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Chapter 25
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Mighty Miss Malone, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Hope
Talent and Hard Work
Family
The Black Experience in America
The Great Depression
Summary
Analysis
Mrs. Malone and Deza share a kitchen and bathroom with two other families (the Wilsons and the Eppses) and a local Black schoolteacher named Mr. Alums, but they have a bedroom to themselves. After the camp, it’s practically heaven. And now that they have a permanent address, Deza can borrow books from the public library! Although Mrs. Malone is slowly giving up hope, Deza makes sure to stop by the post office at least once a week to check for news from Jimmie.
When Deza left Gary, she found herself comparing her simple life to the standard of living enjoyed by Marvin Ware and his girlfriend. Her current situation is even more humble than her upbringing—where at least her family had a whole house to itself. But she knows all too well that things can be worse. And she finds hope and joy wherever she can, like being able to check out library books and visit the post office regularly.
Themes
Although their living situation is better, school is torture. The work is easier than Deza is used to, and her teachers never call on her. The English teacher assigns books about an annoying little White boy named Penrod. Deza is used to reading books about White people, so she has learned to just skip over the bits that made it hard for her to identify with a story’s hero or heroine, like descriptions of their “pale” skin, “golden hair” or “cornflower-blue eyes.” But there are too many terrible things to ignore in the Penrod stories.
Deza is unhappy at school, but she’s learning not to let her teachers’ prejudice and cruelty get her down too much. The “Penrod” books she describes here are a series written by American author Booth Tarkington and published in 1914. Deza would find them offensive both on account of Penrod’s antisocial and disrespectful antics (she’d likely characterize him as a “hoodlum”) and for the pervasive use of racial stereotypes and slurs throughout. This leads her to a broader reflection on how hard it is that she doesn’t have the pleasure of finding herself reflected in the books she reads, all of which feature White protagonists.
Themes
Before Deza knows it, it’s February of 1937. On her birthday, Mrs. Malone and their neighbors throw her a surprise party. There’s even ice cream to share. Deza receives a pair of hand-me-down shoes from the Wilsons and a pair of hand-me-down coveralls from the Eppses. When Mrs. Malone went back to camp for her wedding ring, she was really rescuing the gingham curtain, which she’s turned into a jumper for Deza (there wasn’t quite enough for a dress). Mr. Alums gives Deza books: The Quest of the Silver Fleece by W. E. B. DuBois and Quicksand by Nella Larsen.
Although she’s grown up reading books almost exclusively by and about White people, Deza lives at a moment when American literature is shifting. The Harlem Renaissance is underway in the 1920s and 1930s, bringing poetry, stories, dramas, music, visual art and more by Black artists into the cultural mainstream. The two books that Mr. Alums gives Deza reflect this changing moment and, crucially, give Deza her first taste of literature written by, for, and about Black people. The Quest of the Silver Fleece, published in 1911, is a social novel retelling the Golden Fleece myth with a southern Black protagonist and her northern love interest. Quicksand is a novel that was published in 1928 by Nella Larson, a mixed-race American author and important figure of the Harlem Renaissance. It describes a mixed-race woman’s attempts to fit into Jazz Era society in rural America, urban America, and Europe.
Themes
The jumper (and the frilly blouse Mrs. Malone bought second-hand from one of the front-desk girls at the hotel to go with it) makes Deza feel beautiful. But, when she starts to read them, she realizes that Mr. Alums’s books, which are about people who look like her—Black people—are the best gift of all. In these books, she doesn’t have to skip over any passages. She’s so excited that she stays up all night, reading The Quest for the Silver Fleece through from cover to cover, twice.
Once, the beautiful gingham dress Mrs. Needham gave to Deza represented Deza’s hope for a brighter future. That version of the future was lost when the family left Gary and cannot, the book hints, be recovered. But that doesn’t mean that Deza is doomed to a life of misery and want. She still has the support of her family in her mother’s love, and she still has a quick, intelligent mind to develop. The future may have changed—metaphorically, the dress has turned into a jumper—but that doesn’t mean it won’t still be wonderful.
Themes
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