Masaryk University Faculty of Arts
Department of English and American Studies
English Language and Literature
Bc. Jan Beneš
Discourse on Sexuality in the Works of Zora Neale Hurston Master’s Diploma Thesis
Supervisor: Mgr. Kateřina Prajznerová, M. A., Ph. D.
2011
I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.
…………………………………………….. Author’s signature
2
Acknowledgement
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Kateřina Prajznerová, for her support, for invaluable feedback and suggestions during the writing process as well as for
devoting her time to revising both my thesis and the original essay.
3 Table of Contents
Introduction: Hurston‟s Agenda ...... 3
1. Imagi(ni)ng the Black Female Body: An Overview ...... 9
1.1 Polygenesis and Nineteenth-Century Scientific Racism ...... 9
1.2 Black Female Sexuality during Slavery ...... 13
1.3 Eugenics: Controlling the Black Female Body in the Modern Era ...... 19
1.4 The Black Female Body and the Development of Black Middle-Class Morals ...... 24
1.5 Black Middle-Class Morals and Their Resonance in the Harlem Renaissance ...... 27
1.6 Hurston‟s Response to the Discourse ...... 30
2. “Sweat:” The Black Woman‟s Double Plight ...... 33
Joe Clarke and the Eatonville Porch-Sitters ...... 43
Delia and the Revenge of the Serpent ...... 45
3. Color Struck: Pointing Out the Wrong Way ...... 53
Emma as a Cobble Stone ...... 64
4. TEWWG: A Quest for Independent Black Female Sexuality ...... 72
The American South: The Mule Woman and the New Woman ...... 73
Three Times is the Charm: Janie‟s Three Husbands ...... 80
Logan Killicks – The Middle Class Aspirant ...... 81
Joe Clarks – Hurston’s Omnipresent Mayor of Eatonville ...... 83
Tea Cake – The Aggressive Glance from God ...... 88
Janie‟s Return to Eatonville: As If Their Eyes Were Watching God ...... 94
5. Seraph on the Suwanee: From Getting Raped to Learning How to Handle His Case ...... 100
Arvay Raped to Submission ...... 103
Eighteen Years of Marriage: From Earl‟s Birth to His Death ...... 111
Reaching a Breaking Point: The Repeated Raping and Jim‟s Ultimatum ...... 118
1 The Return of the Serpent: Arvay‟s Journey to the Horizon ...... 123
Conclusion: A Woman Is Born ...... 139
Works Cited ...... 148
Summary ...... 154
Resume ...... 155
2 Introduction: Hurston’s Agenda
Zora Neale Hurston has become an integral part of the American literary canon, and some of her works, recovered after Hurston‟s death in poverty, have come to be regarded as masterpieces of American literature. Numerous studies, articles, and theses have been written about various themes that Hurston deals with in her literary art. Though she died forgotten and alone, Hurston, attracted both scholars and readers by her writing and by her depiction of pressing issues. Alice Walker, Hurston‟s admirer and literary follower, succinctly summarizes
Hurston‟s achievement in portraying in her works “a sense of black people as complete, complex, undiminished human beings, a sense that is lacking in so much black writing and literature” (xii-xiii). Hurston dares to write about poor southern black folk, portraying life in rural southern communities not in stereotypical terms so popular during the early twentieth century but rather as an inherent part of the African American experience. A Southerner herself, Hurston sought to, in both her anthropological and fictional work, to refute the negative image of southern blacks in literature and arts.
The rebellious Hurston addressed issues few of her peers tried to deal with. In trying to achieve a complex portrayal of African Americans as humans, Hurston focused on the often disregarded voice of the black female. Her works are imbued with women seeking to express their emotions and experience, women searching for their place in both the African American and the American nation. Hurston works thus provide a channel for promoting the cause of black women‟s empowerment and resistance to decades of male dominance, be it black or white, over their bodies, womanhood and decision-making. Hurston portrays black women as strong as well as weak, complete, and complex human beings capable of creating their own discourse and managing their own future.
This agenda of Hurston‟s resonates strongly through her art: much has been written about her use of narrative voice, her depiction of gender roles, classes, folk tradition, and
3 other themes. This thesis analyzes Hurston‟s works in terms of the author‟s portrayal of black women‟s sexuality, thus underscoring Hurston‟s transformations of the image of black women from mules, beasts of burden, to masters of their fate. Sexuality refers to a product of
“our discourses, our customs, our institutions, our regulations, our knowledges,” as Michel
Foucault famously posits in his History of Sexuality (158). In the context of African American history, sexuality as an imposed sexual identity is a vital aspect to be analyzed. As Siobhan
Somerville explains, “sexuality means much more than sexual practice per se. One‟s sexual identity, while at times linked directly to one‟s sexual activities, more often describes a complex ideological position, into which one is interpellated based partly on the culture‟s mapping of bodies and desires and partly on one‟s response to the interpellation” (6). The image of the black woman as a sexual beast is a recurrent one in the literature of, not only, the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century, and this representation hints at how black women‟s sexuality was constructed.
The thesis provides an overview of the discourse surrounding black women‟s bodies and, consequently, their sexuality in the United States of America, attempting to reveal the processes at play in the creation of an imag(in)ed sexuality of the black woman. Based on this historic and cultural context, the thesis seeks to analyze four of Hurston‟s works – “Sweat”
(1926), Color Struck (1926), Their Eyes Were Watching God (1938) and Seraph on the
Suwanee (1948) – focusing on the author‟s treatment of the stereotypical imagery on African
American females and their bodies, as well as their characters and morals, which were also part of the complex sexual identity interpellated onto black women. In particular, it is argued here that in her works, Hurston transforms the stereotypes of oversexed women into empowering tales of complex female characters whose claiming of their bodies and free expression of desires brings about their liberation from an overbearing system of patriarchy.
4 Hurston‟s approach, as argued here, does not involve only empowering plots – it also includes usage of narrative techniques and a creative vision through which the author re- claims the imagery of the black women‟s bodies. In Their Eyes Were Watching God and
Seraph on the Suwanee (henceforth referred to as TEWWG and Seraph), Hurston associates her female characters with the landscape of the South, thus underscoring the process of reversal in which women take back what is theirs: their bodies as well as the land that witnessed so much of their oppression. Moreover, Hurston connects her characters with forces of nature – a storm in TEWWG and a sea in Seraph – as well as animals – the serpents in
“Sweat” and Seraph. These forces and animals eventually become so powerful that they help the main characters to avenge the abuses perpetrated on them. In this manner, Hurston depicts, not only, black women as complex human beings capable of growth, experiencing, adapting, and decision-making. Their sexuality cannot be stultified by the black sexuality discourse and the consequent morals trying to imprison their corporal beauty under head rags like Joe does in TEWWG. Rather, the female characters get rid of what has been repressing their expression for so long and decide to manage their fate themselves.
This reversal of power, in which women get the upper hand through discovering their long-suppressed voice and the strength residing in their abused bodies, is exemplified in
Hurston‟s usage of the mule metaphor. Often imag(in)ed and used as mules in the fields, mere beasts of burden and animals which breed other animals, black women were not considered human. Hurston, however, transgresses this imagery in the mule metaphor by letting the mule, the black woman, revolt and literally kick, and in some cases kill, its master. Though not evident at first sight in “Sweat,” the metaphor is present in this short story as Sykes, the male protagonist, uses a bullwhip on Delia in order to scare her and make her succumb to his will.
Though Delia tells him she “aint fuh (him) to be drivin‟ wid no bull whip” (Hurston, “Sweat”
955), Sykes does not listen and scares Delia even more as he brings a snake home. However,
5 Delia, the mule, lets the snake kill Sykes in revenge for his tyrannical behavior. In TEWWG, the metaphor is much more apparent as Nanny, the main character‟s grandmother, warns Janie about becoming a man‟s mule. Janie‟s husbands‟ behavior confirms Nanny‟s fears and warnings, but Janie finds her way out of the repressive marriages and saves herself from the mule‟s fate. Finally, Arvay, the female heroine in Seraph, though a white woman, is also likened to a mule, or at least a horse, by her husband. After much internal struggle, Arvay kicks her master in the end to show him who is in power in the marriage and finally wins respect from Jim. Through this metaphor, Hurston comes up with new imagery for the new, sexually expressive and liberated black woman.
Finally, it needs to be reiterated that Hurston depicts her female characters and their bodies as growing rather than withering and static in their repressive status quo – it is therefore posited here that her literary works are tales of searching for not only sexual self- identification but also for complex personal development. The struggle for sexual liberation is accompanied with a search for voice, for expressing one‟s wishes, desires, and emotions, as well as for equal treatment in relationships and marriage. Hurston‟s works, however, do not provide a universal tale of such liberation. By contrast, analyzing her works from the early short story “Sweat” through her first play Color Struck to the acclaimed TEWWG and the castaway Seraph, one can find an evolutionary process which traces developmental stages of the black woman‟s quest for sexual freedom and equal treatment as well as Hurston‟s developing views on black women‟s sexuality.
Thus, while Delia in “Sweat” gradually finds her voice and expresses her condemnation of Sykes‟s behavior towards her, she is at a loss about what to do next once her husband dies. There is no space for her to exercise her newly found power of expression.
Color Struck offers another view on sexuality: Emmaline‟s anxiety over her dark black body drives John away into the embrace of a mulatto girl, Effie. Emmaline is so color-struck that
6 she hates her own skin, her mulatto child, and ultimately even John as he comes back in the final scene of the play. Emmaline ends up desperate, helpless against the discourse that surrounds her body – she is acutely aware of what her skin entails in terms of sex, she panics, and destroys her life. In these two works from her early apprentice years, Hurston sets the stage for her more empowering narratives of female sexuality.
While the first two works analyzed in this thesis thus reveal Hurston‟s early views on black women‟s sexuality and symbolize the first developmental stages of the black woman, the two novels then represent Hurston‟s mature views. In TEWWG, Janie experiences three marriages only to arrive at a decision that she is better off alone, experienced and sexually aware and free. In Seraph Arvay finds new roles for her body as she discovers the power residing in her – she willingly re-enters the tumultuous marriage with Jim to finally become an equal partner. It is this decision-making, acts of will, that differentiate the female characters from Hurston‟s late novels from the hesitant women of her earlier writings. To underscore this differentiation and movement between the various stages of development,
Hurston associates her characters with certain trees. While “Sweat” ends with the desperate and lonely Delia under a chinaberry tree, Janie imagines her life in terms of a budding tree, she sees it as a map of her progress, and finally Arvay‟s mulberry tree spurs new energy and sexual power in her. Through this empowering imagery connecting characters with landscape and specific trees, as well as through her usage of the mule metaphor which exemplifies the transformation from repression to managing one‟s fate, Hurston provides a distinct portrayal of black women, focusing on their bodies, the expression of their desires, and their search for the self.
The thesis begins with an overview of how black female bodies were imag(in)ed, and referred to in the nineteenth and early twentieth century: from the early polygenetic discourse to the complex middle-class imposition of morals on the allegedly oversexed black females, it
7 seeks to provide context and a framework for the textual analysis of Hurston‟s writings. The following section deals with Hurston‟s short story “Sweat” and the author‟s early attempts to position herself as an artist in the discourse on black women‟s sexuality. Then, Color Struck is analyzed, bringing to the forefront Hurston‟s experiments with form while exploring the same issues of sexuality and voice. Analyses of TEWWG and Seraph are the next two sections, where Hurston‟s more complex treatment of women‟s sexuality is discussed, highlighting the essential position Seraph has in Hurston‟s evolution as a writer concerned with sexuality and self-identification. The thesis ends with a conclusion where Hurston‟s approach towards black women‟s sexuality is summarized and her contributions to the discourse on sexuality are evaluated. The next section after this introductory part provides an overview of the discourse surrounding black women‟s bodies in order to give contextual framework for the textual analysis of Hurston‟s texts.
