Peterkin, Julia Mood

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PETERKIN, Julia Mood

Born 31 October 1880, Laurens County, South Carolina; died 10 August 1961, Fort Motte, South Carolina

Daughter of Julius A. and Alma Archer Mood; married William Peterkin, 1903

The youngest of four children, Julia Mood Peterkin spent several years with her grandparents in rural South Carolina after her mother's early death. Later, she lived in Sumter, South Carolina, with her father. After receiving her B.A. and M.A. degrees from Converse College, Spartanburg, South Carolina, Peterkin taught at Fort Motte, a small, isolated community. She married the owner of Lang Syne plantation there. There were few whites and many blacks on the 2,000-acre plantation. Because of her husband's ill health, Peterkin took over most of the responsibilities of running Lang Syne until her son William was able to assume the actual management.

Peterkin began writing in her early forties, and her work was centered around Fort Motte and Murrell's Inlet, a coastal village in South Carolina where she had a summer home. Plantation stories were a popular genre from antebellum days until well into the 20th century, and it is one of Peterkin's contributions that she brought to this genre a sense of realism and dignity in her portrayal of the lives of black characters. In most of her work there is no stereotyped or affected local color, a common characteristic of plantation stories. Peterkin also broke out of the Southern pattern of sentimentality.

Peterkin's first works, which appeared in many magazines in the early 1920s, may be divided generally into two groups: Gullah-dialect sketches and more conventionally structured short stories. The former are usually dramatic monologues in the words of coastal South Carolina blacks, but the dialect at times becomes obtrusive. The larger group, in which Peterkin departs from extended use of dialect but maintains the rhythm and syntax of the speech, are stark, powerful portrayals of the lives of these isolated people. The stories in Green Thursday (1924) continue in this vein, but there is more description of the land and the natural cycles, which always play an integral part in the lives of her characters. The stories may be read almost as a novel, centering on Killdee and his family.

Peterkin's first novel, Black April (1927), incorporates some of the incidents of the stories. The book is episodic rather than tightly plotted; it gives a convincing picture of the daily lives of the characters and a strong sense of community. In Scarlet Sister Mary (1928), Peterkin's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Peterkin creates a fully conceived heroine of modern fiction. Mary reveals a strong affirmation of life as she steers between the restrictive mores of the community and her sense of freedom and selfhood. Mary's guiding principle is, "Everybody has a selfness that makes the root of his life and being." Like many of Eudora Welty's women characters, Mary, intelligent but uneducated, frequently articulates her emotions through metaphorical identifications with the natural world.

Bright Skin (1932) is a sensitive portrayal of the developing relationship of a boy and girl as they mature. Roll, Jordan Roll (1933) is Peterkin's commentary on photographs of blacks at Lang Syne. In this book, Peterkin loses her artistic objectivity and becomes somewhat nostalgic. Interestingly, Doris Ullman's photographs capture much of the dignity and realism that is portrayed in Peterkin's fiction. In A Plantation Christmas (1934), Peterkin seems overwhelmed by a sense of the past, and although there are fine descriptions, the total effect is local color for its own sake, nostalgic and sentimental. These two books are weakened by the presence of a white narrator; in Peterkin's best works, all the characters are black and events are viewed entirely through their eyes.

Though Peterkin lived and wrote in isolation from the literary world, she was helped and encouraged by many literary figures who praised her economy of style, detachment, and compassion. Peterkin's characters live in an isolated but believable society in which folk beliefs and folk wisdom aid them in the struggle between personal responsibility and fate. Their lives reveal the drama and dignity of the ordinary events of life.

Other Works:

The Collected Short Stories of Julia Peterkin (edited by F. Durham, 1970).

Bibliography:

Clark, E., Innocence Abroad (1931). Fain, J., ed., The Spyglass: Views and Review, 1924-1930 (1963). Durham, F., introduction to The Collected Short Stories of Julia Peterkin (1970). Landers, T. H., Julia Peterkin (1976).