Plum Bun: A Novel Without a Moral

Suddenly, Rachel is offered a promotion to head librarian in a Brooklyn suburb, so Angela is again plunged into loneliness. She realizes how much she misses her sister and decides to try to reconcile, traveling between the world of her white friends and job in the Village and the Black world of Jinny’s Harlem. Angela thinks her two identities can coexist: “when it seemed best to be coloured she would be coloured; when it was best to be white she would be that” (253).

Angela visits Virginia, finding her in high spirits, and they reunite. Jinny hints that she has important news, but that it will have to wait until she returns from a planned visit back home to Philadelphia; she promises to write her sister a letter. While Jinny is out of the room, however, her friends confide to Angela that Virginia is so happy because she is engaged. Angela is ecstatic, assuming Virginia’s fiancé is their childhood friend, Matthew.

Another wealthy white man, Ralph Ashley, takes Angela out on a date, but when she refuses to invite him into her apartment, he calls her “a witch” (260) in a menacing voice and implies that she regularly engages in sexual behavior with men. She manages to close the door on him. Roger, she thinks, “had taught her an unforgettable lesson” (260).

With Virginia in Philadelphia and happily engaged, Angela thinks about her own prospects, and her mind keeps returning to Anthony. She worries about the problem of race, until she recalls that she has never heard Anthony utter a racial slur, and that he is from Brazil, with its mix of races and lack of prejudice. Anthony attended the Van Mier lecture, as well.

Ralph Ashley makes amends for his appalling behavior, and she spends some more time in his social circle, but does not feel at home; even the lavish meals at the Algonquin (an elite hotel for white high society) do not impress her any longer, and Ashley’s retiring nature leaves her indifferent. Angela’s sense of discontent grows: “she was conscious of living in an atmosphere of falseness, of tangled implications” (271). The only solution, she finally reasons, is to reconcile with Anthony: “To be poor with Anthony; to struggle with him; to help him keep his secret vow [to art]; to win his surprised and generous approbation […] life could hold nothing more pleasing than these possibilities” (272).

Angela sends Anthony a note, inviting him to tea; he comes, but he is curiously morose about their meeting, saying he will not come again. As he leaves, he calls her “Angel” and promises that he will always love her. Yet, he keeps his promise and does not return despite Angela’s entreaties.

After ten days, she decides to simply show up on his doorstep; her determination that she loves him and that they are meant to be together is too strong to relinquish now. He is surprised, even angry, at her appearance, which she mistakes for a lack of true feelings for her. But the truth is even more complicated: Anthony reveals that he is Black, expecting Angela to reject him immediately. When she does not, he tells her his actual life story: His father was a sailor from Georgia, who met and married a Brazilian woman, Anthony’s mother. In Georgia, his beautiful mother attracted the attention of the mayor’s son, who, upon learning she was married to a Black man, insulted her. She slapped him across the face, which led to a horrifying and extreme reaction from the white inhabitants of town: Anthony’s father was shot and mutilated in retaliation.

From then on, his mother was afraid—not of white people, shockingly—but of Black people, because they incur such hatred in white people. She married a white man from Germany and abandoned Anthony. This story only increases Angela’s love and commitment to Anthony, and she resolves to tell him the truth about her own origins.

Before Angela has the opportunity to tell Anthony her truth, he writes her to say that they can never be together: “More than race divides us.” Confused, Angela returns to him, even after he asks her not to do so, and finally blurts out that she, too, is only passing as white. He appears even more anguished at her admission, which she mistakes for anger at her deception. However, Anthony finally reveals the real complication: He is already engaged to another woman.

Had he known that Angela loved him, he would never have moved on to another, but now he cannot honorably break the engagement. He believes that if he breaks it off with his fiancée, she will surely die from the shock. When Anthony relates the story of how he met the young woman, it is with dawning horror that Angela realizes that the woman is her sister, Virginia. Anthony met Virginia right after Angela snubbed her in front of Roger; she was despondent, and Anthony believes he saved her. Angela does not want to rob Jinny of happiness—she has done too much to hurt her already—so Angela leaves Anthony, expecting never to see him again.

Angela tries to take solace in her friendship with Rachel, but even this small consolation is disrupted by Rachel’s distressing news: she is not to marry her beloved John. His parents do not approve because he is a gentile, while Rachel is Jewish. Angela tries to commiserate by saying that this disapproval is as arbitrary as the socially constructed strictures (not to mention legal statutes) against interracial marriage. Rachel replies in astonishment that she would never marry a Black person, using a racial slur. Angela bursts into hysterical laughter, and the friendship comes to an end.

Virginia returns from Philadelphia full of wonderful stories about home—especially of Matthew—and reveals that she still loves him, not Anthony. Angela is struck by the bitter ironies of life, but resolved to make the best of it. Roger returns, asking her to reconsider the relationship, but she will not be moved: She cannot imagine life with anyone but Anthony and now knows that Roger is untrustworthy.

She briefly considers Ralph Ashley as a prospect after discovering that he is more open-minded about race that Roger. She returns to Harlem, deciding that she would no longer work so hard to create barriers between herself and her race. Visiting a hairdresser in Harlem, she admires a Black woman from Texas “as the epitome of the iron and blood in a race which did not know how to let go of life” (328).