"Marigolds" is a 1969 short story by Eugenia Collier. The story draws from Collier's early life in rural Maryland during the Great Depression. Its themes include poverty, maturity and the relationship between innocence and compassion. While teaching literature at the Community College of Baltimore County, she published "Marigolds" in Negro Digest, where it won the inaugural Gwendolyn Brooks prize for fiction; it was her first published story.
Plot
The story tells of a young African-American girl named Lizabeth who grew up during the Great Depression. In the beginning of the story, she is very childish and does not stop to think about her actions. With their friends, Lizabeth and her brother go tothe house of an elderly woman named Ms. Lottie and harass her while she tends to her marigolds by throwing stones at the marigolds and yelling rude things at her. They also make fun ofMiss Lottie's mentally disabled son, John Burke. As they run away from Miss Lottie's house after calling her an "old lady witch", Lizabeth begins to think about her actions and how they affect others. Later that night, Lizabeth hears her parents argue about jobs and money and talk about how they feel they can't support themselves. Lizabeth's mother works to support her family, but her father is out of a job and is upset because he believes that he, as the man of the house, should earn the money for the family. Out of shock and anger, Lizabeth sneaks over to Miss Lottie's house. She goes to the garden to destroy all the marigolds in a rage, only to come face-to-face with the old woman. Miss Lottie sees what Lizabeth has done to her flowers, and she is so shocked that she doesn't say or do anything. As Lizabeth realizes that the marigolds she destroyed were the only bit of hope and beauty Miss Lottie had left, she starts to regret her actions and begs Miss Lottie to forgive her. In the present, Lizabeth, who is now an adult, looks back on her childish actions with regret and states that their encounter was the end of her innocence and of her childhood. In the end, Lizabeth finally understands that the marigolds meant to be a symbol of hope even in rough times, and she has planted some of her own. She later said that she wrote the story during a time when she was quite unhappy. At this time, homosexuality was condemned, and Eugenia Collier incorporated it with the use of the "brightly colored" marigolds.
