Elizabeth Hardwick - Two Short Stories dealing with race relationships in Mississipi in The 1950s
“A Business Venture” and “Sharon”
Elixabeth Hardwick
July 27, 1916 - Lexington, Kentucy
1949 to 1972 - Married to Robert Lowell
December 2, 2007 - Manhattan, New York
“Sharon” - 1974
“A Business Venture” - 1986
Both of these stories are included in the forthcoming Library of America Volume devoted to Elizabeth Hardwick
(I was not able to locate first publication data on either story).
Sharon
Sharon is The name that The narrator’s uncle gives to his house, in Mississipi, built prior to The Civil War. The narrator seems in her early teens, she is often invited over her uncle’s to eat.
You can see How skillfully Hardwick describes The uncle’s estate:
“UNclE HERNAN, my mother’s brother (his full name was Hernando de Soto Wirth), lived right near us—a little way down the road, if you took the road; across the pasture, if you didn’t—in a house surrounded by thick privet hedge, taller than a man riding by on a mule could see over. He had live oaks around the house, and I don’t remember ever going there without hearing the whisper of dry fallen leaves beneath my step on the ground. Sometimes there would be a good many Negroes about the house
and yard, for Uncle Hernan worked a good deal of land, and there was always a great slamming of screen doors—people looking for something they couldn’t find and hollering about where they’d looked or thought for somebody else to look, or just saying, “What’d you say?” “Huh?”“I said, ‘What’d you say?’”—or maybe a wrangling noise of a whole clutch of colored children playing off down near the gully. But in spite of all these things, even with all of them going on at one and the same time, Uncle Hernan’s place was a still place.”
Uncle Hernan is a widower. His wife passed a few years ago. The African American woman who she brought with her to be her maid, has stayed on. She speaks in a more educated fashion than would be expected. The narrator’s mother wants her to leave, suspecting her reasons for staying.
The narrator sees something very shocking looking through her uncle’s window, something that viloated The deepest values of White Mississipi.
A Business Arrangement
This is a longer story, narrated by a married woman, age not specified, who is married to Charlie, a serial philander, an oil speculator and a serious drinking party Boy. The story opens in an office where Eileen works. We learn sbout her friends.
One of them, Nellie Townsend lives with her mother in a big House,she runs a dry cleaning business from The House.
“She had working for them off and on a Negro back from the Vietnam war who had used his veterans’ educational benefits to train as a dry cleaner. She picked up the idea when her mother
happened to remark one night after she had paid him for some carpenter work, “Ain’t that a dumb nigger, learning dry cleaning with nothing to dry-clean.” Now, when Mrs. Townshend said “nigger,” it wasn’t as if one of us had said it. She went back through the centuries for her words, back to when “ain’t” was good grammar. “Nigger” for her just meant “black.” But it was assuming Robin had done something dumb that was the mistake. Because he wasn’t dumb, and Nelle knew it. He told her he’d applied for jobs all around, but they didn’t offer much and he might have to go to Biloxi or Hattiesburg or Gulfport to get one. The trouble was, he owned a house here. Nelle said, “Maybe you could work for me.”
Of course trouble comes from this.
This is really a delightful story and i Will leave the plot untold.
The two just publidhed Library of America volumes i spoke about recently, those on Donald Bartheleme and Jean Stafford include their complete Short Stories. The Hardwick volume has only “selected stories” Plus three novels. My Research indicates a lot of her stories are left out, including famous ones. I would prefer The complete stories and leave The novels for a second book.
