Yellow Face

"Yellowface" is the Asian equivalent of theatrical "blackface," as in the case of Warner Oland (a Swede) or Sidney Toler (an Scottish-American) impersonating Charlie Chan. "Yellow Face" is also the name of an uncharacteristic Sherlock Holmes short story -- one that is unusual among Conan Doyle's compositions in that no crime is solved nor none committed, and also because Sherlock Holmes' overconfident deductions prove to be entirely erroneous.

Grant Munro has married a young widow, Effie Hebron, who returned to her native England after her Atlanta husband died of yellow fever.  After some years of blissful marriage, Effie begins to act most strangely;  she sneaks out to a neighboring house in the middle of the night -- a house at the upper window of which her puzzled husband catches sight of a strange and unnaturally immobile yellow face.  

After listening to Munro's narration, Sherlock Holmes confidently theorizes that Effie's first husband did not die, but has secretly returned to England to blackmail his erstwhile wife.  But when Munro, Watson, and Holmes break into the house, they discover at the window not a husband come back to life but a young girl, Effie's daughter, wearing a mask to conceal the fact that she is a "little coal-black negress."  The mystery is solved:  Effie has been behaving peculiarly not because she is seeing another man (as Munro seems to fear) or because she is being blackmailed, but because she was afraid to confess to her second husband that her former mate was black --  even though, she proclaims,  "a nobler man never walked the earth."

And so the story proceeds to its climax.  How will Munro respond to the revelation? Will he reject his wife, or embrace her?  "It was a long two minutes [ten minutes in the first American edition!!] before Grant Munro broke the silence....  He lifted the little child, kissed her, and then, still carrying her, he held out his other hand to his wife, and turned towards the door. 'We can talk it over more comfortably at home,' said he.  'I am not a good man, Effie, but I think I am a better one that you have given me credit for being.'" 

"Yellow Face" is designed to be an uplifting story of tolerance and trust and in truth it is extraordinarily progressive, even radical, by the standards of 1894.  But it's also a naive story.  It elides and dodges the complications that it raises, especially about matters of race.  Is it credible, or is it not more fear than fact, that a mixed-race husband and an English woman would produce a "coal-black" offspring. Doyle's belief that such an engendering is possible is a mark of the simplicity of his thinking about race.  Moreover, there were strict "anti-miscegenation" laws in Georgia in the last part of the nineteenth century. How did Effie and John Hebron manage to evade them?  In what way did they live?  Hebron managed to leave a considerable estate to his wife?  How did he achieve his wealth?

Doyle is interested in making a case for tolerance and he is interested in Holmes.  But he does not much concern himself with the other characters that he creates.  He does not explore the psychological costs for Effie when, as she says, "she cut herself off from her race."  What prompted her to violate so strong a taboo?  And why would a strong and independent woman suddenly become so fearful when she re-married?  What did it cost her, emotionally, to leave her child behind in Georgia where a dark mixed-race girl would be so awkwardly situated?  How could she conceal so much of her history from Grant Munro without overwhelming guilt?  How did she manage to achieve so blissful a union with him while carrying many important secrets?  And what about the poor child?  Born to an illegal union that is soon fractured by death, then abandoned, then reclaimed and brought to a strange land -- and asked to wear a yellow mask for fear the someone would be shocked by her pigmentation. Doyle does not even broach the question of the damage to the child?   And what kind of future can be in store for her in England?

Doyle seems to consider that "Yellow Face" concludes happily -- but does it? While it is certainly to the author's credit that he is unfazed by the taboo against "intermarriage," it is also true that he rests satisfied with easy, superficial, and naive answers to hard questions. Or rather, he does not even seem to realize that he has started a whole pack of hares in motion.   

It's curiously negligent that Doyle does not even give a name to the "coal-black negress."  She remains a plot-device, not a person. 

It is equally odd that Doyle does not find fault with Sherlock Holmes's' inability to think past the convention of the genre, where blackmail is a commonplace.  Intermarriage, Doyle seems to suggest, is so exotic, so unusual, that it would not occur even to so brilliant a detective as Sherlock Holmes that a yellow mask might hide a black face.

Comments

[Watson]

To investigate the fault of the "assumed" protagonist would be to not celebrate the virtuousity of the unassuming plot device.

(You really think he "neglected" to name his plot device? I think you "neglected" to consider the representative powers of anonymity - a canvas on which to project!)

Now, if you want to investigate something, the thing to look at is the wife's saying:

"A nobler man never walked the earth."

It is not the man who can see the diamond within the "coal black negress" who is an extraordinary character, it's the man who takes back his wife after such disloyalty.

It might take more than 10 mins for wifey, though the kid is an (obvious) innocent...

"So, let's just discuss it back home, ok?"

I can't imagine a more reasonable outcome, though, naturally, it is still cliff-hung, but it is most certainly not at all naive.