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Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Story in Black and White

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Description

It is the summer of 1918: There is a war in Europe and a smaller war in South Carolina. Julia is an African-American seamstress. Herman is a white man that has kept company with her for years. As their growing attraction accelerates into an affair they must of course deal with the prejudices and wrath of ignorance in early 20th-century America. Read more

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Concord Theatricals (October 26, 2023)


Language ‏ : ‎ English


Paperback ‏ : ‎ 78 pages


ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0573617694


ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 90


Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.89 ounces


Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5 x 0.16 x 8 inches


Best Sellers Rank: #939,614 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #205 in Black & African American Dramas & Plays #307 in Tragic Dramas & Plays


#205 in Black & African American Dramas & Plays:


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Top Amazon Reviews

    • As expected
As expected
Reviewed in the United States on July 25, 2019 by Mike
    • Powerful.
As great as I remembered. Lovely
Reviewed in the United States on December 15, 2017 by Kelly Stowell
    • Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Story in Black and White
Wedding Band (1966), whose subtitle is A Love/Hate Story in Black and White, is regarded as Alice Childress's masterpiece. It dramatizes the sorrow and repulsion surrounding an interracial love affair in Charleston, South Carolina, in !918. It wasn't produced by a major New York producer until 1972, six years after it was written. It received controversial reviews as it is not a traditional romantic love story between a wealthy white man and an impoverished black woman. On the contrary, it is such a realistic play with its racist and sexist connotations that many critics don't see it as a black play: The play doesn't look "black" because its integrationist subtext surfaces only occasionally and its political urgency is dressed safely in realistic period costume (Wiley, 184). Wedding Band describes a period when demands for equality are repressed by lynching and when interracial marriage is not legally possible in the Jim Crow society of 1918. The play takes place on the tenth anniversary of Julia and her white lover, Herman. The setting is a small backyard tenement to which Julia has moved because of the negative reactions that she has received from the inhabitants of other regions. She has violated both state laws and social mores of the working class by having a relationship with a white man. Julia is a thirty five year old black seamstress with an eight grade education. She seems to be a different black woman among her neighbors because of her aloofness from their daily conversations and her extraordinary relationship with a white man. And she seems to be reluctant to be a member of the black community by loving a white man although it is partly self-sacrifice. But she ends up with defying the white community at the same time as she can never be completely integrated with that society even if she can marry Herman legally in north. And when she realizes this fact, she turns to her own people and becomes a whole with them. The play opens while Julia is sleeping in her new house and a little girl enters her garden crying for a quarter she has lost. In the first scene, Childress introduces the secondary characters of the play. They are characterized as narrow-minded and subordinate types but their personalities and painful life stories reflect the inequalities and hardships that black people have endured in the south. Moreover, they are the characters who expose their difference from Julia justifying Julia's reluctance to be a member of the black community, and later in the play, they are the same characters who help Julia see that how similar their problems can be, which eventually causes Julia to assume them as her people. The landlady, Fanny, tries to talk to Julia in order to understand if the new tenant is quality. She is a pompous black woman who has joined the middle class since she owns property. As soon as she starts to talk to Julia, she begins gossiping about the other women in the neighborhood. She says that Mattie once worked in a white whorehouse washing their joy-towels. And Lula, she says, has adopted a son, which is `gainst nature. And she has a silver-plated tea service, the first and only one to be owned by a colored woman in the United States of America. Lula has given a positive impression to Julia as she trusts her rather than trying to learn about her life. Since Lula has suffered a great abuse from her life and her son has been killed on the railroad track as she neglected to watch him, she needs to talk to someone who can listen and understand her. Her adopted son, Nelson, who is going to join the army, flirts with Julia and asks for a date. At the end of the first scene, Julia reveals her relationship with a white man. Before Julia's shocking revelation, Julia reads Mattie's letter from her husband as she can't read the letter herself. While she is reading the letter, Julia reads these words, Two things a man can give the woman he loves... his name and his protection. (90) Then Mattie tells Julia that, Name and protection. That's right, too. I wouldn't live with no man. Man got to marry me. Man