“Everything has its way of speaking and telling things worth knowing…”
The next Pulitzer Prize-winning novel on my list carries with it yet another public controversy. Julia Peterkin was a public school teacher who started writing at the age of forty. Her husband was William Peterkin, a Southern planter and owner of a vast 2,000-acre historic plantation in South Carolina. As a young woman, she lived a life of privilege and luxury only afforded a southern belle at the time. She had a black nanny and her husband’s plantation employed many black people –racial segregation and hierarchy was sadly the prevailing political order of the day. Like Zora Neale Hurston, Peterkin wrote novels that focused on the Gullah “negro dialect,” for which she was praised as an unlikely hero of the Harlem Renaissance –imagine the irony! A white Southern plantation owner writing an award-winning novel from the perspective of a unique, creole community for which she is both praised by ivory tower academics as well as the jazz-influenced poets of the Harlem Renaissance. Even W.E.B. DuBois wrote: “Peterkin is a southern white woman, but she has the eye and the ear to see beauty and know truth.”
Scarlet Sister Mary tells the story of Mary Pinesett, one of a handful of black southerners living in Georgia on Blue Brook Plantation after the end of the Civil War. She lives and works as a sharecropper, picking cotton and growing her own food. Peterkin beautifully sets the scenes when she describes the changing of the seasons in this region –the hanging oaks, the blossoming cotton, the heat of a summer day, and so on. In the first half of the novel, Mary accidentally gets pregnant and is wedded to an extremely abusive man. We are exposed to her unforgiving church when Mary is banished for dancing on her wedding night, as well as her community’s particular superstitions (they believe in love potions and charms provided by the local conjurer, Daddy Cudjoe). Mary is then abandoned by her two-timing husband, much to the pity of those around her, and eventually she takes on several male lovers (aided by a mystical love charm). In the second part of the novel, Mary sires several more children with many different men and the local church ostracizes her (it is known as “Heaven’s Gate Church”) until one of her children dies, one gets pregnant, and her first son unexpectedly returns to the plantation. Mary finally decides to return to church where she is eventually forgiven and allowed to return, but she decides not to relinquish her love charm.
Scarlet Sister Mary is a fascinating glimpse into an overlooked segment of American life –post Civil War culture, wherein some formerly enslaved black Americans continued picking cotton and living on plantations. In many respects, Scarlet Sister upends the traditional plantation novel by replacing its stereotypes with rural black southerners of complexity and depth, while also embracing the African spiritual inheritance. In the book, we feel Mary’s struggles, and we know her sorrow when her first husband leaves her utterly abandoned with a child. However, we also see a healthy distance between the audience and Mary. She has proven herself to be somewhat untrustworthy and flighty. In short, Mary regularly makes poor decisions, and then asks for forgiveness from her friends, family, and even us (the readers of the novel). Yet somehow we seem to have more sympathy for Mary than we do for characters like Madame Bovary or Anna Karenina. Mary never meant any harm, she simply made a few poor decisions. So we forgive her, or perhaps we just pity her in the end.
Scarlet Sister Mary is obviously an attempt to offer a defense of people like Mary, rousing sympathy for simplistic people trapped in difficult quandaries, however the book has since garnered far more criticism than praise. Mary’s life does not really reveal anything, save for her many misfortunes and missed opportunities. Yet Mary is still portrayed as a one-dimensional, ‘happy-go-lucky,’ superstitious simpleton. She is a wholly inauthentic character. While the book tries to be The Scarlet Letter, nothing is really at stake in Scarlet Sister Mary. By the end, Mary’s many tragedies come back to haunt her and she is welcomed back into her community church with the opportunity to become a Christian again, although she still clings to her primitive superstitions, suggesting that perhaps she has not learned anything after all.
“I mean to present these people in a patient struggle with fate, and not in any race conflict,” wrote Julia Peterkin. She also claimed: “Writing is not my career. I am not a literary person.”