8 1. Imagi(ni)ng the Black Female Body: An Overview
As argued in this thesis, the struggle for claiming one‟s body in Hurston‟s works is the author‟s answer to the imagery and discourse which has surrounded the black female body since the nineteenth century. The following section provides an overview of how the black female body was perceived and described in the nineteenth century and in the early twentieth century. This contextual framework is used as a starting point for analyzing Hurston‟s texts.
The overview follows the development of the discourse on black female sexuality from its beginning, highlighting the gradual employment of medicine and scientism in the discourse which brought about scientifically-backed theories on how black women are overtly sexual and how this behavior negatively affects both their own communities as well as the American nation in general. The discourse reaches its highpoint in the form of the eugenics movement which becomes the central national ideology in the inter-war years. The Harlem Renaissance which fits into this time period was affected by the discourse on sexuality as well. Reacting to the negative representations of black women as oversexed beings, the African American middle class reinforced a model of patriarchy wherein black women were delegated a separate sphere and thus prevented from shaming their communities with their sexuality. These middle class morals resonate throughout the Renaissance era and, as argued in this thesis, they are reflected, along with the discourse on black female sexuality, in Hurston‟s texts as well. The overview section begins with a description of nineteenth-century scientific racism.
1.1 Polygenesis and Nineteenth-Century Scientific Racism
Sexual and sexually deviant portrayal of the black female body did not pertain, due to slavery, to the United States only – it resonated in Europe ever since the slave trade began to flourish, and the discourse on black female sexuality remained omnipresent until the twentieth century.
In fact, black women were perceived as sexually different long before the modern period. In
9 his study of black female imagery in the arts and medicine of the Western civilization, Sander
L. Gilman claims that “the association of the black with concupiscence reaches back into the
Middle Ages [yet] by the eighteenth century, the sexuality of the black, both male and female, becomes an icon for deviant sexuality in general. […] The black figure appears almost always paired with a white figure of the opposite sex” (209). As the “other,” the black body was used to highlight differences between the white and other races, between the normal and the deviant. From the Middle Ages onwards, the black body served as a symbol of the undesirable and, at the same time, the immoral.
The usage of the black body in the arts and in popular culture gained momentum once science got a hold of it, supporting claims of overt and deviant sexuality of black women with scientific studies: “The relationship between the sexuality of the black woman and that of the sexualized white woman enters a new dimension when contemporary scientific discourse concerning the nature of black female sexuality is examined” (Gilman 212). In the United
States, even though sexology as a field did not develop until late nineteenth century, there existed what Sommerville calls „Nineteenth-Century Scientific Racism.‟ These “scientific studies of race […] tended to fall into two general schools of thought, monogeny and polygeny.” While “monogeny […] held that all of the so-called races were members of the same species and that they had descended from common ancestry […] polygeny held that different races were actually different species with distinct biological and geographic origins”
(22). Stemming from this theory were notions1 such as that, for instance, “blacks were permanently inferior to whites and that racial mixture would have dangerous social and
1 Based on Darwin‟s evolutionary theory, later polygenists argued that “blacks were an „incipient species,‟ holding that there had been no racial progress or intellectual development of blacks in recorded history, and that
[…] blacks remained biologically inferior” (Sommerville 24). Also, theory of recapitulation that resulted from
Darwinism held that “adult African Americans and white women were at the same stage as white male children and theretofore represented and ancestral stage in the evolution of adult white males” (24).
10 biological consequences” (23). The method of comparative anatomy, “the chief methodology of nineteenth-century racial science” (Sommerville 25), subsequently “located racial difference through the sexual characteristics of the female body” (26) and put into spotlight not only the supposedly anatomical, but also sexual deficiencies. In this way the anatomy and the language surrounding the exploration of the anatomical structure of other races, in this case of the African American race, became increasingly sexualized.
This gradual sexualization of African American corporeality was evident in scientific observations, for example from travels to Africa. These found their ways into the discourse on black sexuality and it was not uncommon to read of “black women […] copulat[ing] with apes” (Gilman 213). The insertion of such findings further exacerbated the negative denotations of black sexuality and, more importantly, “the black female thus comes to serve as an icon for black sexuality in general,” as Gilman claims (213). Moreover, in terms of the human race, “the black occupied the antithetical position to the white [and such] polygenetic view was applied to all aspects of mankind, including sexuality and beauty. The antithesis of
European sexual mores and beauty is embodied in the black” (Gilman 213). Among the most engaged sciences in the polygenetic discussion were medicine and biology, which, in line with the subject matter of their fields, addressed the black female body. For example, according to the then anatomist Georges Cuvier, “the black female looks different. Her physiognomy, her skin color, the form of her genitalia label her as inherently different”
(Sheftall 23). As Gilman adds, “the black female was widely perceived as possessing not only a “primitive” sexual appetite but also the external signs of this temperament – „primitive‟ genitalia” (Gilman 213). The black female body thus became an object of science which examined its sexual parts and further propagated the notion that blacks were overtly sexual.2
2 This scientific interest in the black corpus did not, however, concern black males. As Gilman points out,
“[W]hen one turns to the descriptions of the autopsies of black males from [the same period as the examinations
11 This employment of science in the portrayal of black women will continue into the twentieth century where it will reach a high point in the form of the American eugenics of the 1920s.
As far as the nineteenth century and the description of the black female body is concerned, Cuvier‟s description of the black female and her sexual organs mentioned above
“dominates all the medical description of the black during the nineteenth century. To an extent, this reflects the general nineteenth-century understanding of female sexuality as pathological: the female genitalia were of interest partly as examples of the various pathologies which could befall them but also because the female genitalia came to define the female for the nineteenth century” (Gilman 216). Also, “if [the black women‟s] sexual parts could be shown to be inherently different, this would be a sufficient sign that the black were a separate (and, needles to say, lower) race” (216). The black female was in this way positioned into the discourse on female sexuality and womanhood in general. At the same time, however, she represented the entire race. She was ascribed a position starkly different to that of the white female and since her sexual parts were so different, so enlarged,3 the black female was the most sexed female and human being there was.
of female sexual parts], the absence of any discussion of the male genitalia whatsoever is striking” (218). As it will be pointed out later, this situation changes in the post-Civil War American South, where the black male body comes to be viewed as dangerously sexual.
3 For example, “on of the most consistent medical characterizations of the anatomy of both African American women and lesbians was the myth of an unusually large clitoris. […] One account of racial differences between white and African American women […] had focused on the size and visibility of the clitoris; [the examiner] had perceived a distinction between the „free‟ clitoris of „negresses‟ and the „imprisonment‟ of the clitoris of the
„Aryan American woman‟” (27). In constructing these oppositions, such characterizations, literalized the sexual and racial ideologies of the nineteenth-century „Cult of True Womanhood,‟” which explicitly privileged white women‟s sexual „purity‟ while implicitly suggesting African American women‟s sexual accessibility”
(Sommerville 28).
12 Treating this deviance of black women, the sciences dealing with black female bodies went further: the anomalousness of black female sexual parts even made some scientists claim that the “malformation” of their sexual organs led to what was termed lesbian love. The black female was also charged, through her bodily deformations and the resulting sexual vigor, with primitive lasciviousness, which meant prostitution – unbridled sexuality of the black and the prostitute thus merged in one, further burdening the black female body imagery. The paralleling of black women with prostitutes was not, however, all that nineteenth-century scientists found. As Gilman observes, “the favorite theory […] is that the skin color and attendant physiognomy of the black are the result of congenital leprosy. […] The association of the black, especially the black female, with the syphilophobia of the late nineteenth century was thus made manifest. Black females d[id] not merely represent the sexualized female, they also represent[ed] the female as the source of corruption and disease” (229-31). As can be seen, the black female and her body became, especially in the nineteenth century medical discourse, an icon for overt sexuality, low morals, illness-spreading, and lesser race. These labels are used in the twentieth century, too. As both a woman and a black, the black woman served as a counterpart to the white race and to the white female. Chastity and purity were contrasted with impurity and uncontrolled libido. The medical discourse, which so highlighted the opposition between white and black as well as between white women and black women, was further used in creating a more general discourse – a discourse promoting white middle- class morals. Nowhere was this discourse more obvious than in the institution of slavery.
1.2 Black Female Sexuality during Slavery
The institution of slavery played an important role in the promotion of the early discourse on
African-American sexuality. In the ante-bellum period, black women had to, according to
Hazel Carby, “confront the dominant domestic ideologies and literary conventions of womanhood which excluded them from the definition “woman‟” (Reconstructing
13 Womanhood 6). Moreover, as Frederick Douglass famously recounts in his narrative, black enslaved women were perceived predominantly as sort of breeding-machines which produced new slaves once the slave trade was abolished. As Douglass observes, “[…] the fact remains
[…] that slaveholders have ordained, and by law established, that the children of slave women shall in all cases follow the condition of their mothers; and this is done too obviously to administer to their own lusts, and make a gratification of their wicked desires profitable as well as pleasurable; for by this cunning arrangement, the slaveholder, in cases not a few, sustains to his slaves the double relation of master and father” (2).
Thus, black women found themselves in a peculiar situation in the institution of slavery. As historian John Blassingame argues, as far as the sexual behavior of black female slaves goes, “‟a slave woman […] could be neither pure nor virtuous;‟ existing in circumstances of sexual subordination, women were literally forced to offer themselves willingly” (qtd. in Reconstructing Womanhood 21) to their masters. “The interpretative ambivalence evident in the juxtaposition of „forced‟ and „willingly‟ indicates the spectrum of representation of the female slave from victim to active collaborator” (22).4 One can see a curious contradiction between black women being conceived of as both non-women and, at the same time, as sexual objects. On the plantation and within the workings of the slavery system, the difference between white and black women mentioned above was further exacerbated. As Barbara Welter observes in “The Cult of True Womanhood,” “purity was as essential as piety to a young woman, its absence as unnatural and unfeminine. Without it she was, in fact, no woman at all, but a member of some lower order. A „fallen woman‟ was a
„fallen angel,‟ unworthy of the celestial company of her sex” (154). The black woman was thus in no control over her body or the portrayal of that body by others, especially white
4 This led, according to Carby, to “historical reluctance to condemn as an act of rape what is conceived in patriarchal terms to be sexual compliance” (Reconstructing Womanhood 22).
14 slave-owners, or her social role as a slave. There was a system of preventing the black woman from becoming a person – she was an object.5 Hurston addresses this objectification of black women in some of her texts as will be shown later in the thesis.
Stemming from the assigned roles of black women and the imagery and sexological discourse surrounding them, their moral character was logically questioned as well. As
Beverly Guy-Sheftall claims, “the most persistent theme in the writings of North American white men was the devaluation and defeminization of Black women. […] The notion of woman as saint or virtuous lady in the minds of white men could not have applied to Black women […] given the need to justify slavery” (23). Thus, the sexological, medical, and anthropological discourse described black women as starkly different from the white women and the white race in general, and the institution of slavery pushed the discourse into its extreme. 6 This extremity is vividly portrayed in Hurston‟s TEWWG as Nanny recounts her experience with slavery and tries to explain to Janie that black women are in no position to decide their fate. Thus she persuades Janie to get married because it is only in marriage,
Nanny seems to believe, that a black woman can possibly regain her feminine role as a mother and a wife. Hurston‟s Janie, however, defies this plan of Nanny‟s and devises her own way of defining her womanhood, breaking free from the objectification of the black female body.
5 As Beverly Guy-Sheftall observes, black women “were disgustingly lustful […] but exceptionally unfeminine.
They were alluring but unattractive; they attracted and repelled at the same time” (23). Slavery, typified by the slave-owners‟ “insatiable desire for cheap labor […], reinforced the images of African women as beasts of burden, workhorses, and hypersexual. […] Their bodies were literally to be used in the fields from sunup to sundown, exploited to fulfill white men‟s lust and to give birth to slave children who would keep the plantation system afloat” (23).
6 Sheftall adds that “this animal sexuality that Black women possessed did not result in criminal behavior on their part (as was the case with Black men who raped white women) but could be used to justify their sexual exploitation at the hands of white men. In other words, white men could turn to them for the uninhibited sex that was denied them by virtuous, chaste white women” (25).