that won't marry you thinks nothin' of you. Just usin' you. (90) Her rigid views are ironic because she later learns that she is not legally married to her husband, October. Upon Mattie's these words, Julia breaks down and says: I have never allowed anybody to use me! . . . I- I have been keepin' company with someone for a long time and... we are not married. . . . My friend is white and that's why I try to stay to myself. (90-91) Because of the letter and Mattie's attitude emphasizing man's name and protection, Julia faces with her own insecurity. As Catherine Wiley suggests in her article, A woman's options are limited to a heterosexual union sanctioned by a piece of paper enforcing not the man's responsibility but her connection to him (Wiley, 186). When she confesses her relationship with a white man, her newly started integration into these working-class black people has turned into just the opposite by ceasing the process of her becoming a part of the black community. When Lula and Mattie learn that Herman is white, they cannot believe that Julia really loves him. They think that she has a relationship with him just because of his money: Mattie: You grit your teeth and take all he's got; if you don't somebody else will. (91) When Julia tries to point out that she loves Herman the way Mattie loves her husband, she loses their sympathy which she has gained while reading the letter by trying to forget the class difference between herself and her neighbors. As Catherine Wiley points out in her article, the women will not accept her love for a white man to be the same as their love for their own black husbands. And when she tries to persuade them to believe the authenticity of their love, they reject to hear her words and Julia is once more left all alone outside the doors of the others: Julia: Well that's always the way. What am I doing standin' in a backyard explainin' my life? Stay to yourself, Julia Augustine. Stay to yourself. (92) Herman, poor forty-year-old baker, enters the stage at the beginning of the second scene. The scene is an expression of their tender and beautiful love and it also exhibits the ordinariness of their relationship (Curb, 59). He brings Julia a decorated wedding cake for their anniversary and a golden wedding band to wear it on chain around her neck as a sign of her ten years enslavement to an impossible relationship in Jim Crow society (Rushing, 379). They make plans to go to New York, where they naively hope that they can marry and easily get integrated into the northern society. Childress emphasizes the strong bond between them by giving many details about their common life; for instance, Herman doesn't even know the size of his socks as Julia buys his clothes for years. However, the scene reveals that they can't help talking about racial issues. Julia often makes generalizations about white people and Herman has a tendency to regard Julia as one of the good kind of colored folks, which means that most of the blacks are not good. This indicates that Herman sees Julia different from the other black women as she is educated and kind. That's why, they can have a relationship with each other. However, she cannot be a part of the white community, either, as the laws and social norms don't allow her to be. Later in the play, she will understand that her love doesn't let her be a member of either society; therefore, she will choose one of the two separate communities by giving up her love. At the very end of the second scene, Herman faints because of the influenza which became an epidemic causing millions of people to die in 1918. In act two, Julia faces the outcomes of Herman's illness and her alienation from her neighbors. Fanny doesn't let her call a doctor for Herman. She tells Julia in a sardonic manner: No, you call a doctor, Nelson won't march in the parade tomorrow or go back to the army, Mattie will be outta work, Lula can't deliver flowers... (105) When Fanny tells her that she is the only colored person whom the whites have allowed to buy land and she doesn't want to lose it. Julia tells her, They all like you, Fanny. Only one of `em cares for me... just one. (105) This shows Julia's isolation and despair as she is in between two communities neither of which she belongs to in a complete sense. She desperately thinks that the only person who loves her is Herman and he is her only hope for life. That's why; she clings to him with all her might. Since she doesn't persuade her neighbors to let her call a doctor, Herman's sister, Annabelle and his mother are asked to come. Their arrival marks the turning point in the play which will cause Julia's understanding, self-assertion and turning away. Herman's sister, Annabelle, feels an explicit discomfort when she enters Fanny's backyard which is alien to her. This starts the sequence of moments leading to Julia's awakening from the transitional world created by the two lovers in black and white. Annabelle tells Julia that she seems to one of the nice colored people and puts her in separate place from both the black and white societies just like Herman who loves her as she is a different black woman with her education and manners. The eventual arrival of the mother increases the celerity of the play. When she first enters the stage, she immediately wants to erase all the traces of Julia on her son by burning his clothes which Fanny has found in Julia's house. She regards Julia as black dirt sticking to Herman. And Julia opposes it by claiming that she is a lady not a piece of dirt deserving to be purged away. With these words, she tries to make