In The New York Times review of Scarlet Sister Mary, John Chamberlain said “This second novel by the author of ‘Black April’ all but cries with color, scent, and sound. It has the rich flavor of a hot candied yam. Mrs. Peterkin rings all the changes of season and weather to build up the world of Scarlet Sister Mary, and she does it in a style that is a happy combination of solidity, brilliance and pure beauty. Sometimes her story sags with too much beauty, but to err in that manner is superhuman and quite easily forgiven.”
Today, the book and its author are largely forgotten, relegated to the dusty pile of Pulitzer winners from bygone eras. And perhaps that is for the best. In many ways, the many controversies surrounding this novel are far more interesting than the novel itself.
Nevertheless, here is a memorable passage from Scarlet Sister Mary:
“The next Christmas Day found Mary with Seraphine, a tiny baby girl, in her arms. Mary herself was a new creature. Her heart was light, her eyes sparkled and her laughter rang out as gaily as anybody’s. She had learned again how to enjoy waking up to see the sky and to work all day long without slackening her speed. Her blood was warm with new life. It was pleasant to walk along the roads, to go to the forest for fire-wood, to swing her ax like a man, driving its keen bright edge into the clean white wood of the trees. She could never be the same free-hearted girl she had been, for trouble had left a scar somewhere deep down in her breast” (Chapter XVII, pg. 182).
On The 1929 Pulitzer Prize Decision
Scarlet Sister Mary, Peterkin’s third novel, naturally caused quite a stir upon release. Dr. Richard S. Burton, returning chair of the Pulitzer Novel Jury in 1929, nominated Victim and Victor by John Rathbone Oliver to win the Pulitzer Prize (and he even delivered a public lecture praising the book, claiming it was a “a book not just for a year but for many years”). He wrote his Jury Report recommending Victim and Victor “on the ground that this novel is of fine quality as a piece of literary work, deals with important elements in the native life, and has the most unusual spiritual elevation and significance. It is a sound piece of literature and a noble interpretation of human character… and it may interest you to know that Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin came close in our estimation to the winning book.” According to literary critic W.J. Stuckey, John Rathbone Oliver’s Victim and Victor was “a mildly shocking piece about a deposed Episcopalian priest who is brokenhearted by his exile from the Church.” And according to former Pulitzer Prize administrator John Hohenberg, Victim and Victor was “the story of an unfrocked Episcopal priest and his yearning for the spiritual comfort of the church from which he had been expelled.”
Richard Burton’s decision to publicly praise the book during a lecture caused a minor controversy in the press. Could a Pulitzer Prize jury member publicly announce his preferences? Was he playing favorites with the award? In a follow-up letter to Frank Fackenthal, Burton acknowledged that in light of the “undesirable publicity” in which he felt he was always “open to misrepresentation” regarding his lecture work, he suggested that Fackenthal release him from the Fiction/Novel jury and instead move him to the “Drama Committee” since he was teaching a course at Columbia on New York plays anyway (and he had previously served on the Drama jury), “or, you might prefer to drop me off entirely, which will be alright.”
Victim and Victor was unanimously accepted by the jury. Other books that were considered included: Boston by Upton Sinclair (however two judges stated that it had a tendency toward propaganda), The Happy Mountain by Maristan Chapman, and Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin. Both Mamba’s Daughters by DuBose Heyward and Dodsworth by Sinclair Lewis were ineligible that year since they were published in 1929; while O.E. Rölvaag’s Peder Victorious “though a fine thing, is hard[l]y of the originality and power of his Giants in the Earth of the preceding season.” However, the Pulitzer Advisory Board outrightly rejected Victim and Victor and nominated Peterkin’s Scarlet Sister Mary instead. Nobody was more angered than author John Rathbone Oliver who believed he was going to win a Pulitzer Prize.. Additionally, at the time, Scarlet Sister Mary was considered obscene and it was banned by a local Carnegie library in Gaffney, Georgia. Meanwhile, The Chicago Journal of Commerce condescendingly wagged its finger at the Pulitzer: a “promiscuous Negress with seven illegitimate children can hardly be regarded as falling under the ‘highest standards’ synonymous with the award.” Even The New York Times questioned the propriety of awarding the Pulitzer Prize to a book about a woman who gives birth to seven illegitimate children. However, ironically much of the press in the south praised the novel for its relaxed and open views toward women (Julia Peterkin was the first southern writer to win the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel). After all, the 19th Amendment was passed in 1920; 1929 was the height of the Jazz Age and the era of the flapper girl. Years later, a controversial show based on the book ran on Broadway featuring an all-white cast of actors playing the black characters in the novel.
