The Gilded Six-Bits: Main Ideas

Marriage can be an imbalanced financial transaction.

From the very first scene of the story, the transactional nature of marriage is illustrated when Joe arrives home chucking money through the front door of his home with Missie May. The absurdity of this weekly ritual creates a metaphor that Joe is paying Missie May for her services as a wife. The ritual, while playful in nature, still highlights the fundamental imbalance in the marriage’s financial dynamics, since women in the 1930s were generally homemakers and unable to earn money on their own. Though the ritual is depicted as joyful on the surface, it reduces their marriage to a financial transaction. The way Missie May is forced to pick money up off the floor and rifle through Joe’s clothes for sweets and treats is inherently humiliating.

This depiction of marriage as an imbalanced financial arrangement is juxtaposed with the moment Missie May sleeps with Slemmons for money and suggests that marriage is in some ways just as oppressive to women as prostitution. Because Missie May’s value is based entirely on her ability to keep house and provide children, her infidelity represents a misguided attempt to balance the financial scales. Joe’s forgiveness of Missie May is only solidified when she gives birth to a son and he repeats the ritual of chucking money through the door for the first time since her betrayal. In that final scene, the amount of money Joe throws at Missie May has increased from nine dollars to fifteen dollars because her value has increased now that she’s born him a son. Although a redemptive moment for Missie May, she remains at the financial mercy of her husband, perhaps even more so now that she is a mother with a dependent child to care for.

The grass appears greener on the other side.

Both Joe and Missie May fall victim to thinking a different life would be better. Joe’s gleeful adulation of Slemmons at the beginning of the story illustrates his belief that his life would be better if he were wealthier and more charismatic. Joe reveals he is somewhat aware of how ridiculous his idolization of Slemmons is when he waits for Missie May to leave the room to emulate Slemmons’s protruding belly and swaggering walk. The scene highlights the absurdity that a man as strong and genuine as Joe would rather be unhealthy and braggadocious for the perceived status it would confer upon him. The allusion to famously wealthy men of the time—Henry Ford and John D. Rockefeller—is meant to highlight that Slemmons’s wealth is a charade and nothing to aspire to. However, Joe is still taken in by Slemmons’s illusion of a wealthy life and wants it for himself. Similarly, Missie May eventually loses her skepticism and begins to fantasize about finding gold on the side of the road. Ultimately this fantasy leads her to invite Slemmons into her bed and betray her marriage. It is not until Joe and Missie May behold Slemmons’s gilded coin up close that they realize the life they fantasized about was not nearly as valuable as the life they were already living.

Superficiality prevents genuine connection.

Both Joe and Missie May are so preoccupied with appearances that they fail to build a strong foundation of connection within their marriage. Although the couple seems happy on the surface, they are both preoccupied with presenting themselves as the perfect couple to their town and are fixated on superficial appearances. Joe parades Missie May around the ice cream parlor and church because he is fixated on Missie May’s beauty and he obsesses over having a son to complete his perfect family. Meanwhile, Missie May focuses on keeping an immaculate and smoothly running home while harboring deep discontent. Missie May’s insistence that she is a “real” wife and not one only for appearance at the beginning of the story is ironic because it reveals her subconscious fear that her whole life is superficial. Similarly, she changes her mind about leaving Joe after running into her mother-in-law because she would rather have the appearance of a solid marriage than actually have one.

The focus on the external world rather than the internal world of their marriage creates a weak connection between Missie May and Joe. Slemmons is able to lure them both with his gilded coins because the couple is so disconnected. When Joe finally spends the gilded coin at the end of the story, his monologue about not being fooled by Slemmons followed by his coin-tossing ritual with Missie May reveals a promising climax. Hopefully, the couple can heal their connection if they focus on each other rather than on external factors.

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