A Measure of Time by Rosa Guy

First published: 1983

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Bildungsroman

Time of work: 1920’s-1950’s

Locale: Montgomery, Alabama; Cleveland, Ohio; New York, New York

Principal Characters:

• Dorine Davis, a saucy, free-spirited, hardheaded woman
• Sonny, a natural hustler and Dorine’s great love
• Big H, a “bookish” club owner and numbers racketeer
• Harry Brisbane, a failed West Indian restaurateur

The Novel

A Measure of Time chronicles the “education” of the main character, Dorine Davis, against a historical backdrop of race relations in the North and South over four decades. It is a sprawling, episodic narrative blending fictional and real characters and events. The novel is divided into four books.

Book 1 begins with Dorine’s introduction to New York in the 1920’s, especially the glittering black community of Harlem. Although she hopes to begin a new life with Sonny, Dorine learns that he has spent on himself the money she gave him to find a place of their own in the city. This realization ushers in the novel’s first flashback to Dorine’s childhood in Alabama and her earliest experiences with money and men; thus, book 1 alternates between Dorine’s Harlem present and her past in Montgomery and Cleveland.

Sonny continues to try to exploit Dorine, who is torn between her sexual attraction toward him and her need to keep her money for her own survival. Sonny “punishes” her by disappearing for long periods of time, but Dorine always hunts him down. Finally, he concocts a scheme to free himself from what he sees as her possessiveness, and he arranges for her to entertain one of his clients, an undercover policeman.

Book 2 begins after Tom Rumley, a small-time criminal, has posted Dorine’s bail and convinced her that she needs to move on with her life. He teaches her the art of “boosting,” or shoplifting, and introduces her to his six-member gang. Using Harlem as her base of operations, the nineteen-year-old Dorine travels the country with this group of professional shoplifters.

This life is interrupted by the death of her sister and Dorine’s return to Montgomery. Feeling momentarily guilty for having sent her family money but given them nothing of her time, Dorine eventually asserts her independence by hiring a surrogate mother to take care of her sister’s children and her own son; she also promises to finance her brother’s higher education.

Back again in New York, Dorine becomes the kept woman of Big H, until, bored by inactivity and frustrated by her lover’s inability to satisfy her sexually, she rejoins Tom in a scam involving “selling” the Brooklyn Bridge. Partially because of the success of this operation and Dorine’s inability to be discreet about her own contributions, Dutch Schultz and his Bronx gangsters learn of the money to be made in Harlem; they kidnap Big H, who is eventually freed, but this act marks the end of the nonviolent black criminal class in Harlem and the beginning of lethal white mobsterism in the area.

Book 3 takes readers through the Great Depression. Dorine returns to Alabama because her brother-in-law has had a stroke. While in Montgomery, she and her “booster” friend Ann get caught outside during a night of white vigilantism caused by the Scottsboro Boys incident. Her political consciousness is raised, and she toys with the idea of joining the Communists who have rallied in defense of the “boys,” but her need for money prevails, and she continues her shoplifting ways.

Dorine seduces Harry Brisbane and moves him and his two daughters into her Harlem apartment. For two years, they live a life punctuated by her road trips and anxiety over Harry’s growing instability. They eventually separate.

At one point, Dorine goes to Tennessee to see her brother’s graduation from medical school, only to learn that he cannot legally practice medicine in Alabama. Her brother’s unconcern about this situation infuriates her, and she once again asserts that the rest of her family are dreaming of a better day while she is out in the real world making money and supporting everyone.

Book 4 opens as the thirty-six-year-old Dorine is released from a five-year term in prison. Although she still has money in the bank and things in storage, her world has changed since her imprisonment. Harlem is seedier; crime is bigger business. At first aimless, Dorine spends time tending to her natural family in Alabama and her extended family of erstwhile “boosters.” She helps her brother get out of Montgomery in the trunk of her car after he angers whites by trying to organize sharecroppers, and she handles the final affairs of two members of her former shoplifting gang.

Back in New York, Dorine invests in Sonny’s new bar, with the stipulation that she will get the bar if her loan is not repaid in two years. Reunited with her son, who is ignorant of his true parentage, Dorine hopes to give him a future managing her business ventures. Her son, however, wants to return to the South now that the Civil Rights movement has begun to energize its people. Tom calls to tell her of Sonny’s fatal heart attack, and Dorine is left lamenting the deterioration of Harlem and wondering about the identity of someone called Martin Luther King, whose cause her brother has just joined.

The Characters

Some reviewers have argued that the novel has essentially only one real character, Dorine Davis, and that the book’s other characters serve merely as foils designed to underscore by contrast her unconquerable vitality and resilience. This, however, is not a weakness but rather a strength. In Dorine Davis, Rosa Guy has created a forceful portrait of a woman pulled between the competing demands of love and personal autonomy.

