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Gwendolyn Brooks' Maud Martha.. extraordinarily Ordinary

© Dorothy Harris

Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917) is a poet and fiction writer whose work has spanned from 1930 to the present. Brooks' was raised in Chicago where she had an early start in publishing. Her first poem "Evantide" was published when she was thirteen years old in American Child magazine. She published her first book of poetry "Street in Bronzeville" in 1945. She also published several collections of poetry, short fiction, and children's literature in the fifty years to follow.

In the novel Maud Martha (1953), Brooks constructs a character whose ordinariness makes her quite unique for characters of her time. Brooks' use of the ordinary in the construction of Maud Martha is an effective tool in conveying the racism, sexism, and classism that many other writers convey through developing complex characters. For the time in which Maud Martha was published, the character's lack of uniqueness is what makes her unique. It is also what makes the character and the novel so strong.

Brooks is aware of the effect of ordinariness in the development of this character. Not only is Brooks aware, but she shows that the character is also aware of the beauty of the ordinary. In the opening chapter, "description of Maud Martha" she writes:

She would have liked a lotus, or China asters or the Japanese Iris, or meadow lilies -- yes, she would have liked meadow lilies, because the very word meadow made her breathe more deeply, and either fling her arms or want to fling her arms, depending on who was by, rapturously up to whatever was watching the sky. But dandelions were what she chiefly saw. Yellow jewels for everyday, studding the patched green dress of her back yard. She liked their demure prettiness second to their everydayness; for in the latter quality she thought she saw a picture of herself, and it was comforting to find that what was common could also be a flower.

Brooks creates, then, a character who is common, and who is also, or who could also be a flower. She emphasizes the commonness of her protagonist while simultaneously exploring the elements of her life that are admirable, painful, powerful and fragile.

Maud Martha is well aware of her commonness, of her ordinariness. She consciously compares herself to the flower. Thus when Maud Martha wonders about the beauty or admiration of the flower, she is wondering about her place in her own environment as well.

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