Critical Essay on Bailey's Cafe by Gloria Naylor

Introduction

Bailey's Cafe is a collection of personal stories that are deeply moving from mostly women who are deeply scarred by life. In the novel, Naylor who is the author reveals an extraordinary ability to create, imagine and relate the stories of people who are almost destroyed by their past yet they try to get some hope in Eve's boarding house via Bailey's Cafe. The essay discusses the importance of the cafe and its proprietor who in the novel is referred to as Bailey and also how the cafe affects the lives of Ester who is a victim of emotional and sexual abuse, Sadie and Eve who owns a brownstone down the street where most fugitive women go. The main themes discussed in this essay is how people misuse female sexuality.

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Bailey's Cafe is a novel by Gloria Naylor who is an award-winning American author. Naylor was born in New York on 25th January 1950.Naylor was the oldest child of Alberta McAlpin and Roosevelt Naylor. In 1963 Naylor along with her family moved to Queen's. Naylor started writing and filling many notebooks with short stories, poems, and observations before her teenage years. In 1963 while Naylor was in high school, she was placed into advanced classes where she immersed herself in the work of the nineteenth century, British novelists. Other novels by Naylor include Linden Hills, Mama Day, The Women of Brewster Place, The Men of Brewster Place and the Meanings of a Word. Some of the authors that inspired Naylor during her studies at Brooklyn College include Alice Walker, Zora Neale Hurston, and Toni Morrison. This led Naylor to begin writing stories that mainly evolved on the African-American women lives. The first novel that Naylor wrote was The Women of Brewster Place. Naylor analyzed the works of her female and male antecedents in a way that was never thought upon before the seventies. Naylor chose to focus on the graphic details of the violence that was enacted by the black women. Naylor gives a high position of vitality and priority in her novels to the Black women and men who work tirelessly in their lives to preserve their communities and families against the vicious odds of discrimination, poverty, dangerous neighborhoods and surroundings that are harmful.

The novel Bailey's Cafe begins in a manner that is realistic and then takes on the qualities of Magical Realism. The cafe acts as a place where people go when they feel they cannot make it and are hanging on the edge as they have persevered so much pain to the extent they feel they cannot continue to live. The novel is narrated by Bailey which is not his real name, but his customers stuck him with the name after he and his wife took over the cafe called Bailey's. In the novel, the unnamed owner of Bailey Cafe acquires the cafe after his return from World War II and claims that the cafe saved him and also that it is magical. The principal narrator tells stories of his wife as well as of other patrons of the cafe who live nearby. Naylor chooses to locate the novel within a specifically cultured and gendered context of women who are disposed of worldwide. The main themes in the Bailey's Cafe novel are how people tend to define female sexuality and femaleness as well as how women have been subjected to sexual roles since Eve. The novel also portrays a different kind of male identity. The structure of the novel mimics that of jazz whereby Naylor tells stories of love and hate, sin and redemption, salvation and damnation.

The cafe acts a way station and a place for people to go when they are not in a position to gather the strength to re-start their lives (Puhr 2). Behind the cafe is where most patrons purposefully or accidentally arrive at the boarding house of Eve. The cafe acts as a halfway house. It is a halfway between the belief that the universe cares for us as individuals and the evidence that it does not. It also acts as a halfway house between the infinite and the finite. The front door of the cafe serves as the edge of the world while the back door serves as the void. It is a way station and "the choices have always been clear it is either one goes back out and resumes their life or heads to the back of the cafe and ends their life" (Naylor 221).Different types of food are offered at the cafe apart from the weekends which is a period in which no time passes and anything that is desired is available. The cafe is a place to heal, restore hope and life. The cafe was a goal for people who were seeking solace and wanted to take a break from life.

In the novel Eve is a woman who runs the boarding house that is near the Barley's Cafe (Naylor 80).Eve is the first and frequent customer in the cafe. Just like the Eve in the Bible, she has no earthly father or mother and also no Adam. The reason as to why Eve goes to Bailey's Cafe is because it is the "righteous" women upon whom places the greatest blame on (Naylor 85).This is caused by the fact that Eve faces problems without a male partner which result in both women and men of the town starting to judge about her sexuality. Eve considers the women as being more complicated, and she does not know what to answer to them and the more the women eyes ask, the more Eve realizes that she was forced to go through several months with nothing or no one to touch her (Naylor 83).In the novel, Eve is cast out of her community after discovering the connections between the vibrations of the earth and the urges of her body after losing her innocence during a hide and seek game, and the act is considered to be a sinful machination of self-pleasure. The theme of mistreatment of women and women being considered as sex instruments is evident in the novel when the Godfather strips Eve's clothes off. After that Eve is thrown out by the Godfather while naked and nothing to feed on. The cafe affects the life of Eve as it is through the cafe that she was able to learn how to provide healing to people who have reached the end and required help to return to their lives. The theme of sexuality in The Bailey's Cafe novel is well illustrated since most of the women at Eves boarding house move towards their healing towards their sexuality (Stave 104).