On one hand, there is her need to be physically close to a man, a longing tempered by distrust. Her first sexual experience is not a positive one. She is raped by her white employer, Master Norton. Her subsequent relationship with Sonny also brings more pain than happiness. No matter how hard she tries to make a home for the two of them, Sonny will not be tied down. These early experiences may account for her sexual aggressiveness in later life. She fears lack of control. It is she who stalks Big H and arouses his interest by performing a seductive dance; it is she who seduces Harry Brisbane in Central Park in a wooded area that she has chosen in advance for the occasion.

At times both complementary and antithetical to her quest for male companionship is Dorine’s desire for some control over her own life. This longing is objectified in her approach to personal finances. Even as an eight-year-old girl compelled to work in white people’s kitchens, Dorine coerces her grandmother into allowing her to retain ten cents of the quarter she earns per week. That dime gives her self-respect and independence.

Even as an adult, she never relinquishes the purse strings, not even for the men in her life. Dorine always keeps an eye on her money.

In this regard, Miss Fanny, Master Norton’s wife and the richest white woman of Dorine’s acquaintance, serves as a negative role model. To preserve her marriage, Miss Fanny turns a blind eye to her husband’s philandering. “With all her money and a town respecting her,” Dorine observes in amazement and disgust, “she still had to stand and take whatever this man had to give.” Even though she herself experiences moments of surrender to male dominance, Dorine returns again and again to her own personal strengths for her survival.

This may account for the fact that she develops an abiding kinship with her adopted family of shoplifters, a group that comes to mean almost as much to her as her natural family in Alabama. While her blood relations seem to her to be little better than “dreamers” in a somnolent South, her fellow “boosters” are out making things happen. They are “doers.” Through sheer bravado at times, they take charge of a situation and snatch fortune from the jaws of fate. Tom Rumley asserts: “Our risks is double, triple that of white boosters. That’s why we don’t try to fade into no background. We in the acting business. We calls attention to our black selves. We look rich, big time.” This mastery of the moment, even if it is little more than role-playing at times, appeals to Dorine’s sense of personal drama, her view of her life as essentially the struggle of one woman against the world.

Even Dorine has her contemplative moments; there are points, especially near the end of the novel, when time in its measured, relentless passage seems to stop her seemingly inexhaustible flow of energy. On her last visit to Alabama, for example, she stops in her car to rest. Upon awakening, Dorine notices what she calls “ivy” on the giant pine trees by the side of the road, “miles and miles of leaves, curtains—delicate green, beautiful to the eyes—deliberately hiding the fact that they were hell-bent on squeezing the life out of those once magnificent pines!” Thus, the parasitic kudzu vine comes to symbolize all those forces of life and nature that tend to slow a person down. For Dorine, it has been her fondness for men, her sense of responsibility to family and friends, the exigencies of her lifestyle, including her term in prison. It is, however, time itself that takes the greatest toll. At forty-two, Dorine is left at the novel’s end living more in the past than in the present, measuring time spent rather than time to spend.

Critical Context

Rosa Guy’s critical reputation rests on her prizewinning works for adolescent readers, novels that treat candidly the subject of black-on-black prejudice, especially the troubled relationship between African Americans and African West Indians.

For Rosa Guy, A Measure of Time is a departure in that it is only her second adult novel after Bird at My Window (1966). Reviews of A Measure of Time in the popular press have been consistently good, but Rosa Guy has not received the careful scholarly attention that she deserves.

Bibliography

Bell, Bernard W. The Afro-American Novel and Its Tradition. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1987. Argues for the placement of Guy’s work within the context of traditional realism and particularly of what Bell calls “Afro-American neorealism,” which asserts that no discussion of character can occur outside a social and historical framework.

Brown, Beth. Review of A Measure of Time. Black Scholar 16 (January, 1985): 54-55. Acknowledges that Guy has not achieved the recognition that she deserves. Guy’s emphasis on the education derived from life on the streets draws comparison to the works of James Baldwin and Chester Hines. By her focus on Dorine’s overbearing pride and her refusal to forgive, according to the reviewer, Rosa Guy gives form to the instinctive force of the ordinary black female.

McHenry, Susan. Review of A Measure of Time. Ms. 12 (July, 1983): 21. Applauds Guy’s novel as an immense, engrossing book that offers the reader a sympathetic view of black American life. Dorine Davis’ personality is an engaging blend of healthy assurance and restive pride, of common sense and an unfortunate fondness for attractive men.

Schraufnagel, Noel. From Apology to Protest: The Black American Novel. Deland, Fla.: Everett/Edwards, 1973. Emphasizes Guy’s skill in depicting the psychological damage that can be caused by racial discrimination.

Wilson, Judith. “Rosa Guy: Writing with a Bold Vision.” Essence 10 (October, 1979): 14-20. Provides a profile of the artist with special attention to biographical detail that has a bearing on her later composition of A Measure of Time. Guy’s Alabama stepmother, her West Indian father, her parents’ involvement in the Marcus Garvey movement, her growing up in Harlem, and her reluctance to showcase only the positive, middle-class black experience are discussed.