15 Nevertheless, in the overview of the nineteenth century sexological discourse, present in slavery as well, the representation of black women as overtly sexual breeding machines explains the development of the imagery and the discourse surrounding the black female body. Intentionally, the fact that the black women bred new children and got raped – allegedly willingly as Blassingame underscores above – was used as an argument for keeping black women in their place and portraying them as dangerous, in need of taming, breaking in, and being held under surveillance and control. As Sheftall points out, “whites felt that notions about the „ideal [Victorian] woman‟ did not apply to Black women because the circumstances of slavery had prevented them from developing qualities that other women possessed and from devoting their lives to wifehood and motherhood, the proper roles for women” (23). The contrast here is clear, the slave black woman could never attain the position and value of the white woman due to her sexed body: “the Black woman‟s allegedly innate racial traits
(promiscuity, filthiness, vulgarity, lewdness, indecency, ugliness) tended to cancel out those uniquely feminine traits that white women were assumed to possess (modesty, purity, chastity, beauty)” (24). In terms of the cult of true womanhood then, black women were, yet again, no women at all since their impurity was obvious in their living conditions, constant pregnancy with new slaves and their promiscuity. In fact, they came to be viewed as “overtly sexual,”7 reflecting the medical discourse‟s labeling of black women as such. Moreover, one
7 Overt sexuality stood in direct opposition to repressed sexuality, which, according to Hazel Carby, represented a sexuality “placed within a shell of modesty, meekness, and chastity. The effect of overt sexuality of the black women on the white male was represented in an entirely different form from that of the figurative power of white female sexuality. Confronted by the black woman, the white man behaved in a manner that was considered to be entirely untempered by any virtuous qualities; the white male, in fact, was represented as being merely prey to the rampant sexuality of his female slaves. A basic assumption of the principles underlying the cult of true womanhood was the necessity for the white female to „civilize‟ the baser instincts of man. But in the face of what was constructed as the overt sexuality of the black female, excluded as she was from the parameters of
16 more notion of black female sexuality unfolded from black women‟s exclusion from true womanhood: that of the black matriarch with “unnatural attributes of masculine power”
(Reconstructing Womanhood 39).
Hurston, however, transforms some of these notions in some her texts. While during the nineteenth century, the sexed body prevented black women from becoming proper women, Hurston‟s Janie from TEWWG remodels this notion: she gradually lays claim to her body and develops a mature sexuality which allows her to return to Eatonville as a beautiful black goddess. Her return reverses the description of black women as ugly and lewd into one of Janie as powerful, self-confident, and sexually experienced. Moreover, Janie possesses at the end of the novel a feminine strength which allows her to get rid of her oppressive husbands, thus turning the negatively perceived masculine power of the black women into a weapon of her empowerment. In Seraph, though Arvay is considered a white character, her origins as a “cracker” – a term used by Hurston – lead Arvay to believe that she does not have any feminine virtues and this feeling haunts her for a good portion of the novel. It is only when she finds that her strength resides in her body, similar to Janie and Delia in “Sweat,” that Arvay is capable of becoming a complex woman.
Hurston also addresses black male sexuality in some of her works, for example in
Jonah’s Gourd Vine, which is an autobiographical tale of Hurston‟s father and his philandering. In terms of the nineteenth century discourse on black sexuality, the men were addresses as well. Contrary to black female sexuality, however, African American manhood and sexuality were often portrayed as passive, but this image changed drastically right after the end of the Civil War. Robyn Wiegman posits in “The Anatomy of Lynching” that with the virtuous possibilities, these baser male instincts were entirely uncontrolled. Thus, the white slave master was not regarded as being responsible for his actions toward his black female slaves. On the contrary, it was the female slave who was held responsible for being a potential, and direct, threat to the conjugal sanctity of the white mistress” (Reconstructing Womanhood 27).
17 advent of Emancipation and its attendant loss of the slave system‟s marking of the African
American body as property, “lynching emerge[d] to reclaim and reassert the centrality of black [male] corporeality” (356). Lynching became a tool of power and of owning the black male‟s body again, projecting onto it social, sexual, and economic frustrations of the white mob8: “As the most extreme deterritorialization of the body […] lynching guarantee[d] the white mob‟s privilege of physical and psychic penetration, grant[ed] it a definitional authority over social space, and embodie[d] the vigilant and violent system of surveillance that under[wrote] late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century negotiations over race and cultural power” (Wiegman 356). Thus, the black men did not exert much control over their bodies and their portrayal either.
As a result, the white mob started to define black man‟s corporeality and, in turn, also the mob‟s own sexuality. The product of this definitional process is the “mythology of the black male as rapist, [which] works the fault line of the slave‟s newly institutionalized masculinization by framing this masculinity as the bestial excess of an overly phallicized primitivity” (Wiegman 357). That is, “while the slavery period […] often envisioned the
Uncle Tom figure as the signification of the „positive good‟ of a system that protected and cared for its black „children,‟ once emancipated these children became virile men who wanted for themselves the ultimate symbol of white civilization: the white woman” (Wiegman 357).9
8 For instance, this projection is vividly portrayed in James Baldwin‟s short story “Going to Meet the Man.”
9 In a similar fashion to Hazel Carby‟s explanation of the black woman‟s overt sexuality and white woman‟s role in it as a savior of the white men from the rampant black woman, Wiegman observes that “the white woman serves, in the ethos of nineteenth-century racialism, as a pivotal rhetorical figure for shaping the mythology of the black rapist. Using her emblem as the keeper of the purity of the race, white men cast themselves as protectors of civilization, reaffirming not only their role as social and familial „heads,‟ but their paternal property rights as well. […] The white male maintains a position of superiority not only in assigning place to his women, but especially in keeping black people, particularly black men, in the place he had assigned for them. In this dual
18 Thus, the cult of true womanhood, wherein the white woman, unlike the black one, is the desired object, comes to play a role in the formation of the perception of black male sexuality discourse as well. In both instances, it produces a black person, be it a man or a woman, who lusts for a white person. In this manner, the sexual discourse did not only present
African Americans as sexually driven people – it also established a hierarchy of sex and desire, where the black male stood above the black female and where white color of skin and purity stood further above black color and lust. The overview of the sexual discourse thus underscores the fact that black women and men, as well as white women up to a point, had no control over what happened to their bodies – they were the objects of the discourse. However, due to their capacity for reproduction, the black women and their allegedly overt sexuality represented the entire black race. Hurston does not address the question of reproduction as neither of her black heroines gives birth to any children, Arvay, the heroine of Seraph being the only exception. Nevertheless, in her emphasis on female sexuality and representations of bodies, the author seems to turn her female characters from sexualized objects into confident, sexual subjects.
1.3 Eugenics: Controlling the Black Female Body in the Modern Era
The sexological discourse on black men and women remained vigorous even after the abolition of slavery, finding its target in the arrivals of nonwhite (im)migrants and working- class people in the urban spaces of the increasingly modernizing United States. One of the new manifestations of the polygenesis-based scientific racism was also the biosocial movement called eugenics, which “saturated U.S. culture during the 1920s. It seeped into politics. It permeated social science and medicine. It shaped public policy and aesthetic role, the mythology of the black male rapist simultaneously engineers race and gender hierarchies, masking the white male‟s own historical participation in „miscegenating‟ sexual activities and ensuring his disciplinary control over potential sexual [and] political […] liaisons between black men and white women” (Wiegman 360).
19 theory. It influenced the nation‟s literature. It affected popular culture” (English 1). It came about as the result of what Wendy Kline calls “an unprecedented outpour of racism in the middle class” (8) in the 1890s. While in the South, white men vented their fury over their failing manhood, the urban middle-class suffered from other maladies. As “the middle-class economy had become corporatized and bureaucratized […] men lost touch with the product of their work. […] Echoing these external, economic factors that threatened the power of the white middle class and, in particular, white manhood, internal symptoms of increasing fragility and weakness manifested themselves in the male body” (8) in the form of neurasthenia, “a lack of nerve force” (8). According to many, “the outbreak of neurasthenia was a sign that white middle-class manhood had lost its virility” (8). At the same time, the virility and sexual force of the African Americans and other ethnic groups was allegedly on the rise: “while the middle class seemed to be fading away, the strength and numbers of not only African Americans but also of the working class and immigrants seemed to increase”
(Kline 9). The manhood of the white male was thus challenged by other ethnicities and the question of manhood turned increasingly racial. Something needed to be done with this negative phenomenon – and eugenics seemed to provide the remedy.
Eugenics and its proponents addressed the “woman question,” which also threatened
“the authority of white middle-class manhood in the late nineteenth century” (Kline 10). The discussion went on about the “woman adrift,” that is the young, working-class, newly- urbanized women, who, living independently of their families and leading lives single,
“challenged […] middle-class conceptions of womanhood” (10). Parallel to the “woman adrift” ran the discourse on “the new woman,” who also raised demands to privileges and rights which had been hitherto only delegated to men. This way, such women violated the earlier cult of true womanhood and the Victorian morals accorded to women, their bodies, and sexuality. Moreover, “women were becoming masculine just as men were becoming
20 increasingly weak and effeminate” (Kline 11). This process was challenging the moral order of the American society (11). Keeping with the polygenetic approach towards racial roles and the resulting mores, especially those pertaining to the white middle class, eugenics targeted women, both white and non-white, in trying to solve this double-edged menacing turn of events.
Eugenics linked gender and race in its concern about the middle-class morality and sexuality: “By regulating the sexuality of working-class and immigrant women, eugenics would reform the sexual behavior of „women adrift‟ and limit the procreation of the less
„civilized‟ – that is, nonwhite and working-class – races” (Kline 13). At the same time, “by encouraging middle-class white women to return to full-time motherhood, eugenics would both prevent the new woman from succeeding in her „vain attempts to fill men‟s places‟ and ensure that the white race once again would be healthy and prolific” (14). Eugenics turned to white women for the betterment of the race and to non-white women for the blame for the degradation of the race, thus echoing the Victorian-era perception of black women as having no morals. Nonwhite women, African American ones among them, were charged as being virile, but too virile; as having sexuality which threatened the very fabric of what the white race in America has been trying to build.
In order to get this message across to a wider audience, eugenics addressed medical science as its source of legitimization, much like the racial scientific discourse on black sexuality did in the nineteenth century. As Daylanne K. English observes, “eugenics became so widely accepted that it might be considered the paradigmatic modern American discourse.
[Moreover,] it represented scientism and progress” (2). Doctors espousing eugenics devised a concept of the “mother of tomorrow.” This was a symbol of the so-called positive eugenics which was embraced even by some women, who, “while supportive of feminism and women‟s rights, recognized the potential danger of abdicating domesticity and motherhood in
21 the name of equality: they would lose their moral authority” (Kline 19). The opposite concept, symbolic of the negative eugenics, was that of the moron, a person unfit for reproduction; a concept which targeted nonwhite women in particular.
Henry Goddard, one of the most famous psychologist involved in the nineteenth- century eugenics, started using a “scale of mental measurement” and IQ tests in order to differentiate between the fit and the unfit (Kline 22). Having first made a distinction between the idiot and the imbecile, Goddard found out that this was not enough to imbue eugenics with the language of legitimate science and he therefore reinvented the term moronia. A moron possessed the mental qualities of a twelve-year-old, at best. The vagueness of the term allowed Goddard to include new symptoms in the category of the feebleminded, which would then suddenly include “unwed mothers and prostitutes.” Owing to Goddard‟s work, eugenics came up with a distinction between normal and other: “since moronia emerged as the binary opposition to normality, and its diagnosis was based as much on moral transgressions as on low intelligence scores, normality became defined as much by moral purity as it did by mental capability. The boundary between what was considered pathological (or backward) and what was considered normal (or modern) was scientifically reformulated on standards of morality”
(Kline 22-26). 10 A similar process will be seen in the Harlem Renaissance discourse on black middle-class morals.11
As far as Hurston and eugenics is concerned, in TEWWG, Janie finds solace and freedom in getting rid of her oppressive husbands, that is, outside of marriage. This ending of the novel, however, seems to be in stark contrast to what the status of a married woman entailed according to eugenics and Goddard‟s differentiation between what and who was considered pure and impure. Janie as an unwed black woman who shows off her bodily
10 English points out that “between 1907 and 1930, twenty-four states enacted statutes permitting compulsory sterilization of feeble-minded or otherwise dysgenic state residents” (10). 11 English, however, claims that some Harlemite writers, such as Nella Larsen, W.E.B. DuBois, and Jean Toomer actually proposed in their writings their own versions of eugenics. For more on this topic, see English.
