SOURCE: Shelton, Frank W. “Ambiguous Manhood in Ernest J. Gaines's Bloodline.” CLA Journal 19, no. 2 (December 1975): 200-09.

In the following essay, Shelton elucidates Gaines's complex portrayal masculinity in Bloodline.

With the recent highly regarded television version of the novel, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Ernest J. Gaines's reputation and popularity have been enhanced substantially. His earlier works are consequently being reconsidered, but one of the curious facts of Gaines criticism is that his one volume of short stories, Bloodline, has been relatively neglected.¹ Certainly “The Sky Is Gray” is an extremely popular story—Gaines himself has noted that it “has been anthologized twelve to fifteen times.”² Considering his own opinion of his stories, about which he said, “I always knew my stories were better than anything else I had written,”³ the critical neglect of them is surprising, especially in light of the fact that the stories deal with...