Bed-Stuy in da Brownstone House:

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Topographies as an all encompassing metaphor

2. Character of Brooklyn brownstones and introduction of the protagonist

3. The family conflict: Land versus home

4. Theoretical reflection upon gender issues in the novel

5. Topographies 1: Fulton Park
5.1 Fulton Street / 125th Street in Harlem and the social meaning of city streets
5.2 Prospect Park and the Brooklyn Public Library at Grand Army Plaza
5.3 Williamsburg / “Berliniamsburg”

6. Politics of Space: Social meaning of the stoop

7. The “City of Women” and the West Indian Carnival in Brooklyn

8. Topographies 2: The Upper West Side and City College of CUNY
8.1 Greenwich Village
8.2 The Upper East Side

9. Conclusion: City projects and individual rise to independence

10. Bibliography

I read Brown Girl, Brownstones as a Bildungsroman, rather than an ethnic study, whereas I do elaborate upon certain terms of sociological discourse pertaining to class, gender and race. The novel concerns the first generation Barbadian - American girl Selina Boyce, who grows up in the Bedford - Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn during the Depression and the Second World War. Exploring the immigrant experience of Selina’s family through two major narrative strands, whereby the first primarily treats her parent’s domestic conflict and the second is devoted to the protagonist’s coming of age, the novel is held together by the artful depiction of New York City topographies. As characteristic of the entire story, the beginning of the plot is constituted by a powerful personification of the brownstone houses, which are typical for Bed - Stuy, as the neighborhood is affectionately called by locals; contributing to its nostalgic charm.

In the somnolent July afternoon the unbroken line of brownstone houses down the long Brooklyn Street resembled an army massed at attention. They were all one uniform red-brown stone. All with high massive stone stoops and black iron-grille fences staving off the sun. All draped in ivy as though mourning. Their somber facades, indifferent to the summer’s heat and passion, faced a park while their backs reared dark against the sky. They were only three or four stories tall - squat - yet they gave the impression of formidable height.^[1]

Both, the structure and significance of the work are sustained by the creation of sociopsychological meaning through the relationship of the plot with its characters and images, which translate into symbolism. Whereas Selina’s consciousness is primarily defined by the atmosphere of the city, her parent’s attitudes are still influenced in various ways by their past childhood on the islands.

The first generation of West Indian im/migrants to the United States in the 1910s and 1920s had responded to the extreme racial segregation they encountered in the United States by nurturing racial identities. Like many of their southern migrant neighbors in Harlem, Caribbean people were new to the neighbourhood. Many Caribbean im/migrants to New York maintained cultural and political links to their home islands, much as African - Americans kept ties to communities in the South.[…] Immigration policies virtually insured that im/migrants would struggle with the problems of more established urban minority groups: high unemployment, neighbourhood redlining; and the flight of white residents and municipal funds.^[2]

The family’s search for a new home in the urban north of the United States is traced by highlighting the architectural metaphors of New York City in the novel. Special consideration is given to the beautiful Bed - Stuy brownstone story houses, Prospect Park, Fulton Street in downtown Brooklyn and industrial Williamsburg as well as bohemian Greenwich Village in Manhattan. Less a conceptualization of dualities, as it can be found often in the secondary literature about Marshall’s first work of prose (yet not always avoidable)^[3], my interpretation aims to support the idea of an all encompassing urban metaphor^[4]. Consequently, the myth of New York City is put into question, as the protagonist rises to independence against the backdrop of development projects and embarks on her own version of the American dream.

Each brownstone house is very unique, though at first sight they all appear uniform. By analogy, they are staged as a living organism, yet clearly remain a constant in the face of change as well.