her accept that she is not an inferior woman just because she is black. She wants to prove herself to the white world symbolized by Herman's mother. But she doesn't try to succeed it with her black identity. Instead, she tries to make her believe that she is above the general level of the other blacks; that's why, she is too much of a lady. However, Herman's mother makes her face with the fact that to the white world, she doesn't have any difference from the other blacks. The white world just like Herman's mother thinks that she is nothing but a big simpleton that can be used by any man as all have nasty natures. Thus, Julia's real lack of difference from the other blacks is articulated by Herman's mother. It's apparent that she can never escape the history and color that she shares with all black women. Her neighbors can see her different from themselves in terms of education and class; however, in the white world she is not distinct from the other blacks. The first dialogue of Herman's mother with Julia constitutes the first step of Julia's realization of her inevitable blackness and her eventual integration with the other black women. Herman's mother talks to her own son alone after throwing Julia out of her own house: Herman's Mother: There's something wrong `bout mismatched things, be they shoes, socks or people. Herman: Go away, don't look at us. Herman's Mother: People don't like it. They are not gonna letcha do it in peace. Herman: We'll go North. Herman's Mother: Not a thing will change except her last name. Herman: She is not like others. (117) It is true that the mother is an ignorant racist; however, she is right that the north cannot provide a full integration as a white world although they can legally get married there. The mother plays the role of a mirror which reflects the inevitable reality to Julia and Herman although they believe that they can overcome racism with their love. Herman's na?ve words that tell his mother not to look symbolize his desire to escape from the problems just like Julia's wish to go to New York. Later, Herman suggests that Julia is different from the others to make his mother and himself believe that integration in the north can be possible. However, his words indirectly support his mother's remarks that other black women are bad as his mother claims. This shows that he has already internalized racism having been imposed on him by the white society for years. Julia's bursting out is incited by her belated understanding that love doesn't allow Herman to transcend his racism (Wiley, 190). Herman starts to declaim a speech he had made at a Klan picnic when he was a child. It is a racist speech, and his mother has always been proud of the day when her son delivered it. In the moments of delirium because of his illness, Herman articulates a striking part of the speech: It is a great and dangerous error to suppose that all people are equally entitled to liberty. . . . It is a reward to be earned, a reward reserved for the intelligent, the patriotic, the virtuous and deserving; and not a boon to be bestowed on people too ignorant, degraded and vicious... (118) When Julia hears these from the mouth of her lover who is reciting the speech at the porch of Mattie, she experiences the stage of explosion and loses herself while shouting at Herman's mother. As Herman leaves with her mother and sister, Julia shouts that, I don't want any whiteness in my house. Stay out . . . and leave me to my black self! (120) The process of reintegration with her neighbors marks another important stage in Julia's evolvement. After her complete turning away from the white world including Herman, she has to amalgamate her blackness with the black world around her. While the women prepare to conduct Nelson to his joining the army, Lula and Julia, with a spirit of festivity, start to dance with the music of Jenkin's Colored Orphan Band. This dance is a step of Julia's integration with her own people symbolizing the unity among the blacks. After the dance, Lula wants Julia to give a farewell speech for Nelson. She proceeds that Julia should tell him how life's gon' be better when he gets back, make up what should be true (125). Then, Julia makes the speech which suggests that there will be no no-colored signs and their courage will open all the doors to them when Nelson and October return. Although Julia and the others don't believe all these things to happen, Julia, with her speech, plays the role of a leader who encourages and gives hope to her people. Then, Herman enters the stage with the boat tickets in his hand. However, Julia tells him to get out of her life, and gives the tickets and her wedding band to Mattie and her daughter eventually articulating that you and Teeta are my people... my family. As Catherine Wiley suggests in her essay, Julia's decision to stay at home, to keep her own name, makes the spectator witness to her new-found ability to celebrate, as she says, her `own black self'. At the end of the play, she demonstrates her assertion of her rights by taking Herman in and locking his mother and sister out. And she comforts Herman dying in her arms with a great sentimentality by describing their journey to New York which they haven't realized and she says we're takin' off, ridin'the waves so smooth and easy . . . There now . . . on our way. In reality, they are not on their way, but Julia is on her way to her new life together with her black people and her blackness. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on May 10, 2006 by Tolstoy

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