22 beauty in front of others should be perceived as impure and immoral; someone the American race should shy away from and prevent from reproducing. The fact that Hurston portrays
Janie in such a manner hints at how rebellious, subversive, and deconstructive some of
Hurston‟s texts are in their depictions of black female sexuality. Janie, for one, seems to be a clear contrast to that what was deemed moral in the 1920s.
Eugenics charged nonwhite women with not only extremely strong sexuality, low intelligence, but also with low morals, which threatened to spread to the middle-class and infect the whole society. The works of scientists propagating eugenics thus updated the previous notions on black female sexuality with scientific studies. Using scientific discourse and the new methods of psychology, eugenics managed to label, again, nonwhite women as unfit, as improper, as a menace, and succeeded in targeting them as the “other” against which morality needed to be strengthened and conserved even in the modern era. The seemingly scientific-turned-public discourse charged nonwhite women‟s bodies and imposed limitations on them, linking their sexuality to their intelligence. Both white and nonwhite women‟s bodies were being constantly policed.
Eugenics thus became an integral part of the Progressive movement of the early twentieth century and, through its focus on the urban new, as well as adrift women, it concerned especially the biggest cities of the US – the policing of black bodies, in particular female ones, found its new form in the North. Eugenics became a modern manifestation of the polygenic school of thought, which turned its attention to nonwhite people living in the increasingly urbanized areas of the United States. From the control exerted over black bodies in the South in the previous centuries, morality and restrictions regarding sexuality and the black body image moved northwards along with the masses of rural African Americans during the Great Migration. New York and Harlem were no exceptions.
23 1.4 The Black Female Body and the Development of Black Middle-
Class Morals
With a science-based discourse which promoted the notion of black women being too sexual and dangerous, and black men being viewed as rapists, the black community, now also in the urban North, had to cope with and react to this situation. The period of the Great Migration and the movement of the African Americans from rural into urban spaces spurred another wave of new notions on black sexuality. As Charles McKinner and Rhonda Jones observe,
“mirroring the reformist efforts of the Progressive Movement, African American women‟s club associations […] were formed in the attempt to eradicate negative images of their virtue and sexuality [and] challenged the idea of the „silent helpmate‟” (274). While the period from
1880 to 1920 “popularized the image of the black beast rapist,” the black women‟s clubs worked on creating a new image of the black woman as they “proclaimed women‟s superiority in issues concerning the moral welfare of the black community, but the equality of men and women in all other matters” (Hornsby 381-82). This superiority of women in question of morality, however, soon turned into submission and the development of a newly strengthened patriarchal system.
This system relied on the resurgence of black males as the leaders of the race, as having roles equal to those of the white men; at least in the realm of the family and the community. As Ann duCille observes, “for newly freed black, men more so than women, laying claim to America meant claiming as well the gender codes of American patriarchal society, including the acceptance of monogamous, made-dominant marriage as a symbol of civility – as a sign, ironically, of man‟s liberation from the paternal incursions of slavery”
(50). Being aware of the role of the marital institution in the workings of the patriarchal system, Hurston, in her portrayals of marriage, clearly opposes the notion that the submissive role of the black women in marriage shall bring uplift to the race. Rather, it seems to bring
24 uplift to the black male‟s confidence and bring the woman down. Marriage in the works of some of the Harlemite female writers often parallels “the oppressions of the slave system”
(duCille 50). Hurston addresses the institution of marriage in Janie‟s tale in TEEWG.
The renewed patriarchal system did not emerge immediately, but was rather a result of two parallel processes. While women began to form clubs in order to promote a racial cause, men found their outlet somewhere else because, as Angela Hornby further accounts, “with disenfranchisement […] men were denied an important avenue for expressing their manhood; and with the construction of black men as dangerous potential rapists, they also found themselves saddled with a definition of self that they had to respond to” (385). In order to improve their position and image, “not unlike black women who sought to improve the status of their race, by turns playing up their feminine side and then asserting their feminist side in community work, […] black men pondered what best defined their manhood” (Hornsby 385).
The outcome of this scoping for a means of racial and sexual uplift was an establishment of a new type of morals – black middle class morals that mirrored white middle class ones.
The mirroring of the white middle-class morals brought about a strengthened patriarchal system, in which women played an important double-edged role. “Confronted with a racially defined middle-class status that restricted them occupationally, politically, and legally, black elites formulated a „moral economy‟ that stressed moral privilege and patriarchal conventions within black communities” (Hornsby 385). For instance, “black middle-class men and women subscribed to white beliefs regarding the „separate spheres‟ ideology, a belief system inscribed in the South‟s racial and gender hierarchy, and which dictated distinct social roles for both sexes” (385). These morals of the black middle-class thus created an image of subservient black women – with purposefully suppressed sexual
25 drives – helping to uplift and improve the image of the black race, described in terms of manhood.12
This image-improving permeated into literature as well. As Ann duCille argues,
“much of the prescriptive literature of the era, which addressed itself to gender conduct, not only placed [black] women firmly in the private sphere but also made it the black woman‟s duty to home, hearth, and black humanity to offer her husband unconditional support in pursuit of his manhood rights: suffrage in the public realm and dominion in decision-making, discipline, and fiscal affairs in the private” (50). The morals, which stemmed from these celebrations of black manhood, imposed new limitations of morality mainly on black women.
As described above in the section on eugenics, the Black Migration intensified the discourse on black female sexuality. As Carby explains, migration of black women from rural to urban areas “generated a series of moral panics. […] The behavior of black female migrants was characterized as sexually degenerate and, therefore, socially dangerous”
(“Policing the Black Woman‟s Body” 739). It was described “as a threat to the progress of the race; as a threat to the establishment of a respectable urban black middle class; as a threat to congenial black and white middle-class relations; and as a threat to the formation of black masculinity in an urban environment” (742). This threat was epitomized by the figure of
“black women blues singers, musicians, and performers” (754) – figures, which Alice Walker celebrates in The Color Purple as sexual liberators in the character of Shug Avery.
The incorporation of racist and sexist grounding for discourse on African American sexuality shows that instead of promoting a new vision of the African American, example of which was supposed to be the New Negro, the collaboration of black women and men brought
12 This can be seen, among many other examples, in W.E.B. DuBois‟s “The Talented Tenth” which calls for the
“the Negro race, like all races, […] to be saved by exceptional men. […] Men we shall have only as we make manhood the object of the work of the schools, intelligence, broad sympathy, knowledge of the world that was and is, and of the relation of men to it” (4, italics mine).
26 about a hierarchy, existing moreover in the already racist and sexist society, which re-imposed a set of limits intra-racially as well. In the first thirty years of the twentieth century, the
African American community thus functioned under the auspices of a patriarchal and racist model adopted in part by the black middle classes. The model imposed moral boundaries on female sexuality. This process surfaced also in the Harlem Renaissance, which has been celebrated as a liberation movement of the black race and the background to the rise of the
New Negro.
1.5 Black Middle-Class Morals and Their Resonance in the Harlem
Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance and the artists, philosophers, patrons and others involved in the movement reacted to the developing black middle class morals in various ways, and Hurston was among those, as argued by this thesis, who resisted the re-imposition of the patriarchal and sexist morals. Visible in Hurston‟s emphasis on the acquisition of voice by her female characters and their claims to their, often sexually active, bodies, the Harlem Renaissance offered a channel for dissent against such morals.
Overall, as Christa Schwarz points out, the image of the Harlem Renaissance as
“joyful abandon, experimentation, and a relaxation of traditional morality […] reflects only one side of an era equally shaped by racism, epitomized by a regrouping of the Ku Klux Klan, and fears about developments in the field of sexuality and gender – particularly the changing role of women and the more open discussion of topics relating to sexuality” (6). Schwarz further claims that “it is evident that the black bourgeoisie attempted to control the black community [and] reacted to changes [in the field of sexuality] in very much the same way as their white counterpart, or […] even more vigorously” (15). What the black middle class sought in its patriarchal functioning and white morals was “respectability” and since “African
27 Americans had been portrayed and treated as sexually suspicious and excessive in the form of sexless „darkies‟ and „mammies‟ or „oversexed studs‟ and „Jezebels‟ […] the black bourgeoisie aimed at sexual „normality‟ by means of an adherence to high moral standards that whites, who had the power to define respectability, had denied them for centuries” (15).
Moreover, “by emphasizing strict sexual morality, the black middle class sought to define itself as distinct from the working class” (Schwarz 16).13
It is important to add here that even though Schwarz differentiates quite sharply between the black middle and working classes, Hurston often blurred these categories in her works. Though dealing with sexuality in detail – as will be shown – Hurston did not rely in her discussion of female sexuality so much on classes as on the critique of the adoption of white morals and views by African Americans. Examples of this critique can be seen in the depiction of he porch-sitters of Eatonville in both “Sweat” and TEWWG, Mrs. Turner in
TEWWG, and others. Tea Cake, for example, is an extremely abusive male character, who displays patriarchal and sexist views and behavior toward Janie, but if one were to categorize him in terms morals associated with class, the categorization would prove difficult. Rather, what seems to be in the forefront here is the fact that much of the views on black female sexuality stemmed from the views held by the white middle class, adopted by the black middle class, but imposed on all classes.
Hurston thus seems to critique not so much the black and white middle classes as originators of the discourse on black sexuality as she focuses on the widespread adoption of these sexist and (intra)racist views by so many black males and, sometimes, also females. She traces the effects of these views on her female characters and depicts the characters‟ struggles
13 On the other hand, “the black bourgeoisie was tied to working-class African Americans in an ambivalent relationship: […] as it was [also] inextricably linked to all African Americans and consequently had to aim at the moral elevation of the black community” (Schwarz 16).
28 for liberation from such limiting discourse; Hurston portrays their resistance to the policing and control attempted by the communities, be it working class or middle class ones. The overview of how the Harlem Renaissance reflected the black middle morals thus remains valid, but Hurston approaches the discourse in her works in a more ambiguous manner.
To summarize, the sexological discourse focused on black men and women, the black woman even came to represent the entire race, much like the white represented the virtues of the white race. Thus, the biggest threat to the African American patriarchal middle class morals, adopted from the white middle-class morals, was the sexual woman. In Schwarz‟s words, “many men feared that the „New [Negro] Women‟ aspired to become „masculine‟ by breaking out of a gender category that traditionally assigned them to the space of the household and the task of motherhood, thereby threatening male dominance” (17). Even literary critics commented on the developments of female sexuality and sexuality became a recurring theme in newspapers due to vice reports14 and in literature due to an increasing number of works dealing with same-sex and overt female sexuality.15 In fact, “the one sex- related topic standing out in critics‟ comments is black female sexuality. […] Literary references to lesbianism, like other sexual portrayals of black women, were clearly regarded as unacceptable – a reflection of the black bourgeoisie‟s desire to challenge and transform the
14 Hurston herself became a topic of one vice report, because she was arrested for allegations of sodomy. For more, on this topic see the section dealing with Seraph.
