Love In Zora Neale Hurston's The Gilded Six-Bits

In her autobiography Zora Neale Hurston said it best “Love, I find is like singing. Everyone can do enough to satisfy themselves, though it may not impress the neighbors as being very much.” (p.249) Sometimes people get blinded by the materialistic view of the world and get distracted from their love. That was the case in Zora Neale Hurston’s “The Gilded Six- Bits”. In “The Gilded Six-Bits” Missie May and Joe have a seemingly perfect Marriage. A new man with the name of “Mister Otis D. Slemmons, of spots and places- Memphis, Chicago, Jacksonville, Philadelphia and so on.” (Bayum and Levine p.2129). Joe fancied Otis D. Slemmons when he first met him Joe excitedly told Missie May about him. Missie May was unbothered by the way Joe talked about Otis and reassured him “Ah’m satisfied wid you jes’ lak you is, baby. God took pattern after a pine tree and built you noble. Youse a pretty man, and if Ah knowed any way to make you mo’pritty still Ah’d take and do it.”(Bayum and Levine p.2130). When Missie May met Otis she saw the gold and was star struck, she thought about the gold just like Joe did. Missie May winds up sleeping with Otis and Joe walks in on them. The two men begin to fight which results in …show more content…
Missie May is a wonderful housekeeper; she cleans the house spotless and cooks for Joe while he is at work. When Joe comes home she has a “big pitcher of buttermilk beaded with pale drops of butter from the churn. Hot fried mullet, crackling bread, ham hock atop a mound of string beans and new potatoes, and perched on the window- sill a pone of spicy potato pudding.” (Bayum and Levine P.2129). Joe works at the G and G fertilizer plant and has a decent paying job. Hurston using Joe as the provider in the family while Missie May stays at home plays into the gender stereotype of the time period that women must stay at home and cook or clean while the men go out and