish assignments (Horne39 40).The Presiding Elder in the play is Dr.Calab Green, who is referred to inthe character list as One of those hierarchical left-overs from the days of over-seers. He is overweight and gluttonous, making bombastic proclamations as hedevours all the food served to him by Mrs.Cobb out of her own family s budget,and it becomes clear that he and his entourage of deacons and stewardessesonly care about money and the maintenance of their own class privilege.Thechildren conspire to bail out their father without his knowledge, and the sonE.J.temporarily spares the family the headache of once again having to move bydrumming up money for the church and delivering it anonymously in an enve-lope.But the financial woes of the family are definitively resolved by Rev.Cobb ssister Mattie, reputedly a Hollywood heiress, who drops in from out of town.As it turns out, Mattie is a firebrand and a drunk who attacks white reporters,but no heiress.She is resourceful and good-hearted, however, and after she talksher friend Jasper out of an expensive horse-racing sweepstakes ticket, her horsewins, earning her and the Cobb family $50,000.Elijah s Ravens contains a quitesimilar plot and almost the same character list; the main differences is that inRavens, Mattie does not win money for the family by gambling, but throughan elaborate scheme to convince churchgoers that Elijah is an actual prophet(Graham Du Bois Papers, Box 42, folder 4).I Gotta Home contains elements of realist theater, melodrama, and enter-taining comedy at the same time (as the local color genre illustrates, realismand comedy were never antithetical, as evidenced by William Dean Howells spreference for comic figures in nineteenth century theater).Borrowing frommelodrama, its nonvirtuous characters are clearly marked as such: Green and Hellman, Graham, and Interpellation of Female Audiences 73his entourage are transparently callous, and the wife of the local doctor, Mrs.Swan, is snobbish to an extraordinary, comic degree.Their physical attributesare likewise meant to clarify their repulsive personalities: Deacon Perkins is a sour-faced little black man, and Calab Green has a ministerial garb thatencases layers of fat (232, 234).But like realism, the play emphasizes the dialectof its characters; it centers on the trials of an ordinary family; its language isclear and non-self-referential; and it aspires to be a commentary on its place andtime (listed in the stage directions as 1938, in a large, Midwestern town ).Itsalternate Elijah s Ravens brought together these elements as well, which earnedit the label The Play of Negro Life (Du Bois, Letter to Graham, July 1941).Butone key intertextual consideration also would have made this play legible asentertainment.Through I Gotta Home and Elijah s Ravens, Graham arguablydrew upon her own experiences to offer an African American, left-wing alterna-tive to one of the most popular soaps on the air at that time, The Guiding Light.First aired in 1937, two years before Graham wrote I Gotta Home, Irna Philips sfamous soap also revolved around the troubles and joys of a reverend and hisfamily.Reverend John Rutledge, its focal character, earnestly ministered to hiscongregation in a fictionalized small Midwestern town called Five Points; as inGraham s two plays, many of the episodes centered on the women around him,and much of the dialogue was set in his home.Though a comedy, its social critique comes through quite clearly: theplay highlights the class divisions among African Americans, and particularlythe corruption of black clergy s upper echelons.Graham shows this not onlythrough the money troubles of the Cobbs in relation to the gluttony of theelders, but also through those of Rev.Cobb s friend Brother Pugh.Pugh is apoor preacher lacking in education but, like Cobb, wholeheartedly devoted tohis parish and short in his revenue collections.He sadly tells Cobb: Ah ain tup wid dese new times.Hit ustta be all right cause Ah knows bout sorrowan sufferin knows bout da love o Jesus, adding Nobody wants to hyeardos things no more.Ah can raise money (246).Cobb naively disagrees withPugh about the priorities of the church elders, but then offers to help by giv-ing his friend one of his old coats.The decidedly nonrealist end, in which thefamily s woes are solved by a winning sweepstakes ticket, was arguably Gra-ham s attempt to compromise with her audience, delivering a definite socialcritique, but in terms not so heavy as to ruin their entertainment.In contrast toNative Son, I Gotta Home balances out its portrait of negro life by represent-ing both admirable and dishonorable figures within the community, and usesa much less sensational plot to do so.Her domestic setting and family plot pro-vide an established arena for the emergence of virtue, facilitating the positive 74 Hellman, Graham, and Interpellation of Female Audiencesrepresentation of black character and creating less potential for misreading bywhite audiences [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.So as the play begins, his chil-dren E.J., Mirah, and Lilacs nervously discuss how their father is behind withhis dollar money again, and how they will probably have to move to a differentparsonage for yet another time (228).In this sense, the play is autobiographi-cal for Graham: her father was a minister for the African Methodist EpiscopalChurch whose