This Morning So Soon Sparknotes

American author James Baldwin was integral to the civil rights movement. Through his journalism, he published articles that reported on major activist marches. His novels and short stories covered many sensitive topics such as race tensions and sexuality. Baldwin’s boldness was necessary for the United States of America to change in the midcentury. In several of his short stories, Baldwin shows nuanced portrayals of white women, showcasing their roles in shaping the lives of his protagonists. In his short stories, James Baldwin uses white women to display his true opinions on white people. James Baldwin portrays white women as symbols of understanding for his protagonists. In “This Morning, This Evening, So Soon”, the main character’s wife,

The main character’s white wife isn’t very fulfilling to him because he’s busy dreaming of abusing black people. The black women in “Going to Meet the Man” fantasies are hot on the protagonist because the women are abused and forced into submission. It only adds insult to the fact that white women can be hot without getting abused. White women as a source of privilege and power don’t display what Baldwin admires about white people, but are used as a way to show what he doesn’t like about white people. Desire and appeal to people is another facet of the role of a white woman in a James Baldwin short story. In “Going to Meet the Man”, the police officer, a protagonist, is torn between his attraction to harming black people and his attraction to his white wife. Even though the protagonist enjoys the misuse of black lives throughout almost all of the scenes in that show, he grabs her and appreciates her while “crying and laughing” (Baldwin 1965), but he’s still interested in her. Furthermore, the use of all of James Baldwin’s protagonists having wives shows his true insecurities about never

Overall, James Baldwin’s use of white women in his short stories displays his real opinion of white people. Baldwin prefers when the white women in his stories are polite, understanding, and curious. In “This Morning, This Evening, So Soon”, the protagonist’s beloved wife, Harriet, is white, however she is extremely interested in getting to know her husband’s sister and is super receptive to the hate the protagonist receives in the United States. She doesn’t let the hate get her down though, always the optimist, she tells their son, Paul, to be proud of his dad. Harriet is always polite and actively attempting to find an understanding of her husband’s experience in life. Baldwin doesn’t like white women to be displays of power and a reminder of the systemic oppression he felt in his life, like Sonny’s mother in “Sonny’s Blues”. He also doesn’t like when women are objectified, as showcased in “Going to Meet the Man”, where the wife is asleep the entire time, except for when she’s needed for her husband’s