15 One of the best-known and most radical works dealing with sexual behavior and existing sexual discourse was the magazine Fire !!!. This was supposed to be a publication “that was to expose the vices and stupidities of the race […] and alternative manifesto to The New Negro” (Schwarz 34). It was a product of a group called
Niggeratti, member of which was also Zora Neale Hurston. This group of Harlemite artists “claimed to stage a
„second renaissance‟ in which the Renaissance leaders‟ „New Negro‟ was replaced by what [Langston] Hughes described as „a brand new nigger‟” (37).
29 sexualized stereotype of African American women” (Schwarz 39).16 Hurston challenged in her art these limitations imposed on black literature – Color Struck and “Sweat” were both published in the revolutionary magazine Fire!!, and her novels such as Jonah’s Gourd Vine,
TEWWG, and Seraph also probe female sexuality in a manner so divergent from what was deemed acceptable during the early decades of the twentieth century.
In conclusion, the discourse described in this introductory section targeted the black female as oversexed, and as threatening the life of the community. The discourse posited that black women were impure and could never become ladies. It created an image of black female as exceedingly sexual and this image was perpetuated even at the beginning of the twentieth century, although the underlying ideology of true womanhood was not relevant anymore. It also reflected the attempt of the black bourgeoisie to uplift its image of overtly sexual beings – both in cases of its male and female members – to normality. African
Americans tried to build upon patriarchal rules of community, which transferred the guilt and loss of manhood from the black male onto the oversexed black female, who in turn became a submissive „partner‟ of the black man. This discourse projected these newly strengthened rules and representations onto literature and the arts.
1.6 Hurston’s Response to the Discourse
A member of the revolutionary current within the Harlem Renaissance, as evident in her membership in the Niggeratti, Zora Neale Hurston refused to succumb to the views of black women proposed in the discourse on black female sexuality. She was not the only female writer to focus on sexuality, however, but rather an artist giving a new impulse to an already existing struggle in black literature for claiming a place for the black woman. As duCille
16 As duCille points out, “newspapers and journals such as the Colored American repeatedly argued that black women owed it to the race to allow their men to feel tough and protective at all costs as part of the effort to uplift the race by uplifting its male members” (50).
30 argues, Jessie Fauset and Nella Larsen dealt with black woman‟s sexuality in the Harlem
Renaissance as well. Along with Hurston, these writers felt the “need to redefine who
„women‟ were in the process of laying claim to womanhood, while also renegotiating gender relations within their own increasingly patriarchal black communities, as they claimed the right to participate in the American body politic and to control the politics of their own bodies” (30). Their literary art focused on black women and their plight in the post-
Reconstruction period which gradually brought a model of patriarchal society for the African
Americans, and ascribed a separate sphere to women, as evidenced in the overview above.
Hurston did not use the older framework of passionlessness17 in order to portray black women in terms other than oversexed and thus dangerous to their communities, but updated this framework by focusing on the process of liberation by claiming the women‟s sexuality and exploring their passions and desires. The works of the Renaissance authors seeking to free black women‟s bodies share some elements. As duCille points out: “black women begin to become actively sexual beings, implicitly questioning their positioning as objects of male desire and contemplating, if not fully exploring, their sexual selves” (87). This is true for a number of Hurston‟s work – Janie in TEWWG and Arvay in Seraph are described as sexual beings and the depictions of their lives focus on them becoming aware of their sexuality and
17 Early black women writers created, according to duCille, “virtuous, often light-skinned, mulatta heroines whose sexual purity reigned on the printed page as a rebuttal to the racist imaging of black women as morally loose and readily accessible. [S]uch idealized colored heroines‟ [Victorian sexlessness] was both a rhetorical device and a political strategy designed to link black and white womanhood under the protective umbrella of chastity and virtue. […] Passionlessness provided the ideological underpinning of claims for female moral superiority that were used to elevate women‟s status and to expand their possibilities, even as it delimited female social and sexual behavior. […] For early black women writers, literary passionlessness negated a negative: it endowed virtue to the historically virtueless” (31-32).
31 the power it brings. A conscious exploration of one‟s sexuality is thus in the forefront of some of Hurston‟s heroines‟ quests.
The other element in the activist women‟s writings is the criticism of marriage for its reinforcement of patriarchal rules, while patriarchy is also explored and deemed as having detrimental effect on black women and their development (duCille 87). It is clear from what is pointed out here that Hurston devotes her art to searching for ways to rid black women of the stereotypical portrayal as exceedingly sexual creatures whose libidos prevent them from becoming equal members of their communities and that is why their sexuality needs to be curbed. Hurston goes against the discourse described above and depicts her female characters as searching – through exploring their desires and the limitations to these desires set by other people, especially men – for self-identification. It is only when they free their bodies from patriarchal control that Hurston‟s heroines become full-fledged characters. Hurston‟s works are thus narratives about searching for ways of finally expressing that which has been suppressed and hidden from the heroines by others. The following sections focus on textual analysis of four of Hurston‟s works, commencing with the short story “Sweat.”
32 2. “Sweat:” The Black Woman’s Double Plight
Zora Neale Hurston wrote her short fiction mostly during the Harlem Renaissance, and her novels in the 1930s and 1940s, years after the Renaissance had reached its peak. “Sweat,” first printed in the magazine Fire!!, belongs among her pieces created in the heydays of the
Renaissance movement, yet the fact that this story was published in the rebellious, short-lived venue for young artists sets Hurston apart from the literary mainstream of the Renaissance. In fact, the story puts her outside not only for her choice of this periodical, but also for the fact that her short fiction was that of a black female writer. Though in his foreword to Short
Fiction by Black Women, 1900-1920, Henry Louis Gates observes that “the progenitor of the black literary tradition was a woman [Phillis Wheatley], [and] all subsequent black writers have evolved in a matrilinear line of descent” (xvi), the short fiction by female writers of the
Harlem Renaissance has gone without notice for a long time.
In her seminal article on African American women‟s short fiction in the Harlem
Renaissance, Judith Musser points out that “scholars have tended to ignore women who wrote short stories during the Harlem Renaissance [and] their works were rarely anthologized and are scarcely studied by scholars of the Renaissance era” (28). Hurston‟s “Sweat” thus belongs to two worlds: though published during the glory period of the Renaissance, it was disregarded, certainly by scholars, because of the author‟s gender. Nevertheless, Hurston‟s short fiction and “Sweat” in particular exemplifies the themes that the women‟s short fiction of the Renaissance era dealt with. Through “Sweat,” Hurston joined other black female writers of the period and highlighted her early commitment to rebellion and to different artistic and intellectual approaches towards black women‟s issues.
Women‟s short fiction of the movement emphasized slightly different themes than the rest of the literature created and published at that time. On the general level, “women short
33 story writers responded to the call to create literature that would ennoble the African
American” (Musser 27). In their works, “there are few descriptions of idyllic beauty or pastoral harmony [when writing about the deep South], even within women‟s stories that involve rustic settings and simple folk. Instead, the lives of poor women in women‟s writings involve struggle and conflict. Likewise, this realistic portrayal is usually not written satirically or in the picaresque mode, for there are few stories that evoke wit, humor or on-the-road adventure” (Musser 29-30). The setting and the mood of the short fiction written by black women was therefore gloomy, often realistic, and exploring women‟s struggles.
By portraying the South as a murky place, where women have to fight for their place under the sun, the women‟s writers set themselves visibly from the black male artists. While
Robert Bone described, for example, Hurston‟s short fiction as “the idealization of the rural past […] simplicity” (qtd. in Di Candia 10), Musser pinpoints the fact that the female characters in the black women‟s short fiction actually deal with current and prevalent issues.
“The conflicts that face these characters are daily, immediate living concerns, such as how to find and keep a job, save enough money, feed, clothe, and educate children, deal with a spouse (or life without a spouse), and maintain personal dignity in the face of routine oppression and prejudice” (30). The women short fiction writers thus found and explored their niche within the African American experience and “the importance of this is that it strongly suggests a gendered point of view which involves ritualistic journeys, articulated voices, and symbolic spaces characteristic of a tradition of African American women‟s writers” (Musser
30). Hurston‟s short fiction, as well as her novels, belong to this tradition, too.
Though disregarded by scholars, the women‟s short fiction played a crucial part of the
Harlem Renaissance intellectual and artistic agenda: the women writers brought to the forefront issues, which did not appear in many other works published during that era. Gender, inequality between black men and women set against the background of the Jim Crow South,
34 social and economic dynamics of the life in the South, and the very fact that they dealt with the South are characteristics of the women‟s writers (short) fiction.
As mentioned, Hurston contributed to this female literary niche in her own way. As
Wilfred D. Samuels observes, “Hurston‟s early stories reveal the ideas of an author with clear convictions about the issues and ideas that will become the centerpieces of her longer works.
[…] Hurston‟s stories provide the genesis of her exploration of a theme that seems of singular importance to her throughout her career as writer: the quest for female empowerment in a patriarchal world” (240). “Sweat” is an example of Hurston‟s short fiction and the themes it discusses: it is the dark tale of Delia, a washwoman, who struggles economically, physically, and sexually in her tumultuous relationship with the womanizer Sykes. Robert Hemenway appreciates the short story as “a remarkable work, her best fiction of the period. [As] a perfect fusing of the Eatonville environment and the high seriousness of self-conscious literature, it illustrates the unlimited potential in Hurston‟s folk material when an organic form grew from the subject matter” (47). “Sweat” provides a glimpse into what Hurston considered important in her fiction, and what she strove to explore and unravel in much of her art – racial, class, and sexual dynamics in the South. It also confirms her membership in the group of the women‟s short fiction writers of the Renaissance era, in both choice of subject matter and its setting and focus. Finally, “Sweat” shows Hurston‟s approach towards and views on black female sexuality vis-à-vis life in the South, among both white and black men; it is one of the author‟s initial attempts at emancipating her female characters from this double-edged situation and space.
“Sweat” opens with a scene with Delia “squatted in the kitchen floor beside the great pile of clothes, sorting them into small heaps according to color, and humming a song in a mournful key, but wondering through it all where Sykes, her husband, had gone with her horse and buckboard” (Hurston, “Sweat” 955). The reader learns that Delia is a hard-working
35 woman, she is working even at “eleven clock […] on Sunday,” while her husband is off somewhere. She is not happy about her situation, otherwise she would not be singing in a mournful way. As she is sorting the clothes, thinking of Sykes, “something long, round, limp and black fell upon her shoulders and slithered to the floor beside her. A great terror took hold of her. It softened her knees and dried her mouth so that it was a full minute before she could cry out or move. Then she saw that it was the big bull whip her husband liked to carry when he drove” (Hurston, “Sweat” 955). The fact that Sykes, instead of a simple greeting, uses his bull whip on his wife‟s back signifies something about their marriage: while she is working late on a Sunday night, Sykes is out, leaving her home alone. And when he comes back, he uses a whip on her back, as if establishing his role of a master or an overseer over Delia and her fate. The image and the atmosphere of the opening scene clearly set the mood for the rest of the story and bring back the metaphor of the mule which Hurston extends in her TEWWG and Seraph.
When Delia cries out and asks Sykes “what you throw dat whip on me like dat? You know it would skeer me – looks just like a snake, an‟ you knows how skeered Ah is of snakes,” the husband just laughs and retorts cruelly: “Course Ah knowed it! That‟s how come
Ah done it. […] Ah don‟t keer how bad Ah skeer you” (Hurston, “Sweat” 955). Sykes has used the whip on Delia intentionally and it has apparently made him happy. The way Hurston describes Sykes‟s whip, however, hints at Sykes‟s urge to dominate Delia physically, because he cannot or does not want to assert his male role sexually. As Sharon L. Jones explains,
Sykes‟s “long, black, round bullwhip becomes symbolic of [his] sexuality. The unmistakable phallic imagery reinforces Sykes‟s sense of himself as a sexual creature, yet the emphasis on
“limp” also suggests the ineffectual nature of that sexuality in their marriage. The whip represents a masculinity by which he constantly lords it over her in his mistreatment, his physical abuse, and his philandering with other women” (84). Physical contact is missing in
36 their relationship; there is not a sign of it throughout the story, except for Sykes‟s abuse of
Delia. They are apart sexually and this gap shows in Sykes‟s behavior and his attempts to dominate Delia. At the same time, his use of a bullwhip reveals his other frustrations, as the reader soon learns.
