The Gilded Six-Bits

“The front door stood open to the sunshine so that the floor of the front room could finish drying after its weekly scouring. It was Saturday.”

The cleanliness of the home and the day of the week are important because cleaning the house is part of the ritual that takes place on payday, which is on Saturday. The passage hints at the reciprocal roles each partner plays in the marriage, with Missie May fulfilling her job as homemaker in anticipation of Joe bringing home his wages.

“Who dat chunkin’ money in mah do’way?”

Missie May says this every week on Saturday when Joe throws silver dollars in her doorway; it’s a playful prelude to their “mock battle” and foreshadows intertwined themes of Sex, Physical Desire, and Marriage and The Function and Morality of Money. It also represents Hurston’s use of African American vernacular.

“Mister Otis D. Slemmons, of spots and places—Memphis, Chicago, Jacksonville, Philadelphia and so on.”

This quote introduces Missie May—and the reader—to Slemmons, who becomes the source of conflict in Missie May and Joe’s marriage. Slemmons’s urbanity and worldliness is also suggested in this quote; he is not just from all those cities, but also from “spots and places.”

“He got de finest clothes Ah ever seen on a colored man’s back.”

Joe’s comment about Slemmons’s clothing implicitly links wealth to race, suggesting that “fine” or expensive clothing is not common to African Americans during this period. When Slemmons’s wealth turns out to be an illusion, remarks like Joe’s come to serve as an indictment of those who seek to emulate whiteness.

“Ah seen de pitchers of Henry Ford and he’s a spare-built man and Rockefeller look lak he ain’t got but one gut. But Ford and Rockefeller and dis Slemmons and all de rest can be as many-gutted as day please, Ah’s satisfied wid you jes’ lak you is baby.”

Missie May’s remark about how Slemmons’s appearance compares to well-known, wealthy men of the period works on multiple levels. It challenges the notion that rich men must be “puzzle-gutted” like Slemmons while also connecting Slemmons (and his wealth) with white men. Finally, Missie May’s comment asserts her love for Joe as he is.

“If anybody had asked Joe about the moon on the lake, he would have said he hadn’t paid it any attention. But he saw it with his feelings. It made him yearn painfully for Missie. Creation obsessed him.”

Linking the moon, a symbol of fertility, with Joe’s desire for a family—“[c]reation obsessed him” (92)—ironically foreshadows his arrival home to find Missie May and Slemmons in bed together. If the child born to Missie May is in fact Slemmons’s and not Joe’s, then this passage becomes even more prescient.

“The great belt on the wheel of Time slipped and eternity stood still.”

This metaphor—of time as a wheel with a belt like a car or another piece of modern machinery—describes how Joe feels when he discovers Missie May cheating on him with Slemmons. Ironically, the narrator describes “eternity,” i.e., timelessness or time in its totality, as standing still, such is the feeling of shock Joe experiences.

“The hours went past on their rusty ankles. Joe still and quiet on one bed rail and Missie May wrung dry of sobs on the other.”

Again, a metaphor involving time describes the aftermath of Missie May and Slemmons’s affair. In this case, time is personified as having “rusty ankles” (94), suggesting its creaky passage. Missie May and Joe each experience the long night in different ways; Joe is quiet, suggesting his thoughtful response to his wife’s cheating, while Missie May passes the night in tears over the idea of losing her husband.

“With this strange man in her bed, she felt embarrassed to get up and dress. She decided to wait till he had dressed and gone.”

The narrator shares Missie May’s inner thoughts, revealing that—in a single, life-changing night—Joe has gone from her husband to “this strange man” (94). The narrator of “The Gilded Six-Bits” is third-person subjective, allowing the reader to witness the inner thoughts and feelings of one or more characters—in this case, Joe and Missie May.

“It was almost six months later Missie May took to bed and Joe went and got his mother to come wait on the house. […] Missie May was delivered of a fine boy.”

The narrator shares this information after noting that three months have passed since Missie May and Slemmons’s night together. That total number, nine months, open up the possibility that the baby may in fact be Slemmons’s and not Joe’s. Nevertheless, the child seems to heal their relationship, pointing to its role as a “healthy” product of sex.

“There were no more Saturday romps. No ringing silver dollars to stack beside her plate. No pockets to rifle. In fact, the yellow coin in his trousers was like a monster hiding in the cave of his pockets to destroy her.”

The playful, loving relationship Missie May and Joe once had is gone, destroyed by Missie May’s adultery. Significantly, its loss is conveyed primarily through money: the silver dollars and small gifts Joe once gave her, which have been replaced by the golden coin Joe took from Slemmons and now keeps in his pocket.

“‘Hello, Joe,’ the clerk greeted him. ‘Ain’t seen you in a long time.’ […] ‘Nope, Ah ain’t been heah. Been round in spots and places.’”

Joe’s response to the grocery store clerk—“Been round in spots in places” (97)—echoes the way he introduces Slemmons to Missie May at the beginning of the short story: “Mister Otis D. Slemmons, of spots and places—Memphis, Chicago, Jacksonville, Philadelphia and so on” (89). His use of this same turn of phrase suggests that Joe has lost some of his innocence, acquiring a veneer of the worldliness that he once admired in Slemmons—somewhat ironically, as it was the businessman’s affair with Joe’s wife that brought about this change.

“‘Well, I’ll be doggone! A gold-plated four-bit piece. Where’d you git it Joe?’ […] ‘Offen a stray n— dat come through Eatonville. He had it on his watch chain for a charm—goin’ round making out iss gold money. […] Tryin’ to fool people.’”

Joe plans to use the gilded half-dollar to buy candy kisses for Missie May, but not before rewriting the story of his own cuckolding for the store clerk. Instead of being the “fool,” Joe tells the clerk he was wise to Slemmons’s deception. While this may be an attempt to save face, it also communicates Joe’s disdain for Slemmons; newly secure in his relationship with Missie May and the new baby, Joe sees Slemmons’s charade as pathetic.