Say Yes

Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1985

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Summary

Story Analysis

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Themes

Race as a Fixed Concept Versus Race as a Social Construction

One of the central tensions in the story is the conflicting definitions of race. The husband believes race to be immutable. For him, it is a firm barrier, which denies people of two different races mutual understanding. He claims he has “always gotten along just fine” with Black Americans but believes them to be foreign since “a person from their culture and a person from our culture could never really know each other” (1). The use of “our,” addressing his wife, supposes an affinity with other white people. However, white is not a cultural identity, but a social identity, which includes a number of different ethnic and cultural groups. Although the husband’s ethnic origins are not stated, he does not seem to have issues with white Americans from other ethnicities, but, for him, Blackness is completely alien. However, he does mention that “foreigners” should not marry American citizens because one can’t “understand someone who comes from a completely different background” (2).

His belief in whiteness as a shared and monolithic cultural identity is shattered when his wife disagrees with him. Ann believes there can be a mutual understanding between people of different races “if they love each other” (1). When Ann asks her husband if he would still marry her if she were African American, he responds “if you were black, you wouldn’t be you,” which Ann agrees with (2).

However, their disagreement is a complicated dialogue. If Ann were a Black woman, she would not be herself because of the social forces of American society. She would be seen and treated as a Black woman, which would change her experiences. This is what Ann concedes to. However, her husband believes that if she were a Black woman, there would be something inherently different about her, which would make her foreign and “other” to him—since he believes there’s a fundamental difference between Black Americans and white Americans.

His is an inherently racist stance. He considers race to be more than a social identity and believes there’s some deeper distinction between Blackness and whiteness, which can never be reconciled. That his wife disagrees with him is the first inkling he has that he mightn’t know everything about her, even though she comes from a similar background, and Ann suddenly becomes the “other” to him as well, with the husband describing her as a stranger by the end of the story. The husband’s lesson is that two people can be from the same background and still be incredibly different in the same way that two people from different cultures can fall in love and have successful relationships.

Reversal of Gender Roles

At the beginning of the piece, the husband and wife are washing dishes together, which is typical in their household since “a few months earlier he’d overheard a friend of his wife’s congratulating her on having such a considerate husband” (1). His identity as a “considerate husband” sets him apart from traditional expectations of masculinity. He’s happy to contribute to a task which is socially considered domestic and feminine.

“Say Yes” begins with a sense of equality within the household since “his wife [washes] while he [dries]” (1). However, as the couple argues about race relations, their gendered performances begin to shift. After her husband voices his disapproval of interracial relationships, Ann asks him, through a hypothetical scenario wherein she’s African American, “will you marry me?” (2). Through the imagined scenario, Ann proposes to her husband, hoping that he will say yes to her. He declines, which angers her. She leaves the kitchen, forcing him to wash the dishes by himself.

Ann goes to the living room where she flips through the pages of a magazine as if “studying every word” (2). Her action is juxtaposed with her husband cleaning the entire kitchen, making it seem “the way it looked when they were first shown the house” (2). After their argument, Ann refuses to help clean and offers a more masculine performance, waiting for her husband to finish cleaning. Her husband fulfills the role of the traditional housewife.

Passing as White

Although “Say Yes” is not explicitly a “passing narrative,” it gives a subtle nod to a common tradition in American Literature. Many works of fiction discuss the lives of people of African descent, who are light complexioned enough to be able to be read as white and, therefore, assimilate into the white world. Often these characters meet a tragic end because their ancestral origins are ultimately exposed. “Say Yes” does not follow this typical model but references the literary tradition. Ann has a strong reaction to her husband’s rejection of interracial marriage and asks her husband if he would marry her if she were a Black woman. It is never stated whether or not Ann is “passing” as white, and the story is not concerned with answering this question. However, after she poses this question to her husband, he begins to see her differently and questions how well he knows his wife.

He becomes uneasy and suspicious as he realizes that race is more complicated than he originally considered it to be. The husband becomes almost haunted by the idea of Blackness that after she poses this hypothetical question, he cleans the whole kitchen, so it looks “the way it looked when they were first shown the house, before they had ever lived there” (3). When Ann cuts her finger, Wolff is very deliberate with his language and continues to refer to “a single drop of blood”—a reference to the “one drop rule,” a racist law of the American South, wherein anybody with a “drop” of “African blood” was considered black in order to preserve “white purity.” The husband is so distraught by the argument that he “[scours] the linoleum where the drop of blood had fallen” and decides “he might as well mop the whole floor” (3). If we read the drop of blood as a Black person’s blood, even though it may only be in a hypothetical sense given Anne’s hypothetical proposal as a Black woman, we can see that the husband is trying to symbolically eliminate the presence of a Blackness.

Ann’s question rattles him. He’s overwhelmed by the idea of Blackness within his own home. At the end of the story, though in a desperate attempt to reconcile, he tells his wife he would marry her. However, as the two prepare for bed, he turns out the lights, as instructed, and is still uneasy. He “couldn’t see a thing” in the overwhelming darkness and he hears his wife, but to him it recalls “the sound of…a stranger,” which offers an ambiguous ending (4). There’s a possibility that Ann has been “passing” as white or that their argument coupled with his anxieties about Blackness have clouded his judgment, forcing him to question if he really knows his wife.