26 pages • 52 minutes read
The Gilded Six-Bits
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Themes
Sex, Physical Desire, and Marriage
Sex, marriage, and the implications—moral or otherwise—of sex outside marriage are central to Hurston’s short story. While much of “The Gilded Six-Bits” focuses on Joe and Missie May’s marriage, particularly their domestic life, there are also lessons implied by her unfaithfulness to Joe.
The focus on Joe and Missie May’s daily and weekly routines—most of the story is set in and around their home—allows the reader a glimpse into their intimate life. At the beginning of “The Gilded Six-Bits,” the couple are practically newlyweds, engaged in a weekly routine that centers around Joe’s payday but also involves lots of playful affection: “Missie May grinned with delight. She had not seen the big tall man come stealing in the gate and creep up the walk grinning happily at the joyful mischief he was about to commit” (87). Mutual physical desire is an important and (the story suggests) natural element of this relationship. In their mock battle, they become “a furious mass of male and female energy” (87), as though archetypes of sexuality.
Hurston lingers especially on Missie May’s physical attraction to Joe, whom she praises as a “pritty man.” Besides establishing her feelings for her husband, such remarks make her infidelity seem worse by contrast, and not only for the obvious moral reason. There has been no indication that she’s attracted to Slemmons at all; on the contrary, most of her remarks about Slemmons have disparaged either his looks (she describes him as having a “puzzlegut”) or his character (she implies he might be lying). She apparently sleeps with him only in the hopes of getting one of his gold coins, which the story frames as a disruption of the healthy sexuality that undergirds Joe and Missie May’s marriage. It certainly seems to lower her in her own estimation: Joe’s gesture of leaving the gilded coin under her pillow would not cut so deep if it didn’t.
Meanwhile, the consequences of Missie May’s affair become apparent within the marriage: “There were no more Saturday romps. No ringing silver dollars to stack besides her plate. No pockets to rifle” (95). Not only does Joe remove his affection, but the end of the weekly “romps” also means the end of the payday silver dollars and small gifts stuffed in his pockets, which seemed so crucial to their happiness. With the trust between them broken, they lose all of the little intimacies and private jokes that characterized their relationship.
With Joe and Missie May’s marriage threatened due to a deviation from “healthy” sexual behavior, their path back to a happy relationship seems to hinge on a very “natural” consequence of sex: a child. When Missie May becomes pregnant, she reassures Joe the child will be “de very spit of [him]” (96). After his birth, and when Joe seems satisfied that the child is indeed his, he returns to his weekly routine of throwing silver dollars down on their doorstep and buying Missie May candy kisses. It’s up to the reader to decide if the baby is Joe’s or not, or whether that even matters.
The Function and Morality of Money
In 1933, when “The Gilded Six-Bits” was published, 15 million Americans were out of work. Money, or lack of it, was on nearly every American’s mind, and it figures prominently in the story, beginning with the title. It is clear in the opening paragraph that Joe and Missie May’s home—and, indeed, the entire community of Eatonville—is a working-class one, indebted “to the payroll of the G. and G. Fertilizer works for its support” (86). Nevertheless, the money Joe brings home to Missie May—from “[t]he nine dollars hurled into the open door” to the candy kisses and other trinkets he has hidden in their pockets (87)—sufficiently supports their happy marriage and sustains their love. Joe has even been putting money aside in the hope that they will have a child soon: “They had been married more than a year now. They had money put away. They ought to be making little feet for shoes” (92).
It is only when Slemmons appears that Joe and Missie May voice discontent with their humble yet comfortable existence. Notably, Joe is the first to express any dissatisfaction, even wishing he had Slemmons’s “build” (i.e., potbelly) because he associates it with wealth. Joe’s envy seems rooted in sexual anxiety, as he repeatedly notes Slemmons’s claims that his wealth comes from admiring women. This is ironic, as Joe’s words seem to spark the discontent that leads Missie May to cheat on him. The first time she expresses interest in Slemmons’s wealth, she effectively echoes Joe’s own wishes, imagining him wearing Slemmons’s gold. Money’s corrupting influence thus works on both members of the marriage, exploiting their insecurities.
The role that money plays in nearly unraveling the marriage makes it all the more striking that Hurston suggests the couple’s renewed intimacy by reinstating their payday ritual at the story’s conclusion. However, while the story does draw parallels between Joe and Missie May’s routine and the circumstances surrounding her adultery, there is an important difference. Joe and Missie May use money primarily to shore up their connection to one another, its value almost secondary to its role as a prop in their flirtation. By contrast, Slemmons’s (apparent) wealth is a show of power; he wears it rather than uses it. This is the vision of money that takes hold of Joe and Missie May—e.g., Joe trying to imitate Slemmons’ paunch or Missie May dressing up for their first outing to the ice cream parlor. The story implies that money may be a benign or even positive force when used transactionally (i.e., between people) to reaffirm social bonds. Hoarded and displayed, however, its influence proves harmful.
Appearance Versus Reality
The notion of what is real—and what is false—looms large in Hurston’s short story. At the beginning of the story, Joe and Missie May’s affection for each other is expressed through a weekly “mock battle” (97): Joe leaves the half-dollars on the doorstep and then hides behind a bush, knowing Missie May will find him. What follows is a performance on both of their parts: Missie May pretends that she doesn’t know who’s “chunkin’” money on her steps, and Joe pretends not to want Missie May to go through his pockets. This pantomime is acted out weekly for one another’s benefit:
‘Nobody ain’t gointer be chunkin’ money at me and Ah not do ’em nothin’,’ she shouted in mock anger. He ran around the house with Missie May at his heels. She overtook him at the kitchen door. […] For several minutes the two were a furious mass of male and female energy. […] Missie May clutching onto Joe and Joe trying, but not too hard, to get away (87).
This exchange, rehearsed as it may seem, doesn’t conceal their real affection for each other; it does, however, foreshadow the deception of Otis D. Slemmons.
Slemmons’s fake gold coins give the story its title—the gilded six-bits are the supposed $5 gold coin he wears on his stickpin and the $10 gold coin on his watch chain, which come to represent Missie May’s betrayal of Joe. They also symbolize that Slemmons isn’t all he says he is. When Joe first meets him, Slemmons tells Joe “how de white womens in Chicago give ’im all dat gold money. So he don’t ’low nobody to touch it at all. […] You kin make ’miration at it, but don’t tetch it” (90). What Slemmons’s boasting covers up is the fact that his gold is not real. This calls into question his entire story: his origins “of spots and places” like Philadelphia and Chicago (89), his association with the white women who are his benefactors, and—above all—his wealth and reputation as a businessman. Unlike Joe and Missie May, whose “deception” is a signifier of their love for each other, Slemmons is a con man whose deception is dangerous, luring Missie May into an adulterous relationship.
To a large extent, the “morality” of deception therefore overlaps with the morality of money: It is positive as a reaffirmation of social bonds but negative as a tool of power. However, the extent to which the story associates Slemmons’s lies with his proximity—real or perceived—to whiteness is also suggestive. Joe, for instance, repeatedly suggests that Slemmons’s wealthy appearance is unusual for a Black man. Though partly a reflection of socioeconomic reality, these comments take on added weight once Slemmons’s deception becomes clear. Particularly in the context of the Harlem Renaissance, which celebrated traditional African American culture, Slemmons’s emulation of whiteness is a cautionary tale about the hollowness of such attempts.
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By Zora Neale Hurston
