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On "The Gilded Six-Bits," Missie's infidelity test the strength of the marriage with her husband Joe, a marriage which utltimately weathers the storm. The marriage in " The Gilded Six-Bits" is spared because, despite Hurston's harships in her own marriages, she saw marriage as an important institution capable of providing possibilities in life. There are four main characters involved in this short story: Missie May, her husband Joe, Otis D. Slemmons, and the store clerk at the market. The story takes place in Eatonville, Florida, a southern, black working class town which looked to the payroll of the G.and G. Fertilizer works for its support. Joe and Missie May appear happy and stable depite their background of poverty and social life. When the story opens, immediately Hurston writes that, "there was something happy about the place," (335) referring to the yard of Missie May and Joe