The 1929 Novel Jury consisted of the following three individuals:
- Richard Burton (1861-1940) studied at Trinity College and Johns Hopkins. He was a professor at Rollins College for many years. In addition to serving on several Pulitzer Prize Juries in the Novel and Biography categories, he also served on the Book and Drama Leagues of America.
- Jefferson Butler Fletcher (1865-1946) was born in Chicago, served in the American Field Ambulance Services during World War I, and was educated at Harvard and Bowdoin College. He was a long-serving professor of Comparative Literature at Columbia University (from 1904-1939) and was considered a foremost expert on the Italian Renaissance and Dante. In his obituary in The New York Times, it was noted that he served on the Pulitzer Novel Jury for “several years.” Sadly, his son died in an automobile accident in 1926, Fletcher also had a daughter.
- Robert Morss Lovett (1870-1956) was a Bostonian who studied at Harvard. He taught literature at the University of Chicago for many years, he was associate editor of The New Republic, served as governor secretary of the Virgin Islands, and was a political activist –he was accused of being a communist by the Dies Committee which forced him out of his secretary position. He was often on the frontlines of left-leaning picket lines, and helped launch the careers of several young writers, including John Dos Passos. In later years, his wife became a close friend and associate of Jane Addams and the couple lived at Hull House for a spell.
The 1929 Pulitzer Prize debacle led John Hohenbereg to later offer the following remarks: “The upshot of the debate inside the Columbia administration was the beginning of a determined effort, which took shape over thee next four decades, to keep the lid on all public information about the prizes until the universityTrustees took final action. It was a difficult decision for a university to make, and it proved even more difficult to enforce, but the embarrassment to Dr. Oliver [John Rathbone Oliver] was not something anybody wanted to have happen again.”
Who is Julia Peterkin?
Julia Peterkin (1880-1961) was born in Laurence County, South Carolina. Her father was Julius Mood, a physician, and her mother was Alma Archer (who died shortly after giving birth to Julia). She graduated from Converse College in 1896 at the age of sixteen (and then received a master’s degree from the same school). She taught at the public school in Fort Motte, South Carolina for a few years before marrying William Peterkin, heir to the Lang Syne Plantation in Fort Mott, in 1903. Their plantation employed some 450 black Americans and produced cotton, wheat, and vegetables. They had one son together, William George Peterkin, Jr. Strangely enough, Peterkin’s father Dr. Julius Mood inexplicably decided to sterilize her by removing her ovaries after delivering her son. The truth of this operation remains somewhat shrouded in mystery, with some researchers claiming the cause was that she struggled mightily during delivery which and perhaps her father decided to spare her more suffering (without her consent). Julia Peterkin then fell into a dark period of postpartum depression and premature menopause wherein she lay in bed for about two years, angry at her father for sterilizing her while she was unconscious and unable to consent. It was only the African Americans at the plantation who encouraged her to get out of bed and embrace her life again, particularly a woman named Lavina Berry, or “Maum Vinner.”
Peterkin began publishing her creative writing at the age of forty. Her first collection of sketches was about black Americans entitled “Green Thursday,” a collection of linked short stories about a black farm laborer named Killdee, along with his wife, Rose, and their foster daughter, Missie. Peterkin’s first novel Black April was published in 1927 (it was banned in Boston) and it was followed by Scarlet Sister Mary in 1928, winner of the Pulitzer (which was also banned in several Southern libraries). This was followed by Bright Skin in 1932; Roll, Jordan, Roll in 1932; and Plantation Christmas in 1934. Enjoying best-seller status and facing a backlash from white southerners who considered her a “race-traitor,” Peterkin’s writing largely focused on the Gullah culture of coastal South Carolina. Taken together as a whole, Green Thursday, Black April, Scarlet Sister Mary, and Bright Skin chronicle the decline of the plantation economy and the personal and social forces that were driving African Americans to leave the rural South.
