Plum Bun - Understanding Plum Bun's Title

Understanding Plum Bun's Title

Plum Bun, Fauset’s second novel, sold 100,000 copies within 90 days of its publication, thus giving it the status of a best-seller in its time. The title, Plum Bun, illustrates some of the forces which drive the novel’s main character Angela Murray. The novel’s epigraph quotes the nursery rhyme from which the title is taken: "To market, to market / to buy a plum bun / Home again, home again / Market is done". A plum bun itself, which may be similar to the English Chelsea Roll and the American Cinnamon Roll, is a sweet pastry made of white flour, in which deeply colored currents, raisins, or prunes (plums) are baked. The use of the term "plum bun" is also a sexual innuendo as a plum bun can also be read as "an attractive piece."

Angela must come to grips with her colored and white racial heritage, as well as with her femininity (stereotypically seen as sweetness), before she achieves psychological wholeness. Although African-American women were typed in popular song as “a little brown sugar" or a “jellyroll,” Angela had to cease thinking of herself as a purveyor of feminine sweetness for sale, and instead step into new roles with inherent value.