As their quarrel continues, Delia tells Sykes that using a bullwhip on her for the fun of it is “a sin. Some day Ah‟m gointuh drop dead from some of yo‟ foolishness” (Hurston,
“Sweat” 955), which is a prophecy that almost comes true at the end. Moreover, Delia suddenly shifts the power in their quarrel to her side when she continues: “Nother thing, where you been wid mah rig? Ah feeds dat pony,” revealing that she is in fact the breadwinner in the relationship. Sykes reacts, in frustration and disgust: “You sho is one aggravatin‟ nigger woman! […] Ah done tole you time and again to keep them white folks‟ clothes outa dis house. […] Next time, Ah‟ gointer kick „em outdoors” (956). This reaction of
Sykes‟s further unravels the dynamics between the two characters: Delia works hard and goes to church, Sykes is abusive, sexually incapable or unwilling, and utterly inappreciative of
Delia‟s toil. To make his point of disgust over Delia‟s work for the rich white people, Sykes
“stepped roughly upon the whitest pile of things, kicking them helter-skelter as he crossed the room. His wife gave a little scream of dismay, and quickly gathered them together again”
(956). He then finishes his frustrated act by threatening Delia that he “will throw [the clothes] out and put mah fist up side yo‟ head to boot” (956). The man the readers see here is unhappy, enraged, and, most of all, desperate. When Delia speaks next, Sykes‟s motivation for the abuse finally surfaces.
While at the beginning the reader sees Delia reminding Sykes of her ownership of the pony and thus assumes that Delia earns more money than her husband, the situation becomes more obvious as “Delia‟s habitual meekness seemed to slip from her shoulders like a blown scarf. She was on her feet; her poor little body, her bare knuckly hands bravely defying the
37 strapping hulk before her” (Hurston, “Sweat” 956). Instead of remaining on her knees as she had been until this point, Delia finally rises up and faces Sykes; she rebels, and uses the one weapon she has got against her cruel husband: money. “Looka heah, Sykes, you done gone too fur. Ah been married to you fur fifteen years, and Ah been takin‟ in washin‟ fur fifteen years. Sweat, sweat, sweat! Work and sweat, cry and sweat, pray and sweat!” (956), Delia summarizes her situation. Not only has she been sweating for white people and their dirty clothes, but she has been feeding herself and her husband with this work. The only appreciation he shows is, however, abuse and pretense that he does not understand what Delia is hinting at: “What‟s that got to do with me?,” he asked brutally” (957), thinking his usual aggression will put Delia down.
As evident from the evolving dialogue, however, Delia will not give in this time. She is, in stark contrast to him, changing as a character by standing up for herself: “What‟s it got to do with you, Sykes? Mah tub of suds is filled yo‟ belly with vittles more times than yo‟ hands is filled it. Mah sweat is done paid for this house and Ah reckon Ah kin keep on swetin‟ in it” (Hurston, “Sweat” 957). She rightfully claims possession for her pony, her house, and her dignity. This quarrel between Delia and Sykes over who deserves what position within their relationship provides a social commentary on the domestic and economic life of the black lower class in the rural South; gives an anthropological undertone to the unveiling story.
By focusing on Delia, Hurston pinpoints especially the desperate situation of the black woman, who struggles to survive in both the physically abusive marriage and the economically abusive job market of the South, where, as the author illustrates, any work, even from the hands of white people, was good. There were not many job opportunities, and as
Diane K. Lewis explains, “black women, on account of male exclusion from the job market, have been forced to share with black men marginal participation in the public work world of the dominant society through menial and ill-paying jobs. Their economic contributions have
38 often been essential to their families. Their important economic role has assured them power over crucial resources available to a racially excluded group” (345).18 Delia does not seem to possess much power here, it seems, or she does not seem to be using it in order to tame her abusive husband. She does not know there is some power in her which could be used against her husband. In a similar manner to Janie in TEWWG or Arvay in Seraph, it takes Delia some time to find out how she can avenge Sykes‟s behavior. Her time comes later in the story, when she uses the connection to her white employers in order to scare Sykes.
The economically crucial role of the black women did not have the same effect as in the white society. “Black women have held a relatively high position within a dominated society. This contrasts with the deference accorded white women in the dominant society.
For, unlike white women, black women have lacked deference in the dominant society principally because of the stigma of race. Within the dominated society, their source of power has become one basis of denial of deference” (Lewis 345). Hurston reflects this paradox in
“Sweat:” Delia works hard and is a proud owner of a house and a pony, yet her husband shows no sign of respect of her. The racism of the limited job market combines with Sykes‟s sexism and chauvinism here to underscore what sort of environment Hurston is potraying and what kind of characters she is interested in as an artist.
18 Quoting Angela Davis, Jones also describes the historical situation in the Jim Crow South, where job market was extremely limited: “African American women historically have worked as domestic help for low wages. By 1910 more than 50 percent of African American women held jobs, and about a third of these women worked as domestic servants. During the heyday of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s, more than 50 percent worked as domestics, and by 1930, three-fifths of the African American female workforce was employed as domestic help. The number of African American women employed as domestics decreased during World War II, but in 1960 one out of every three African American women in the workforce still worked as a domestic servant. Hurston‟s characterization of Delia as a domestic worker reflects the reality of limited job opportunities for black women. This reality had interesting implications for racial, sexual, and class politics. African American women performed the majority of domestic work in their own homes as well as the homes of white bourgeois women who could afford domestic help” (83).
39 Delia finds not deference but surprise in Sykes‟s face when she “seized the iron skillet from the stove and struck a defensive pose, which act surprised [Sykes] greatly, coming from her. It cowed him and he did not strike her as he usually did” (Hurston, “Sweat” 957). It is as if Hurston is describing a familiar scene in the Jones‟s household. Only this time, something stops Sykes and he does not attack Delia as usual. And so she continues: “That ole snaggle- toothed black woman you runnin‟ with aint comin‟ heah to pile up on mah sweat and blood.
You aint paid for nothin‟ on this place, and Ah‟m gointer stay right heah till Ah‟m toted out foot foremost” (957). Delia defies Sykes and tells him that will have to kill her in order to have the house and the other woman. Instead of hitting her per usual for her brave monologue,
Sykes hits her by different means: “Well, you better quit gittin‟ me riled up, else they‟ll be totin‟ you out sooner than you expect. Ah‟m so tired of you Ah don‟t know whut to do.
Gawd! how Ah hates skinny wimmen!” (957). Instead of attacking her body with his fists,
Sykes attacks it with his words, denigrating her looks which are stigmatized by his abuse and her hard work.
Sykes‟s words are not surprising in the light of what Lewis points out: “black men, unable to get and keep jobs, display resentment toward black women who assume the role of
„provider‟” (345). Concomitantly, the roles played by white women which are highly valued, that is, “„the driving force behind every successful man,‟ the valued sex object, are frequently denied black women: the first because of the exclusion of black men from the public world, and the second because of the impossibility of attaining a white standard of beauty” (345).
Thus, when Sykes hits Delia‟s body with his retort, he voices another typical condition of the then life in the South: black women were subjected to white standards of beauty, and to white morals attached to female beauty. Hurston develops this idea more in Their Eyes Were
Watching God, where Jody Starks hides Janie‟s head under a scarf, in order to subject her body to him as well as to remind her that she is not a white lady to be showing herself in
40 public. Sykes, in attacking Delia‟s appearance, her skinny figure, which is at the same time in opposition to his standards of beauty, aptly sums up her situation and her limitations. Along with her economic role, which does not bring her respect, she is not a viable sexual object either. The hard work has made her skinny to the point of losing her sexual attractiveness and allure for Sykes, hence his limp bullwhip. Hurston, through Sykes‟s words, comments on
Delia‟s condition, and on the way black men can use the woman‟s position to abuse her even more.
At the same time, however, Hurston does not leave her female character powerless, and strives to portray her as a strong woman. After his threat to kill her, “a little awed by this new Delia, he sidled out of the door and slammed the back gate after him. […] She knew very well that he would not return until nearly daybreak also. Her work over, she went on to bed but not to sleep at once. Things had come to a pretty pass!” (Hurston, “Sweat” 957; emphasis mine). Though the readers have just been shown Delia‟s plight as a black woman, Hurston pushes her female character forward, describing her as a “new Delia” whose husband is so surprised by her defiance that he leaves the house. Also, by staging a power reversal, Delia seems to arrive at a new point in her tale – the quarrel does end with Sykes‟s assumedly usual departure for the night, but it leaves Sykes surprised and also set on killing Delia, as is obvious from his threat. Delia stands up for herself, despite Sykes‟s vicious attack, and realizes that this time, things may actually change, hence her words when going to bed.
Before the end of the first scene, Hurston portrayes Delia‟s marriage to Sykes in a manner similar to the poetic natural imagery she develops in Their Eyes Were Watching God as well as in Seraph on the Suwanee:
She lay awake, gazing upon the debris that cluttered their matrimonial
trail. Not an image left standing along the way. Anything like flowers
had long ago been drowned in the salty stream that had been pressed
41 from her heart. Her tears, her sweat, her blood. She had brought love to
the union and he had brought a longing after the flesh. Two months after
the wedding, he had given her the first brutal beating. […] She was
young and soft then, but now she thought of her knotty, muscled limbs,
her harsh knuckly hands, and drew herself into an unhappy little ball in
the middle of the big feather bed. Too late now to hope for love […] Too
late for everything. (Hurston, “Sweat” 958)
Marriage, in its ideal form, is here described in terms of flowers, though there are not any in
Delia‟s case. It is, nevertheless, an image which Hurston will use later on in her works. Delia envisions her marriage in shattered pieces, glued together by her sweat, the money she has been able to earn, as well as by her love. What she holds on to at the end of her vision is her house, the very symbol of the little economic power she has: “She had built it for her old days, and planted one by one the trees and flowers there. It was lovely to her, lovely. […] Oh well, whatever goes over the Devil‟s back, is got to come under his belly. Sometime or ruther,
Sykes, like everybody else, is gointer reap his sowing. […] His shells could no longer reach her. Amen” (Hurston, “Sweat” 958). The house in fact responds to her love, while Sykes does not. It is the one thing that appreciates Delia‟s sweat and blood and love. When she realizes this, she decides to never give in to her husband again, she “build[s] a spiritual earthworks against her husband” (958), thus employing even her devout religiosity in her determination to fight her husband‟s abuse in the future. By the end of the first scene which has brought such change of dynamics in Delia and Sykes‟s marriage, Delia, when Sykes comes early in the morning and is his oppressive self again, shows “triumphant indifference to all that he was or did” (958) and goes to sleep in peace.
42 Joe Clarke and the Eatonville Porch-Sitters
Hurston pauses before she continues in Delia‟s tale to let other characters share wisdom on the unraveling tale with the reader. She does a similar narrative pause in Color Struck, where in Scene III she lets all characters on stage dance and express their relationships through movement, dance, distance and proximity. And she lets marginal characters speak about Janie and Jody, as well as Janie and Tea Cake, in TEWWG. Hurston employs this narrative technique even in her early prose and lets the men on Joe Clarke‟s porch speak for the
Eatonville community: “It was a hot, hot day near the end of July. The village men on Joe
Clarke‟s porch even chewed cane listlessly” (Hurston, “Sweat” 958). Along comes Delia with her pony, “the rusty backboard was heaped with baskets of crisp, clean laundry.” The porch then starts discussing Sykes Jones and his inability to provide and care for his wife: “Sykes
Jones aint wuth de shot an‟ powder hit would tek tuh kill „em. Not to huh he aint. […] It‟s too bad, too, cause she wuz a right pretty lil trick when he got huh. [But] too much knockin‟ will ruin any „oman. He done beat huh „nough tuh kill three women, let „lone change they looks”
(958). The whole Eatonville thus seems to know everything about Delia and Sykes, and especially about the way Sykes has been treating Delia for the last fifteen years. They have not done anything about it though.
