Blood is an interesting motif throughout this novel, because it is so subtle but yet it runs so deep. Joe Christmas was considered fully black because of the “one drop rule” which stated that a person with even one drop of African American blood, was not considered white. Joe’s blood was seen as tainted- which is why his grandfather left him in an orphanage. The woman at the orphanage took advantage of Joe and his lower position- his age and his color- and placed him in a home where he was not loved. It’s as if Joe never even had a chance at becoming a good, successful person- and that his moral decline was somehow genetic. In one of the more violent and upsetting scenes of this novel (it had plenty), Joe Christmas is beaten up after Bobbie’s “parents” find out he is black. While they are hitting him the men say, “We’ll find out. We’ll see if his blood is black”(219). Here the reader sees that the idea of blood is greater than the sameness of actual blood. Meaning blood symbolizes ties between certain people- families- but at the end of the day, blood is blood no matter what color or gender someone is. This entire scene reminded me of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice when he says,
“and what’s his reason? I am a Jew. Hath
not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison
us, do we not die?” (Act 3, Scene 1)
Throughout history, dominant white society has used blood- and the “impurity” of it, in order to justify oppression and segregation. But we all bleed- and we all feel. Blood ties people together, and binds people who otherwise would never get along or be together. This aspect of blood is especially manifested in the unborn child of Lena and Joe Brown. This future child shares both of their blood, therefore binding the two together forever. This is a responsibility Joe Brown runs away from- but even though Byron Burch (in my hopeful alternate ending for the novel) will claim this child as his own- he will never be truly his by blood. Lena knows that this child will forever carry the blood of her and Joe which is why she is so determined to find him- even when he has run away while she was giving birth.
Astute observations: blood is extremely important in the novel and equally problematic. I always find myself cringing at moment in which the text seems to sanction “scientific racism,” as when Gavin Stevens narrates the absurd battle between JCs “white” and “black” blood within his body. But the weight of the novel seems, to me at least, to emphasize that blood is something that’s always already “mixed up” (to use a recurring phrase from the novel). Yes, Lena pursued Joe Brown/Lucas Burch because his blood is in her child, but she also gets “mixed up” and thinks of Christmas as both (!) her child and her husband. I think this latter observation is closer to the truth the novel wants to explore: that kinship has more to do with “elective affinities” and constructions than biology and that Lena is kin to Christmas (and Johanna and Byron and Hightower) as one of the “outlandish” members of society.