Cordelia is one of those rebellious and lost teenage souls. She is willing to sell her body to strangers in order to make cash rather than to hold a decent job. She rejects her responsibilities and resents the fact that she probably plays the role of the mother of the household to her 6 younger siblings while her actual mother is at work. All Cordelia wants is to have a good time and to turn heads to get some attention. She rarely gets attention from her parents because they have 6 other kids to worry about, the only attention she seems to get is the negative kind which she is all too happy to give them. If her family had listened to her please to stay would her life have turned out differently? Would she have married John Stokes the pig farmer and live happily ever after as she seems to fantasize? Maybe. Maybe not. Her wild and reckless side would have probably emerged regardless of her location, however, she is bitter about the move to Harlem and upset that her parents don't seem to listen to her opinion or regard her needs at all in the decision. The Joneses were all labeled to have 'bad mixed bloff in em' according to Mrs. Stokes. Maybe Cordelia's behavior was less influenced by her environment and more influenced by her genes. Did her parents have a wild side?
As her methods for prostituting are described the details are kind of blurry. She goes to the theatre and waits for a man to approach her. Using her 'skills' to identify which ones were worth her time, she made her selections. The narration that started out as 3rd person becomes 1st person as we witness this transaction through the eyes of one of her 'customers.' As they kiss and flirt their way to her house he decides not to go through with it. Giving her 2 dollars he takes his leave. When they run into each other months later, even in her drunken state she soberly recognizes him. "The guy who gimme ma' firs' two bucks..." Is that really all he is to her? I think that he broke some of her confidence when he rejected her and she may even have been insulted that he gave her money. She could have been looking for something more than that, she realized that he was different than most men. She puts on an emotionless facade and tries to come off to her friends as if she didn't care about him, only about his money.
Works Cited
Thurman, Wallace. "Cordelia the Crude." The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader. Ed. David Lewis. New York: 1995. 629-633.
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