She wrote to fellow writers, like Carl Sandburg and H. L. Mencken, inviting them to her plantation. Sandburg visited but Mencken became Peterkin’s literary agent, eventually leading her to Alfred A. Knopf. She also exchanged letters with prominent black writers like W. E. B. Du Bois, Walter White, Alain Locke, and Countee Cullen who all praised Peterkin’s works. A tall, slender, red-haired woman, Ms. Peterkin also worked as an actress for a spell, playing the main character in Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler at the Town Theatre in Columbia, South Carolina, beginning in February 1932.
As an interesting bit of Pulitzer trivia: in 1933, Ms. Peterkin was contacted by author Caroline Pafford Miller of Baxley, Georgia. Miller was seeking a publisher for her first novel Lamb in His Bosom, and hoped Peterkin could help her. Peterkin forwarded Miller’s name and manuscript to her publisher and in 1933, Harper released Lamb in His Bosom, which then went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1934.
It is not entirely clear to my why Julia Peterkin stopped published works of fiction after 1934, however she died in Orangeburg on August 10, 1961, of congestive heart failure. She was buried in the family plot across the street from the Episcopal Church near Fort Motte. In The New York Times 1961 obituary for Ms. Peterkin, she was called a “chronicler of the Negroes of her native South Carolina coast.” In 1988, Peterkin was posthumously inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors, and in 1998, the Department of English and Creative Writing at her alma mater Converse College established The Julia Peterkin Award for poetry, an award open to everyone.
Film Adaptation:
- None
Literary Context in 1928-1929:
- Nobel Prize for Literature (1928): awarded to Norwegian writer Sigrid Undset (1882–1949) “principally for her powerful descriptions of Northern life during the Middle Ages.”
- The top Publishers Weekly bestselling novel in 1928 was fellow pulitzer prize-winner The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder. Two other Pulitzer Prize-winning authors also had bestsellers that year: Claire Ambler by Booth Tarkington and The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg by Louis Bromfield.
- Ford Madox Ford published Last Post in the U.K. –the last in his World War I tetralogy “Parade’s End.”
- The English novelist and poet Thomas Hardy’s ashes were interred in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey, London.
- Weird Tales magazine published H. P. Lovecraft’s story “The Call of Cthulhu” in the United States.
- George Orwell moved from London to Paris; his first articles as a professional writer appeared later in the year.
- D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover was published in Florence, but it would not be published in Britain until 1960.
- Erich Maria Remarque’s antiwar novel All Quiet on the Western Front was first published in the German newspaper Vossische Zeitung.
- Agatha Christie published The Mystery of the Blue Train.
- Evelyn Waugh published his debut novel Decline and Fall.
- E. M. Forster published The Eternal Moment and Other Stories.
- Virginia Woolf published Orlando.
- Upton Sinclair published Boston.
- Dark Princess by W.E.B. Dubois was published.
- The Man Who Knew Coolidge by Sinclair Lewis was published.
- Quicksand by Nella Larsen was published.
- The Trumpeter of Krakow by Eric P. Kelly was published and won the Newbery Medal the following year.
Did The Right Book Win?
If it is not already clear, I didn’t particularly care for Julia Peterkin’s Scarlet Sister Mary. This is simply not an exemplar work of great American literature; how it snuck past the board and jury in 1929 is something of a mystery to me. However, I am unsure of any alternative American novel that I might have made a more fitting selection for the Pulitzer Prize in 1929 so I suppose I would not have issued an award at all this year.
Peterkin, Julia. Scarlet Sister Mary. Indianapolis, The Bobbs-Merrill Company Publishers, 1929.