Glancing down the interminable Brooklyn street you thought of those joined brownstones as one house reflected through a train of mirrors, with no walls between the houses but only vast rooms yawning endlessly one into the other. Yet, looking close, you saw that under the thick ivy each house had something distinctly its own. Some touch that was Gothic, Romanesque, baroque or Greek triumphed amid the Victorian clutter. Here, Ionic columns framed the windows while next door gargoyles scowled up at the sun. There, the cornices were hung with carved foliage while Gorgon heads decorated others. Many houses had bay windows of Gothic stonework; a few boasted turrets raised high above the other roofs. Yet they all shared the same brown monotony. All seemed doomed by the confusion in their design. Behind those grim facades, in those high rooms, life soared and ebbed. Bodies crouched in the postures of love at night, children burst from the womb’s thick shell, and death, when it was time, shuffled through the halls. First, there had been the Dutch - English and Scotch - Irish who had built the houses. There had been tea in the afternoon then and skirts rustling across the parquet floors and mild voices. For a long time it had been only the whites, each generation unravelling in a quiet skein of years behind the green shades. But now in 1939 the last of them were discreetly dying behind those shades or selling the houses and moving away. And as they left, the West Indians slowly edged their way in. Like a dark sea nudging its way onto a white beach and staining the sand, they came. The West Indians, especially the Barbadians who had never owned anything perhaps but a few acres in a poor land, loved the houses with the same fierce idolatry as they had the land on their obscure islands. But, with their coming, there was no longer tea in the afternoon, and their odd speech clashed in the hushed rooms, while underneath the ivy the old houses remained as indifferent to them as to the whites, as aloof…(B3/4)

The description carries the reader directly into the position of an observer from the street.

An appreciation of the brownstone houses’ Gestalt is brought about by the consideration of several details in design. One can almost smell their clay like substance and sense the spiritual dimension of their statuary function. With European settlers leaving and Barbadian immigrants moving into the neighbourhood at the time when the narrative action starts, Bedford - Stuyvesant is in historical flux, yet the authenticity of its cultural environment is preserved by the character of the brownstone houses. Inevitably intertwined with this phenomenon is the fate of the new residents, who generally regarded the acquisition of the real estate as an opportunity to climb the social ladder.

Acquiring the ownership of these brownstone houses, acquiring property and an identity as middle class home owners in their new country is the main goal - an obsession in some cases - of many of the Barbadian immigrants.^[5]

A description of the brownstone interior occurs along with the introduction of the protagonist. Vividly, it becomes apparent, that Selina maintains an intimate attachment to the house, as her notion of “home” as her parents know Barbados merely is an abstract concept to her. However, the role of the house in her life seems to be ambivalent and temporary. On the one hand, the house provides a space she loved, but on the other she experiences a sense of not belonging. This is portrayed through the girl’s make believe type play, engaging the spirits of former upstairs tenants; as she has a keen transcendental sense making her receptive for the anecdotes told by those old walls, rooms and furniture. The implicit gateway idea of the hallway metaphor then foreshadows the narratological fact that Selina is meant to eventually leave the familiarity, the safety and a certain preconceived destiny the house is representative of.

Her house was alive to Selina. She sat this summer afternoon on the upper landing on the top floor, listening to its shallow breathing – (…) she seemed to know the world down there in the dark hall and beyond for what it was. Yet knowing, she still longed to leave this safe, sunlit place at the top of the house for the challenge there. (…) Slowly she raised her arm, thin and dark in the sun - haze, circled by two heavy silver bangles which had come from “home” and which every Barbadian - American girl wore from birth. Glaring down, she shook her fist, and the bangles sounded her defiance in a thin clangor. When her arm dropped, the house, stunned by the noise, ceased breathing and a pure silence fell. (…) she rose, her arms lifted in welcome, and quickly the white family who had lived there before, whom the old woman upstairs always spoke of glided with pale footfalls up the stairs. Their white hands trailed the banister; their mild voices implored her to give them a little life. And as they crowded around, fusing with her, she was no longer a dark girl alone and dreaming at the top of an old house, but one of them, invested with their beauty and gentility. She threw her head back until it trembled proudly on the stalk of her neck and, holding up her imaginary gown, she swept downstairs to the parlor floor. At the bottom step she paused in the entrance hall, which was a room in itself with its carpet, wallpaper and hushed dimness. Opening off the hall was the parlor, full of ponderous furniture and potted ferns which the whites had left, with an aged and inviolate silence. It was the museum of all the lives that had ever lived here. The floor –to-ceiling mirror retained their faces as the silence did their voices. As Selina entered, the chandelier which held the sunlight frozen in its prisms rushed at her, and the mirror flung her back at herself. The mood was broken. The gown dropped from her limp hands. The illusory figures fled and she was only herself again. (…) that was all she was. She did not belong here. She was something vulgar in a holy place. (B 4/5/6)

