Status Codes in COLORED TELEVISION and PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. Do markers of success define fate or not?

                          Colored Television and Pride and Prejudice

I read Colored Television by Danzy Senna and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin for two different book groups. It was surprising that the plots of these books, a hundred years apart, seemed to hinge on similar status codes. Though the personal stakes were different.  The Bennett sisters, Elizabeth and Jane, heroines of Pride and Prejudice, navigated the Bristish aristocracy's marriage market, while Jane and Lenny, the talented African American couple in Colored Television chased careers in Los Angeles' media markets. Both sets of contenders must crack social codes to gain entry, aware that perceived status can make or break their future prospects.

Indicators of status for both included desirable neighborhoods and residences, clothes, physical attractiveness, well-born or estimable friends and family, appropriate education or employment. In Austin's world, the answers determined whether a girl or young man is worthy as a dancing partner, let alone a marriage prospect. Beauty was an asset that might be nullified by low financial prospects. Yet there's urgency for Jane and Elizabeth, the eldest of five sisters in Pride and Prejudice. Fated to lose their home to a male heir after the death of their father, a reality though not imminent, is presented by the appearance of the heir, a minister. His quest for a wife fueled their mother's pressure to find husbands before her girls are spinsters, "on the shelf." (Unmarried noblewomen were considered a financial burden, often compelled to find an appropriate job, like a governess.) Yet, though flogged through the aristocratic marriage system, Elizabeth Bennett creates her own "codes." 

Jane in Colored Television, an African American woman of mixed parentage, who thinks of herself as a "mulatto," is an academic at a university. Her position, offered after her first groundbreaking book, is jeopardized without a second book published to seal her status as an important writer. The first, written before her two children, had proved an interminable project. Economic stability for her family is the major focus of Jane's ambition. Lenny, a sophisticated abstract painter, produces unsold paintings with an opacity of meaning both intriguing and off-putting. Though desperate to have a stable life for their kids, Jane appeared to be the only one trying to make it happen. But Lenny, who disavows all need to compromise his vision, is learning Japanese for an upcoming show in Japan. 

As the novel opened, they were enjoying a few months "sabbatical" at the beautiful, eccentrically designed Los Angeles house of Jane's writer friend, an African American, who's found commercial success. Jane and her family lived a borrowed life in a highly desirable neighborhood with "blue ribbon" schools. As temporary rich people, the pleasure came with pressure.  Jane, who thinks she doesn't fit in either White or Black society, wanted to save her children from the pain of being without a stable racial group. The history of Mulattos, the topic of her ongoing book, seemed more about "passing" than definition. It's intrinsic to her fears about her children's "issues." And, as much as she yearned to be "fitting-in," she knew her own standards were about separation. 

Jane and Elizabeth Bennett also had official and unofficial "codes" of status. Elizabeth, a born "gentlewoman," felt the irony of their life of "genteel" poverty. How her mother watched every penny so that her girls "pass" as respectable gentry.  They hiked miles instead of hiring coaches, ate food from bartered stock and their garden, wore old hand-me-down dresses disguised with clever alterations. Yet Elizabeth mused--do these economies matter to their value as human beings? Did "marrying well" mean a better life or freedom bartered for better clothes?"  

Jane, who borrowed the designer clothes of her friend's White "trophy" wife to go to school events, meetings, parties, felt a little absurd. But she must adhere to the stylish dress codes of her neighborhood. Her kids played with borrowed toys and clothes of their Host's kids, but Jane hoped they would make affluent new friends at school. And, however briefly, she had a real office to finish her book and Lenny had a studio. But the pressure was on! Book had to be finished and his work for the show, before they must pack up and find another low-rent housing solution. Publishing her "big" book must happen! She already felt successful. Visitors at her daughter's birthday party, impressed by the house, neighborhood, assumed Jane and Lenny must be successful. 

At public events, both Jane and Elizabeth Bennett carefully accessed, who was valuable to know and get information they needed. When Jane realized her academic status impressed a Hollywood agent, she asked herself, How can she make some serious money? Elizabeth played her values, refused practical marital choices over her own worth. But then she wondered, Can love exist within a "good" match?  Then she agonized, whether she has overplayed her hand?  In these books, as in real life, status is a signifier and a code to crack. Discovery is what happens when the game seems over.   

S.W.