Anne Moody and Consumption

The entire paper is not yet written because I didn't know if I was on the right track and didn't want to get too far in the writing process and have to go back to the drawing board.

“That summer I could feel myself beginning to change. For the first time I began to think something would be done about whites killing, beating, and misusing Negroes. I knew I was going to be a part of whatever happened.” – pg. 278

Anne Moody’s memoir Coming of Age in Mississippi depicts a Black woman struggling to determine her identity as she grows up in the segregated South. This journey of self-identity leads to her fascination with consumption and materialism throughout much of her younger years. Ultimately it is not her participation in consumption which aids in the discovery of who she is, but, instead, it is her collective action for the Movement (an intangible ritual) which leads to her strong foundation of her personal identity.
In the mid-twentieth century rural, American South, Essie Mae Moody (Anne) grows up in an atmosphere in which Whites solely make up the privileged class. One of her first jobs, doing chores for Miss Ola, subjects Moody to material items which she wholly admires: antebellum beds with grandiose bed posts, feather mattresses, an in-house bathroom with pristine white tubs, and rugs in the bathroom. Then Moody has another opportunity to witness upper-class white culture when she works for Mrs. Claiborne. There Moody learns to set a table and how to eat a “balanced meal” – both notions she knew nothing of before because her family was too poor to buy meat for dinner therefore they never owned knives since there was no need for such items. Miss Ola’s and Mrs. Claiborne’s lifestyles act as a foil to Moody’s life since her mother cannot even afford to feed her children and they must embarrassingly eat the same peanut butter and biscuits everyday for lunch. Throughout her childhood Moody notices how whites, the freest people within American society, have “things” and soon she links materialism with freedom. This epiphany contributes to her fascination with the tangible and consumption in her search for personal identity and ultimately personal freedom.
Moody’s left-out attitude is evident even as a child when she not only grows to dislike whites but also her own race: “But I also hated Negroes. I hate them for not standing up and doing something about the murders. In fact, I think I had stronger resentment toward Negroes for letting the whites kill them than toward the whites. Anyway it was at this stage in my life that I began to look upon Negro men as cowards” (Moody 136). These negative sentiments regarding her own culture signal to the reader that even as a child Moody feels alone and without a place to fit in since whites discriminate against her and the African American community seem to her spineless because they do not confront whites as she does even at an early age. Her courage to stand up to white privilege surfaces around the time she is tutoring Wayne, the same time when “separate but equal” was ruled unconstitutional but the Supreme Court. When Mrs. Burke inquires Moody’s stance on school integration she (unlike the “coward Negro men”) voices her thoughts. Here the reader sees foreshadowing of how defiant action brings to Moody a more solidified identity: “But courage was growing inside me too. Little by little it was getting harder and harder for me not to speak out.” (Moody 163).
This courage is soon overshadowed by her persistent loneliness: “Now I felt as though I was in a class all by myself, and I didn’t’ want it that way. I was lonesome” (Moody 182). In order to feel fulfilled Moody escapes her hometown bound for New Orleans in an attempt to escape such sentiments. There she begins to feel “human” and permits the transvestites to give her an external makeover with new clothes and different makeup which for a time alleviates her feelings of exclusion: “Most of my classmates and teachers commented on how I had changed and how good I looked” (Moody 199).
Once again attempting to escape her town (which signifies her loneliness), she moves in with her father. Upon her arrival Moody is again consumed with consumption in order distract her and fulfill her emptiness: “All that morning I was thinking about how I would fix my room up. I wanted to make it look just like the students’ rooms I had seen in magazines, with a single bed, a bookshelf filled with books, and a desk with a good lamp” (Moody 217). When she eventually does receive her bedroom furniture, she is disappointed because her stepmother purchases tacky furniture which lacks the modernity Moody aspires to have and consume.
When she is notified of her college acceptance at Natchez College, she spends.
“I bought only a few cheap clothes, and since I had always wanted a suitcase of my own, I splurged on a three-piece eighteen-dollar luggage” – pg. 238 The luggage eventually comes apart at the seams. This miniature narrative seems as a microcosm for all the times purchasing something to feel better had failed Moody throughout her memoir: “I felt like I had been wounded and that what was showing through that hole was my own insides.” – pg. 239

When she then attends Tougaloo she becomes anxiety-ridden because for the first time, she has a white teacher: “I began to get scared all over again. I had never had a white teacher. Now I wished I had gone to L.S.U. I knew the whites in New Orleans weren’t’ half as bad as the ones in Mississippi […] I got so damn mad just sitting there thinking about those white teachers, chills started running down my back.” Again to ease her anxiety, Moody turns to the tangible and the physically external: “I started taking time with my clothes, watching my weight, and wanting to look good” – pg. 269

Only when she begins to participate in The Movement any focus on consumption goes on hiatus. Instead her collective action for such a cause gives her meaning in her life: “I had a good excuse to stay on campus for the summer and work with the Movement, and this was what I really wanted to do.” – pg. 287
“But something happened to me as I got more and more involved in the Movement. It no longer seemed important to prove anything. I had found something outside myself that gave meaning to my life.” – pg. 288

INTERESTING TO NOTE THAT THE PLACES IN WHICH THESE SIT-INS OCCURRED (in the Woolworth’s) ARE ALSO PHYSICAL SITES OF CONSUMPTION – here Moody imbues a different meaning to these sites of consumption with her Movement work.

For the duration of the memoir Moody’s consumption is only to serve others or to help the Movement. Consumption also takes on a different meaning for Moody when she uses her money to help others instead of buying things for herself. In chapter 25, she buys school clothes, school supplies, and a day’s lunch for two girls who were living the life she had endured as a child. – pg. 342


WHAT DOES MOODY WANT THE READER TO THINK OF THE ISSUES IN HER MEMOIR?
Her memoir’s ending leaves the reader hanging and for a good reason. It connotes that her search for self (similar to the Movement) does not have a tidy, succinct finale. The conclusion could not have a decisive end because its preceding content is entirely too complex. Such an ending – or lack thereof – acts as a literary foil to the memoir’s major theme of consumption. Unlike a purchase (in which the experience is unilateral as a consumer pays for an item and the experience of consumption ends there) the Movement and Moody’s life are much more multifaceted and therefore cannot easily be summed up for the reader.
Her book also serves as anecdotal evidence that those participating in the democratic ritual of consumption does not help to buy one’s acceptance into a hierarchal society. Ironically Moody spends a major portion of her younger years consumed with consumption, and ultimately it is the intangible – the collective action involved in the Movement – which augments her sense of self.