As Selina continues to roam around being forbidden by her mother to go outside without her sister who is unavailable, the reader eventually meets her father Deighton in the sun parlor, which is the sanctuary of the house. It’s a rare luxury space actually, which is different from the other rooms due to its large glass walls. As the reader gets to know Deighton’s character over the course of the plot, it becomes apparent, that in a psychological sense he had never left the Caribbean. Hence, his regular physical removal into the sun parlor allows him to keep the illusion alive, to be able to maintain a similarly slow - paced sort of mentality in Brooklyn as it is a more on Barbados. Providing a sense of immunity to the bearings going on in the other areas of the house and drowned in sunlight, the space is literally reminiscent of an island.

They were very proud of the sun parlor. Not many of the old brownstones had them. It was the one room in the house given over to the sun. Sunlight came spilling through the glass walls, swayed like a dancer in the air and lay in a yellow rug on the floor. (B8)

It is here, where Deighton comes up with his get - rich - quick schemes and also, where Selina has intimate conversations with her dad. In the context of one of those talks, the father gives a clue as to what the domestic conflict between him and Selina’s mother may stem from, that is they were brought up in different environments on the islands.

I’s a person live in town and always had plenty to do. I not like yuh mother and the mounts of these Bajan that come from down some gully or up some hill behind God back and ain use to nothing.(B9/10)

While the father lacks motivation to adapt to the capitalist culture in New York and continues daydreaming about returning “home”, the mother, just like most women in the Barbadian immigrant community, is seriously determined to make great sacrifices in order to create a better life for her family in the city. Almost in blind pursuit, she is practically prostituting herself to be able to afford a down payment on the brownstone the family is just renting so far. The Bajan women do not necessarily go to work in Manhattan, as one might expect according to a theoretical duality paradigm, but in neighborhoods, which border directly on Bed - Stuy, showing that the social strata in Brooklyn factually changes from block to block. This is an important aspect, exemplifying one reason, why the notion of Marshall’s fiction being an important contribution to the sociological insights of African - American Literature is a consensus. It defies the stereotype of Brooklyn as a monolithic ghetto and illustrates the borough’s many faces, albeit they may sometimes be ugly, instead.

[...]

^[1] Paule Marshall: Brown Girl, Brownstones. New Jersey: The Chatham Bookseller 1972, p. 1. Following quotations from the novel will be identified by a page reference to this edition in brackets in the text.

^[2] Rachel Buff: “Performing Memory, Inventing Tradition.” In: Immigration and the Political Economy of Home. West Indian Brooklyn and American Indian Minneapolis, 1945 – 1992. Berkeley: University of California Press 2001, p. 79.

^[3] Compare to: Martin Japtok: “Paule Marshall’s ‘Brown Girl, Brownstones’: reconciling ethnicity and individualism.” In: African American Review 1998. Auf: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2838/is_n2_v32/ai_21059959, viewed on 2008-10-06.

^[4] Compare to: Kimberley Benston: “Architectural Imagery and Unity in Paule Marshall’s Brown Girl, Brownstones.” In: Negro American Literature Forum 9, 3, 1975, p. 76 - 70.

^[5] Deborah Schneider: “A Search for Selfhood: Paule Marshall’s Brown Girl, Brownstones.” In: The Afro - American Novel since 1960. Amsterdam: Gründer Publishing Co. 1982, p. 54.