politically inflected sermons mixing religion and civil rights, aswell as his placement of self-sacrifice over bourgeois respectability, got him introuble with its bishops.Thus the young Graham also had to move from placeto place, from Seattle to Louisiana to the industrial cities of the Midwest, as thebishops kept sending her father away to unenviable parish assignments (Horne39 40).The Presiding Elder in the play is Dr.Calab Green, who is referred to inthe character list as One of those hierarchical left-overs from the days of over-seers. He is overweight and gluttonous, making bombastic proclamations as hedevours all the food served to him by Mrs.Cobb out of her own family s budget,and it becomes clear that he and his entourage of deacons and stewardessesonly care about money and the maintenance of their own class privilege.Thechildren conspire to bail out their father without his knowledge, and the sonE.J.temporarily spares the family the headache of once again having to move bydrumming up money for the church and delivering it anonymously in an enve-lope.But the financial woes of the family are definitively resolved by Rev.Cobb ssister Mattie, reputedly a Hollywood heiress, who drops in from out of town.As it turns out, Mattie is a firebrand and a drunk who attacks white reporters,but no heiress.She is resourceful and good-hearted, however, and after she talksher friend Jasper out of an expensive horse-racing sweepstakes ticket, her horsewins, earning her and the Cobb family $50,000.Elijah s Ravens contains a quitesimilar plot and almost the same character list; the main differences is that inRavens, Mattie does not win money for the family by gambling, but throughan elaborate scheme to convince churchgoers that Elijah is an actual prophet(Graham Du Bois Papers, Box 42, folder 4).I Gotta Home contains elements of realist theater, melodrama, and enter-taining comedy at the same time (as the local color genre illustrates, realismand comedy were never antithetical, as evidenced by William Dean Howells spreference for comic figures in nineteenth century theater).Borrowing frommelodrama, its nonvirtuous characters are clearly marked as such: Green and Hellman, Graham, and Interpellation of Female Audiences 73his entourage are transparently callous, and the wife of the local doctor, Mrs.Swan, is snobbish to an extraordinary, comic degree.Their physical attributesare likewise meant to clarify their repulsive personalities: Deacon Perkins is a sour-faced little black man, and Calab Green has a ministerial garb thatencases layers of fat (232, 234).But like realism, the play emphasizes the dialectof its characters; it centers on the trials of an ordinary family; its language isclear and non-self-referential; and it aspires to be a commentary on its place andtime (listed in the stage directions as 1938, in a large, Midwestern town ).Itsalternate Elijah s Ravens brought together these elements as well, which earnedit the label The Play of Negro Life (Du Bois, Letter to Graham, July 1941).Butone key intertextual consideration also would have made this play legible asentertainment.Through I Gotta Home and Elijah s Ravens, Graham arguablydrew upon her own experiences to offer an African American, left-wing alterna-tive to one of the most popular soaps on the air at that time, The Guiding Light.First aired in 1937, two years before Graham wrote I Gotta Home, Irna Philips sfamous soap also revolved around the troubles and joys of a reverend and hisfamily.Reverend John Rutledge, its focal character, earnestly ministered to hiscongregation in a fictionalized small Midwestern town called Five Points; as inGraham s two plays, many of the episodes centered on the women around him,and much of the dialogue was set in his home.Though a comedy, its social critique comes through quite clearly: theplay highlights the class divisions among African Americans, and particularlythe corruption of black clergy s upper echelons.Graham shows this not onlythrough the money troubles of the Cobbs in relation to the gluttony of theelders, but also through those of Rev.Cobb s friend Brother Pugh.Pugh is apoor preacher lacking in education but, like Cobb, wholeheartedly devoted tohis parish and short in his revenue collections.He sadly tells Cobb: Ah ain tup wid dese new times.Hit ustta be all right cause Ah knows bout sorrowan sufferin knows bout da love o Jesus, adding Nobody wants to hyeardos things no more.Ah can raise money (246).Cobb naively disagrees withPugh about the priorities of the church elders, but then offers to help by giv-ing his friend one of his old coats.The decidedly nonrealist end, in which thefamily s woes are solved by a winning sweepstakes ticket, was arguably Gra-ham s attempt to compromise with her audience, delivering a definite socialcritique, but in terms not so heavy as to ruin their entertainment.In contrast toNative Son, I Gotta Home balances out its portrait of negro life by represent-ing both admirable and dishonorable figures within the community, and usesa much less sensational plot to do so.Her domestic setting and family plot pro-vide an established arena for the emergence of virtue, facilitating the positive 74 Hellman, Graham, and Interpellation of Female Audiencesrepresentation of black character and creating less potential for misreading bywhite audiences [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]