The cafe affects the life of Sadie as it gives her one or more possibilities of her situation but her story does not get any resolution. Sadie is the other name of Sarah which is similar to the Biblical Sarah in many ways. During her childhood years, Sadie was barren since at the age of fourteen her mother had her sterilized (Naylor 45).At the age of sixteen Sadie was taken to the streets by her mother since she had been "seeing herself to be in a position of feeding Sadie till she was sick and nearly died" (Naylor 44).Sadie was forced by her mother into prostitution to pay their bills. Sadie worked hard to please her mother since her mother used to refer to her as "The One the Coat Hanger Missed" since she had failed to abort Sadie. Sadie knew the difference between how other parents treated their children and how her mother treated her had to be her fault, and therefore she tried to be good in every way possible. Sadie went to the cafe to seek solace since in Sadie's world there is no God who is benevolent who stops the unwelcome advance. Sadie goes into Bailey's Cafe where she takes a cup of tea and takes a break from her life. This was after her life had become too much for her to be in the streets. Her mother viewed the life of Sadie as being a pure hell to be in a position of taking care of a child. After her mother died, Sadie went off with Daniel, a man who was old enough to be her father (Naylor 51).Despite in the novel Daniel acknowledging the worth of Sadie his victory was short lived. After the death of Daniel, Sadie goes back to her old life and path that she believes will make her dreams to become true and therefore Sadie ends up going to the cafe making it be "the last place before the world comes to an end" (Naylor 68).Sadie later meets the Iceman at the cafe who offers her with several things but she turns them down, and the affair ends up being a love affair that is frustrated. Sadie and the Iceman use the backdoor to get out of the cafe since it sits right on the margin between infinite possibility and the edge of the world. The back door of the cafe opens out to avoid" (Naylor 76).

In the novel, Esther is the first tenant of Eve to tell her story. The cafe also affects the life of Esther .At the age of twelve, Esther's brother arranges a marriage for her with his boss. Just because she is a good sister Esther agrees to the marriage. Esther stays in the marriage for twelve years whereby each year was meant to compensate a year that his brother took care of her. After twelve years Esther leaves her husband and finds the Bailey's Cafe. The cafe affects her life since it is through the cafe that Esther was able to smell the roses of Eve and follows the scent to her new home. Eve used the roses as a healing strategy for Esther. The roses led to Easters acknowledgment of beauty and joy which moves her back to the realm of the fully human (Stave 107).

The critics of the novel are that in Bailey's Cafe there are a lot of promises. The novel also depends greatly on the observations of a forthright unsophisticate who describes himself, dispiritingly as majoring in life. All the characters in the Barley's Cafe are Blacks, and this brings in a wrong perception since also some Whites also face similar problems and therefore Naylor should have included White characters as well (Speller).

Conclusion

In conclusion, Bailey's Cafe is a novel that is religious and is filled with Biblical references and draws back to Biblical stories. The novel encompasses myth, history and quotidian detail. The Bailey's Cafe helps the reader to understand that pain is one thing the world contains in excessive amounts through the pain contained in the stories of the different characters. The Bailey's Cafe acted as a place where individuals went to seek solace when the pain became too much for them to handle.

Works Cited

Alexander, Lynn. "Signifyin (g) Sex: Gloria Naylor's Bailey's Cafe and Western Religious Tradition." He Said, She Says: An RSVP to the Male Text. Ed. Mica Howe and Sarah Appleton Aguiar. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP (2001): 91-105.

Bender, Carol, and Roseanne Hoefel. "Toward a Literacy of Empathy: Inhabiting Gloria Naylor's Bailey's Cafe." Gloria Naylor: Strategy and Technique, Magic and Myth (2001): 182-195.

Buehler, Dorothea. "Below the Surface: Female Sexuality in Gloria Naylor's" Bailey's Cafe"." Amerikastudien/American Studies (2011): 425-448.

Naylor, Gloria. Bailey's cafe. Vintage, 1992.

Puhr, Kathleen M. "Healers in Gloria Naylor's fiction." Twentieth Century Literature 40.4 (2002).

Speller, Chrishawn A. Seeing Is Believing: Exploring Intertextuality of Aural and Written Blues in Gloria Naylor's Bailey's Cafe, Gayl Jones's Corregidora and Toni Morrison's Jazz.

Diss. MA Thesis. The Florida State University, 2003.

Stave, Shirley A., ed. Gloria Naylor: strategy and technique, magic and myth. Associated University Presse, 2001.