Nevertheless, the men on the porch like Delia and they dislike Bertha, Sykes‟s lover, and the conversation then turns to Sykes‟s womanizing tendencies, the readers learn that he has tried coming onto some of the porch men‟s wives. Suddenly, Joe Clarke joins the conversation with a poetic and powerful monologue:
Taint no law on earth dat kin make a man be decent if it aint in „im.
There‟s plenty men dat takes a wife lak dey do a joint uh sugar-cane. It‟s
round, juicy an‟ sweet when dey gits it. Bu dey squeeze an‟ grind,
squeeze an‟ grind an‟ wring till dey wringe every drop uh pleasure dat‟s
43 in „em out. When dey‟s satisfied dat dey is wrung dry, dey treats „em lak
dey do a cane-chew. Dey thows „em away. Dey knows whut dey is doin‟
while dey is at it, an‟ hates theirselves fuh it but they keeps on hangin‟
after huh tell she‟s empty. Den dey hates huh fuh bein‟s a cane-chew an‟
in de way. (Hurston 959)
Joe Clarke, the richest man in Eatonville, the mayor and the voice of the black middle class – as the readers learn in TEWWG – here explains his views on marriage, condemning men for their behavior towards women, while excusing them for their natural behavior at the same time. This scene with Joe Clarke in the forefront is crucial for a number of reasons: this is the same Joe Clarke, who, under the name of Joe Starks, marries Janie in TEWWG and then treats her like a stalk of sugar-chew. As “a member of the black bourgeoisie […] he deconstructs the politics of race, class, and gender in heterosexual relationships and astutely examines the roots of Sykes‟s misdirected and projected anger toward Delia,” (Jones 85) only to treat his wife the same way in Hurston‟s novel. As a black male, Clarke leaves maneuvering room for Sykes, he excuses and shows understanding for his behavior, because he says that Sykes is in a different category of men – the one which does not have it in itself to let women breathe freely. By creating an excuse for Sykes, Clarke himself becomes suspect, although only in the context of Hurston‟s life work, rather than just this short story. Nevertheless, the fact that
Clarke does not live up to his own bourgeoisie standards and morals concerning women in
TEWWG goes to show how much Hurston mistrusted the black middle class morals imposed on women and their bodies. It also underscores the fallacy of men, even as powerful as
Clarke, in Hurston‟s works – there are not many loyal, decent male figures.
Still, there is one more reason why the porch scene is important, why Hurston lets the men speak the way they do: as they chew sugar cane and “let [the chew] dribble over the edge of the porch” (Hurston, “Sweat” 959), the men embody the same process Clarke is describing
44 in his soliloquy. Some of the men have wives at home, who are waiting for them to return from their afternoon of porch-sitting. The men let their cane chew dribble, highlighting the slow process that is the disintegration of their own marriages. The commentary scene is thus
Hurston‟s commentary on these men as well. And to drive home her point with the porch scene, Hurston introduces Sykes and Bertha into the scene: “Sykes and Bertha arrived. A determined silence fell on the porch.” Significantly, the men become silent when faced with the men they have been gossiping about, planning a revenge on him. Sykes enters Clarke‟s store and starts buying things for Bertha, when Delia arrives on the scene. In front of his wife,
“pleased […] for Delia to see,” Sykes tells his lover to “git whutsoever yo‟ heart desires,
Honey” (960), buying all the things Bertha desires with Delia‟s hard-earned money. The scene ends with the porch men coming back on the porch, chewing on melon, gossiping about
Sykes some more.
Delia and the Revenge of the Serpent
The intermezzo scene thus brings no resolution to Delia‟s tale, except for the fact that the readers now know that Sykes has no scruples and publicly ridicules his wife. Also, the
Eatonville male community, though disgusted by Sykes‟s behavior, remains silent when bearing witness to Sykes‟s insolence. Confirming their emasculated position within the class and gender hierarchy of the South, “the porch-sitters […] fail to do more than talk” (West 28).
The continuous portrayal of men as useless and as full of talk, but no action – as exemplified by both the porch men and Sykes, too – contrasts with the way Hurston empowers her female characters, not only in “Sweat,” by giving them voice, which they then use to act. It is no coincidence that while men in “Sweat” talk about what they would do and to whom, they sink to inactivity and muteness when faced with the actual moment of action.
At the same time, it is only natural for Hurston that Delia finds her voice when threatened by Sykes‟s limp long black bullwhip – a tool used for mules – and then sets to
45 action, driving Sykes home and, eventually, out of her life. In terms of the sexual discourse this thesis is focusing on, the men‟s inability to speak up when asked shows their emasculation, their „limpness‟ so to speak, while the females‟ grasp of their voice stands for coming to terms with their violated bodies and bleak condition, and their determination to turn their voice into a powerful weapon set on action as well as letting their hitherto muted sexualities flourish. Delia is here only a predecessor to what comes in Janie‟s case in
TEWWG, yet it shows the imagery and techniques Hurston employs in discussing her views on female sexuality.
After the intermezzo comes a short section in which Hurston summarizes the events of
July. Sykes keeps on seeing Bertha in front of the whole Eatonville community, including
Delia, thus choosing the sexually attractive woman full of energy, just like Joe Clarke has explained above. The way Sykes describes Bertha, the way he flatters her, is overtly sexual –
Sykes puts emphasis on flesh, on meat, as Delia has mentioned in her vision of their marriage, and this emphasis underscores the terms in which Sykes values women: in purely sexual terms. “Ah sho‟ „bominates uh skinny „oman. Lawdy, you sho‟ is got one portly shape on you!” (Hurston, “Sweat” 961). Delia, as opposed to Bertha, has been earning money, she has become economically independent on her husband, but it has cost her sexuality.
Because Sykes only sees flesh and not hard work, does not appreciate effort and only looks for pleasure, he chooses Bertha, the sexually attractive woman – at least to him, that is – and promises her to “git dat „oman outa” the house (961). He subscribes to the discourse on sexuality, which insisted on black women suppressing their sexuality, put emphasis on their separate sphere of home, on their dependence on their men. Sykes both abides by and fails this ideology at the same time: he refuses to rejoin with his wife, because she does not fit the image described above. He cheats on Delia with Bertha, a woman who shows off her sexuality in public, yet a woman who does not threaten his masculinity in any class or
46 economic ways. Hurston portrays Sykes as confused here: he fails the morals imposed on women at either point, because he prefers vulgar sexuality and flesh to an independent woman‟s increasing economic power.
The emasculated Sykes can only spend so much of Delia‟s money on Bertha and has to get rid of Delia somehow, because he does not have his own house. The short section ends with a brief sketch of how things are going in the Jones‟s household: “Delia and Sykes fought all the time now with no peaceful interludes. They slept and ate in silence. Two or three times
Delia had attempted a timid friendliness, but she was repulsed each time. It was plain that the breaches must remain agape” (Hurston, “Sweat” 961). So despite the sexual gap between them, Delia attempts to reunite with Sykes sexually, but is now repulsed by Sykes. While he is repulsed by her skinny figure, because she has been working so hard for both of them, she is repulsed because Sykes has been limp for a while now and because he no longer exerts any power over Delia. Thus ends July and comes August to Eatonville.
Hurston begins the final section of her text by foreshadowing the upcoming events:
“The heat streamed down like a million hot arrows, smiting all things living upon the earth.
Grass withered, leaves browned, snakes went blind in shedding and men and dogs went mad.
Dog days!” (Hurston, “Sweat” 961). As Hurston predicts, Sykes has gone mad as he brings a box with a large snake to the house. Both him and the readers know how much Delia is scared of snakes. He promises that “[the snake] is gointer stay right heah tell he die. He wouldn‟t bite me cause Ah knows how tuh handle ‟im. Nohow he wouldn‟t risk breakin‟ out his fangs ‟gin yo‟ skinny laigs” (962). Now that he has brought the biblical symbol of sin to the house, he thinks he has Delia cornered and he voices his power in front of everyone, he knows how to handle both snakes and women: “Ah‟m a snake charmer an‟ knows how tuh handle ‟em”
(962). By bringing the snake and by being the only one able to handle it, Sykes increases
Delia‟s burden, and she gradually starts associating Sykes with the serpent as “red fury grew
47 [in her] grew bloodier for every second that she regarded the creature that was her torment”
(962). The snake becomes the proverbial last drop in Delia‟s mind.
As a result of her rage, Delia complains to Sykes: “Ah hates you, Sykes. […] Ah hates you tuh de same degree dat Ah useter love yuh. Ah done took an‟ took till mah belly is full up tuh mah neck. […] Ah don‟t wantuh see yuh ‟roun ‟ me atall. Lay ‟roun ‟ wid dat ‟oman all yuh wants tuh, but gwan ‟way fum me an‟ mah house. Ah hates yuh lak uh suck-egg dog”
(Hurston, “Sweat” 963). When Delia finally voices her hate of Sykes, “the huge wad of corn bread and collar greens he was chewing fall out of his mouth in amazement,” but he manages to tell her hates her too and comment on her appearance once again. But Delia does not give in, just like she has promised herself, and she threatens Sykes: “Ah‟m goin‟ tuh de white folks bout you, mah young man, de very nex‟ time you lay yo‟ han‟s on me. Mah cup is done run ovah” (963). She thus uses her connection to her white employers, something Sykes does not have because of his unemployment. This is the one form of power Delia has over Sykes and she professes she will use it if necessary. Despite the attention Hurston devotes to the empowerment of her female characters, the author often leaves their fate in the hands of white people, as if underscoring the still existing economic, moral, and judiciary dependence of blacks on whites. White people are Delia‟s only protection against Sykes, the Eatonville community is mute as the readers know. Hurston sketches a similar scene in TEWWG, where a jury of white people decides Janie‟s fate.
After Delia‟s brave defiance, Sykes leaves the house and does not return until Sunday.
Delia thus goes to church, “to the night service – „love feast‟ – which was very warm and full of spirit. In the emotional winds her domestic trials were borne far and wide so that she sang as she drove homeward” (Hurston, “Sweat” 964). Sykes‟s departure makes Delia happy, she does not think about him anymore and so she almost forgets about the snake in her house as she enters: “Whut‟s de mattah, ol‟‟ satan, you aint kickin‟ up yo‟ racket? She addressed the
48 snake‟s box. Complete silence.” Though rather ominous, Delia interprets the silence as a sign of Sykes‟s complete departure as “she went on into the house with a new hope in its birth struggles. […] Fifteen years of misery and suppression had brought Delia to the place where she would hope anything that looked towards a way over or through her wall of inhibitions”
(964). As in the opening scene of the story, Delia sets to work on the white people‟s clothes and, again, she is faced with a snake in the house – this time he is not limp, however.
While “she was singing again [and] the mood of the „love feast‟ had returned,” Delia sits on her feather bed and suddenly, “moved by both horror and terror, she spring back toward the door. There lay the snake in the basket!” (Hurston, “Sweat” 965). Sykes‟s snake, the embodiment of the torment that has been Sykes for the last fifteen years, is hidden in
Delia‟s basket of clothes, in the very tool she uses in her hard work. The fact that Sykes‟s weapon against Delia hides in her laundry basket is both symbolic and ironic: Sykes‟s disrespect for Delia has reached its peak, the scene is an extension of the opening scene. Here, the snake and Sykes‟s disgust for Delia‟s work for the rich white people combine to sneak up on the female character and try to kill her. Delia, however, flees from the house as the snake follows her and manages to find a haven in the barn, where she awaits her fate.
Instead of the love emphasized in her return from church, the escape to the barn brings
“a cold, bloody rage. Hours of this. A period of introspection, a space of retrospection, then a mixture of both. Out of this an awful calm. “Well, Ah done de bes‟ Ah could. If things aint right, Gawd knows taint mah fault” (Hurston, “Sweat” 965). With these thoughts, thoughts suggesting venegeance, Delia falls asleep and wakes up to “a faint grey sky.” She hears Sykes come back home. Similarly to TEWWG, Hurston again announces a tragedy about to happen in natural imagery: “The gray in the sky was spreading. […] The drawn shade [in the bedroom] shut out the dawn, shut in the night. But the thin walls held back no sound” (965).
