Porgy by DuBose Heyward

First published: 1925

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Regional

Time of plot: Early twentieth century

Locale: Charleston, South Carolina

Principal characters

• Porgy, a disabled African American beggar
• Crown, a stevedore, or dockworker
• Bess, Crown’s lover

The Story:

Before the American Civil War, Catfish Row had been the fine mansion of a wealthy white family. By the early twentieth century, it was home for a community of poor African American families, descendants of former slaves. Porgy, a disabled beggar, inhabits a ground-floor room. No one knows his age, and his large, powerful hands are in strange contrast to his frail body. Porgy’s neighbor, Peter, transports him to and from his begging each day in his wagon.

Porgy’s single vice is gambling—throwing dice with friends in the courtyard of Catfish Row. One evening in April, Robbins, the husband of Serena and father of three children, is killed by the traveling stevedore Crown, whom he had accused of cheating at dice. When police investigate, no one offers testimony, so the police take Peter into custody, hoping he will provide information. While Peter is in jail for ten days, the horse and wagon that he had been buying on contract are repossessed, and Porgy loses his only means of transportation.

By May, Porgy is destitute and has to find another means of getting downtown. His new emancipation comes when he builds a “chariot”—a goat-pulled, two-wheeled, toilet-soap crate. He no longer has to remain at one stand all day, but can now roam at will and take in more money. In June, Crown’s lover, Bess, comes to Catfish Row. Maria, who operates a kitchen in the building, gives her food. Bess then goes to live with Porgy and becomes a new woman, giving up drugs and alcohol. Happier than ever, Porgy wins often at gambling, so his friends get suspicious.

One day, a dandy, Sportin’ Life, comes to town and gives Bess cocaine. She is arrested for disorderly conduct. Porgy tries to pay her fine, but when the judge sees the beggar, to whom he had often given dimes, with ten dollars, he becomes enraged, takes the money, and sentences Bess to ten days in a filthy, overcrowded prison, where she gets seriously ill with fever. With the help of Maria and other women in Catfish Row, Porgy nurses Bess back to health.

At the Sons and Daughters of Repent Ye Saith the Lord picnic on Kittiwar Island, Bess is accosted by Crown, who had been hiding on the island. He takes her to his hut and sexually assaults her, but at the end of the day, he lets her return to Porgy, promising that he will take her back in the fall, when cotton shipments will provide stevedoring work in Savannah.

One day in September, the Mosquito Fleet of fishing boats celebrates a record-breaking catch. As they prepare to go out the next morning, Catfish Row resident Clara futilely warns her husband, Jake, not to go out in his boat that day. Soon after the fleet leaves the pier, warning bells chime and the hurricane flag rises over the customhouse. After an ominous calm, a hurricane strikes the city. Water, driven by the shrieking wind, rises above the seawall, crosses the street, and invades the ground floor of Catfish Row, where forty frightened residents huddle in the great second-story ballroom. During a lull in the storm, Clara sees the wreck of her husband’s boat near the wharf, leaves her baby with Bess, and goes out into the flood. A few minutes later, she is overwhelmed in the storm’s sudden return. The hurricane claims several Catfish Row fishermen. Bess and Porgy adopt Clara’s baby.

In October, drays loaded with heavy bales of cotton come rumbling down the street. Catfish Row boils with excitement, for stevedoring jobs and money will bring prosperity. The cotton, however, means disaster to Porgy. He asks Bess whether she is his lover, or Crown’s lover. His, she answers, unless Crown seizes her again as he did at the picnic. If that happens, she cannot answer for herself. Porgy assures her that he will not let Crown take her away from him.

Crown returns to Catfish Row and, despite warnings from Maria, stalks Bess. When Crown breaks into Porgy and Bess’s room one midnight, Porgy stabs him. The next day, the body is found in the river near Catfish Row. Again, residents give police no information, and the community sighs in relief when the officers leave without arresting anyone. A buzzard that had fed upon Crown’s body lights on the parapet above Porgy’s room, forecasting doom.

Asked to identify Crown’s body at the morgue, Porgy flees in his goat-cart, hotly pursued by a patrol wagon. Passersby laugh at the ridiculously one-sided race. Porgy is caught at the edge of town but is no longer needed, because someone else has identified the body. Porgy is jailed for five days for contempt of court. Without witnesses or evidence, the police declare Crown was killed at the hands of a person or persons unknown.

When Porgy returns from jail and finds Serena holding Jake and Clara’s orphan baby, he suspects the worst. Neighbors tell him that some stevedores had gotten Bess drunk and taken her off to Savannah. Porgy knows she will never return. Serena adopts the baby. For one summer, Porgy experienced brief glimpses of happiness, but by fall, he is left again a solitary beggar.

Bibliography

Alpert, Hollis. The Life and Times of “Porgy and Bess”: The Story of an American Classic. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990. Traces the history of Porgy from Heyward’s novel to the 1935 Broadway premiere of the opera Porgy and Bess. Includes illustrations from several productions of the opera.

Durham, Frank. DuBose Heyward: The Man Who Wrote “Porgy.” Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1965. Focuses primarily on the novel Porgy and its stage versions. Ignores the author’s other works, however, but offers valuable background to Porgy’s creation and reception.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “The Reputed Demises of Uncle Tom: Or, The Treatment of the Negro in Fiction by White Southern Authors in the 1920’s.” Southern Literary Review 2, no. 2 (Spring, 1970): 26-50. Discusses Porgy in relation to African American characters in literary history: from primitive portrayals in abolition literature, to the plantation myth of the black man as folk figure type during Reconstruction, to the New Negro after World War I.

Hutchisson, James M. DuBose Heyward: A Charleston Gentleman and the World of “Porgy and Bess.” Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000. In this critical biography, Hutchisson argues that Porgy was the first major Southern novel to portray African Americans without condescension; he describes how Heyward overcame racial and social restrictions to depict the humanity of black people.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “Professional Authorship in the Charleston Renaissance: The Career of DuBose Heyward.” In Renaissance in Charleston: Art and Life in the Carolina Low Country, 1900-1940, edited by James M. Hutchisson and Harlan Greene. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2003. An overview of Heyward’s career, placed within the social and historical context of Charleston, South Carolina, during the city’s cultural renaissance.

Rhodes, Chip. “Primitive Desires and the Desire for the Primitive: DuBose Heyward and Nella Larsen.” In Structures of the Jazz Age: Mass Culture, Progressive Education, and Racial Discourse in American Modernism. London: Verso, 1998. Analyzes Heyward’s work as part of the cult of primitivism that attained popularity in the United States in the 1920’s.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “Writing up the New Negro: The Construction of Consumer Desire in the Twenties.” Journal of American Studies 28, no. 2 (August, 1994): 191-207. Discusses desire in Porgy in context with other works of Southern literature. Describes Catfish Row as a place in limbo between slavery and freedom.

Slavick, William H. DuBose Heyward. Boston: Twayne, 1981. Critical biography provides extensive discussion of the novel Porgy, as well as Heyward’s other fiction, poetry, and drama.