Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin 10 out of 10
Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin
10 out of 10
It seems somewhat sad to see that quite a number of formerly acclaimed chefs d’oeuvre have fallen into neglect and if you look them now on the world’s database, you tend to find very little about them and this looks to be the case of Scarlet Sister Mary, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1929 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulitzer_Prize_for_Fiction) but not much read these days.
One reason might be that phenomenal as this novel is, it could be difficult to read and the undersigned thought himself lucky to have the habit of reading for some hours every day, for without that ritual, the dialogue specific to the Gullah people of the Low Country in South Carolina, which is hard to comprehend, given that it includes expression such as ‘chillen’ and there are words that the locals have not heard about and thus are twisted, like diploma, which Seraphin is trying so hard to get, only it had never been heard of and therefore the name and the notion are alien for her mother and neighbors…
The heroine is named in the title, Mary, referred to as ‘Scarlet’ because of her alleged sin, which takes place once her lawful husband, July, abandons his home and wife for the company of Cinder, a rival woman that we would learn as we read that has used magic, the power of a charm provided by the local magician, Daddy Cudjoe, the one who offers both black and good witchcraft – anyway, he had not known when Cinder came to him that this would be used on a married man and he complains about ‘women’ and what had happened when he finds out from the wife, who wants a charm to get her spouse back, which would be very difficult because one charm would have to annul another powerful one that worked, for those who believe such theories.
The main character had been an orphan and she was taken and raised by auntie Maum Hannah and her crippled son, Budda Ben, the latter being the victim of a fall when he was a baby and later on, the subject of insults, abuses and harassment by the children of the village, especially those of Andrew, an important man in the religious community, and the one who, instead of reining in and better instructing his children, decides to target the challenged man and exclude hi from the religious group, on the grounds that, exasperated and quite overwhelmed the vicious boys who chased, set the dogs on him, would curse and voice his frustration and legitimate anger.
Maum Hannah and Budda Ben are vehemently opposed to the matrimony of the heroine to the infamous July and we would see that their opposition was more than reasonable, it was prophetic, for on the very night of the wedding, the groom decides to take Cinder for a dance – admittedly, given that those locals that were religious were fundamentalist and almost fanatical in their ways and thus only the ‘sinners’, those outside the church could do something so reprehensible as to dance, his bride would not dance – and he is enjoying so much the agitation with another woman, that his spouse is provoked into showing how good a dancer she is, offering reason for her ‘impeachment’- to make a passing reference to the idiot who is now ruling the free world and the process that should have liberated us from this plague…
However, there is soon another infringement of the drastic rules of the local church, when the first son of the heroine, Unex from the original ‘Unexpected’, a name most did not now, but July thinks about, is born long before the ‘rightful’ date, nine months since the matrimony, making the others understand that ‘Scarlet Sister Mary’ had had carnal relations with her would be spouse, before the sanctity offered by marriage and this is a reason for her exclusion, which would have anyway arrived later, because once she is left by her husband and she would have suffered tremendously for many months, she in the end decides to put this pain behind, has sex with June, the brother of the departed husband and a loyal, steady support in the vicissitudes of having to cope alone with a period of disease affecting the cotton crop.
Sister Mary would have a ‘litter’ of children, since she would change course dramatically, after the initial descent into Hades, the terror of losing the one she loved, she would maintain, indeed she would emphasize this to her daughter, Seraphin, that no ‘mens’ deserve so much affection and she would keep having children, after the initial ‘love child’, Unex, the others being all, ‘carnal children’, all with different fathers, loved, encouraged, pushed to overcome adversity – in the case of one of them, a serious accident involving one of the new machines operating near the crops severs one leg and he is lucky, if we can say such a thing, that a doctor is in the area and he could saw the wound together, or else he would have died.
If in the first place Mary is so furious and hateful that she would like to kill Cinder, after her reversal of fortune she even travels to the city to visit the woman, by that time abandoned in her place by the philandering, womanizing July, and she is now without a tooth in her mouth and living in squalor, making the former rival pity the state in which this victim is now in; the heroine is now more concerned with and opposed to Doll, sister of July and wife of Andrew, the latter being overwhelmed by the free spending spouse who is demanding for a car – it seems to be the beginning of the last century, though no date is mentioned – and Scarlet Sister proves her magnanimity in recommending that Andrew, a man she is attracted to, and for the last twenty years it looks like she had given in to her impulses, makes peace with his absent and quite difficult wife.
As Mary gives birth to twins, most likely the last birth, there is another infant in the same room and his presence there is so mysterious as to border the miraculous, supernatural, albeit the secret is soon uncovered and there is yet…another baby to join the new born and the grandmother has hence four newly born to care for…