Sykes is inside the house, searching for Delia‟s dead corpse and the snake, having no idea that
49 “the rattler is a ventriloquist. His whirr sounds to the right, to the left, straight ahead, behind, close under foot – everywhere but where it is. Woe to him who guesses wrong unless he is prepared to hold up his end of the argument! Sometimes he strikes without rattling at all”
(965). Hurston here summarizes for the reader the power reversal that has happened in the story: Sykes boasted about being a superior snake and women handler, but now that Delia escaped his murderous snake, he walks into a trap set up by himself. Delia is nowhere in sight, nor is the snake – at least Sykes thinks so.
Sykes wakes up the snake by knocking down a pot in the kitchen and realizes that now the snake is after him. He jumps onto the bed – but the snake is hiding there. Delia “could hear Sykes calling in a most despairing tone as one who expected no answer. […] Delia could not move – her legs were gone flabby. She never moved, he called, and the sun kept rising”
(Hurston, “Sweat” 966). When Delia finally decides to creep toward the house and the bedroom, “she saw him on his hands and knees as soon as she reached the door. He crept an inch or two toward her – all that he was able, and she saw his horribly swollen neck and his one open eye shining with hope. A surge of pity too strong to support bore her away from that eye that must, could not, fail to see the tubs. He would see the lamp” (966). Delia does not help Sykes and watches him die. She is struck by the thought that, even in his mortal agony,
Sykes must see that she had been working on the clothes again, that he must be aware of her employment taking up most of their bedroom‟s space. It is crucial to emphasize that the scene happens in the bedroom, where Sykes goes limp again, faced with Delia‟s economic power and mental resilience. He dies in the middle of white people‟s clothes, killed by the very snake he has brought and which he embodies. He dies as a sinner.
However, while in TEWWG the male‟s death ultimately brings emancipation to the female character, the ending of “Sweat” is much more vague and open. Delia “could scarcely reach the Chinaberry tree, where she waited in the growing heat while inside she knew the
50 cold river was creeping up and up to extinguish that eye which must know by now that she knew” (Hurston, “Sweat” 967). The unchristian act of not aiding a fellow man, of watching him die in front of her, shakes Delia‟s faith. She is so surprised by the fact that her wishes have come true that she cannot act on her basic Christian principles. At the same time, however, she feels the cold rage overpowering this guilt she saw in Sykes‟s eye, because she now knows that in the agony he must have endured in his death, Sykes experienced part of the pain she has been enduring for the last fifteen years. Delia is not relieved, that is not sense of the ending, but she is free from Sykes.
Hurston thus lets the abusive male character die a painful death, which he has brought on himself. The same happens to Joe Starks and Tea Cake in TEWWG, where Tea Cake actually also dies after being bitten by an animal. As Laurie Champion rightly points out, by having the abusive male killed, “Hurston simultaneously discourages those who try to reinforce sexist modes of oppression and encourages women to defy sexism by illustrating how those who abuse women are doomed” (190). Delia emerges from “Sweat” a changed woman, a stronger woman, who stood up to her husband when nobody else did. Delia challenges the oppression embodied by both Sykes and the porch-sitters of Eatonville: she reminds Sykes – using her voice the right way for perhaps the first time – that she is the breadwinner of the family and that, though his limp black bullwhip scares her, she can find ways of exercising her economic power and stop Sykes‟s abuse. From a mule in need of bull- whipping, Delia turns into an empowered woman. At the same time, by using her voice and standing up to Sykes, she manages what the whole male population of Eatonville cannot seem to achieve – she stops Sykes‟s womanizing.
The subject matter of “Sweat” exemplifies clearly the issues, which Hurston concentrates on for the rest of her career. Her “keen analysis of racial, sexual, and gender politics […] foreshadows her treatment of these themes in her novels and shows the
51 possibility of female emancipation [, which] can be achieved only through the death of the male heterosexual partner – whether figurative or literal” (Jones 86). In opposition to the discourse on sexuality which relied on denying black women independence and promoted subservience to males, Hurston here promotes emancipation based on independence on males.
She proposes that in order to liberate themselves, women get rid of their oppressors; she promotes rebellion on the part of women. Delia, in the end, finally sheds the embarrassment she felt for her employment because of Sykes. She embraces it, and with it the independence it brings. Though it brings an uncertain future, as shown in the final moments of the text,
Delia can rest easy for now. She has managed to emancipate herself, her dignity and also her body from the abuse of Sykes. She can now claim her abused body and let her sexuality bud again, having no longer an abusive husband. In opposition to the recurrent limpness of Sykes, the reader sees an erect, strong, black female figure. At the same time, Hurston underscores
Delia‟s uncertainty about what comes next. She leaves the ending open and ambiguous, only to provide closure in her longer works, mainly in TEWWG and Seraph.
52 3. Color Struck: Pointing Out the Wrong Way
Color Struck: A Play in Four Scenes is Hurston‟s first play. Hurston wrote it sometime before
1925, before she entered Barnard College in New York. It “won second prize in the drama division in the 1925 Opportunity contest, and the version printed in Fire!! [was] reworked and submitted to the 1926 contest, where it won honorable mention” (Hemenway 47). This thesis deals with the reworked and published 1926 version of the play. The plot of the play revolves around John and Emmaline (called Emma throughout the play, even in stage directions) and a cakewalk contest they are going to take part in. Divided into four scenes, each of them is set somewhere else: the first one takes place in a Jim Crow train car, the second and the third at the cakewalk contest – all three set twenty years before the present – and the fourth is set in the present in Emma‟s pitiful apartment.
Hurston‟s biographer, Robert Hemenway, labels Color Struck “not a very effective drama, and its only memorable scene […] the cakewalk.” He dismisses the play as unimportant, because “on the whole, Color Struck is an apprentice work […] celebrat[ing] the proletariat” (47). Despite this criticism, however, Color Struck exemplifies, in its treatment of
Emma‟s preoccupation with skin color and her love to John, the very themes which pervade almost all of Hurston‟s fictional works: sexuality and the claiming of one‟s body, as well as finding one‟s voice are all present in the play. However, in comparison to the other works analyzed in this thesis, Color Struck, as one of first Hurston‟s fictional works, deals with these issues in a slightly different way. There is no triumphant or liberating ending to the play, but rather an open, ambiguous ending which invites various interpretations. Emmaline, the main female character is not the strong character Hurston‟s readers encounter in TEWWG or in
Seraph. Emmaline is only at the beginning of her search for ways to liberate her voice and her body. She is very gender- and class-conscious, fearful of her own black body and its sexual
53 power, and she is aware of the ways other people perceive her. Color Struck and its main character thus offer a look at Hurston‟s first treatment of the issues and themes which then remerge throughout most of her works.
The black female character, Emma, is, both literally and virtually, in the centre of the stage here, and the fears and insecurities surrounding her black body represent the major theme. Hurston begins to find her niche and starts to formulate her views on black female sexuality, stemming from what David Krasner sees as a “revolt against a black northern elitist culture that rejected the values of the black south as well as its people, […] she was embarking on a creative process of reclaiming southern, poor, black women from the dustbin of history. Black women of the south had been deemed out of step with the progressive elements of an urbanized, sophisticated, and for the most part masculinized New Negro culture” (535). Color Struck thus fits into the framework of Hurston as an engaged and activist writer who projected her views of black society and its values and her critique of these, in particular those pertaining to sexuality and black women, into her fictional works. As opposed to the later Their Eyes Were Watching God and Seraph on the Suwanee, she does not liberate the female character from the constraining environment of sexual, economic, and social oppression, but rather touches upon the mental processes of the black female and the ramifications such environment has. Emma‟s story is portrayed as, in Krasner‟s words, a
“profound characterization of voicelessness and fragmentation” (550), something Janie in
Their Eyes Were Watching God is indeed another version of. In Hurston‟s novel, however,
Janie embodies this mute and fragmented black female character only at the beginning.
Emma, on the other hand, remains a shattered self till the end.
The play is in several places overtly sexual, playing into the whole design of Fire!! claiming to be a revolutionary venue for young black artists. In Scene I, before the audience and the readers even catch a glimpse of Emma and John, Effie, “a mulatto girl,” enters the Jim
54 Crow train car and is immediately attended to by a peer of the opposite gender: “Howdy do,
Miss Effie, you‟se lookin‟ jes lak a rose. Fack is, if you wuzn‟t walkin‟ long, ah‟d think you wuz a rose” (Hurston, Color Struck 1.1.2). Effie, however, knows her worth, both economic and sexual, she is aware of her looks and of how prized her light brown skin is. She states her value in telling, sexual, terms: “A man dat don‟t buz me nothing tuh put in mah basket, ain‟t goin‟ wid me tuh no cake walk” (1.1.11-12). Effie‟s basket and its contents come into play later on, but the readers already know that Effie is both admired for and aware of what her skin color and her looks – the basket – entail.
After Effie‟s entrance, the readers learn that John, “a light brown-skinned man,” and
Emma, “a black woman,” “the bestest cakewalkers in dis state” (Hurston, Color Struck
1.1.26), are not on the train. But as “the locomotive bell begins to ring,” John and Emma arrive and sit “directly in front of Effie” (1.1.31, 36). John begins to explain why the couple has arrived late, only to unravel what then becomes the focus of the rest of the piece: Emma‟s jealousy of Effie and her skin, and the hatred of her own:
JOHN: It was Emmaline nearly made us get left. She says I wuz smiling
at Effie on the street car and she had to get off and wait for another one.
EMMA: (Removing the hatpins from her hat, turns furiously upon him).
You wuz grinning at her and she wuz grinning back jes lake a ole chessy
cat!
JOHN: (Positively) I wuzn‟t.
EMMA: You wuz. I seen you looking jes lake a possum.
JOHN: I wuzn‟t. I never gits a chance tuh smile at nobody – you won‟t
let me.
55 EMMA: Jes the same every time you sees a yaller face, you takes a
chance (They sit down in peeved silence for a minute). (Hurston, Color
Struck 1.1.40-47)
After this exchange, John starts a conversation with Effie, right in front of Emma, who immediately stops their banter, and John and Emma then kiss, making up. The readers thus see the first contours of the relationship between Emma and John, and the roots of Emma‟s jealousy. David Krasner claims that “John is obsessed with Effie” and that “Emma has every reason to fear John‟s betrayal” (542). This reading, however, completely leaves aside Emma‟s fear of her own skin – fear, which later surfaces even more – and rather concentrates on
John‟s behavior. But is argued here that the main conflict of the play is two-sided and it is in fact Emma who is in the main focus of the play: John‟s bold and flirtatious behavior is one aspect of the stormy relationship, but Emma‟s preoccupation with her own value and looks in contrast to the light-skinned Effie, is equally important. Moreover, it is Emma‟s trauma of her own skin, as Sandra Richards calls it (73), and her racial paranoia that drives Emma‟s actions later on.
Suddenly, the actors on the stage start dancing, showing off their cakewalk steps in the car as they try to warm up before the contest: “John and Emma step into the aisle and „parade‟ up and down the aisle – Emma holding up her skirt, showing the lace on her petticoats. They two-step back to their seat amid much applause” (Hurston, Color Struck 1.1.86-88). However, despite their dancing in unison and Emma‟s erotic approach to the dance, John does not stop looking at Effie and when the music keeps playing in the car and Effie is showing her cakewalk steps, John applauds loudly: “If dat Effie can‟t step, nobody can.” Emma reacts accordingly: “Course you‟d say so cause it‟s her. Everything she do is pretty to you” (1.1.97-
98, emphasis mine). The word “pretty” is very important here, because Emma ascribes prettiness to what she calls “yaller face,” a mulatto. If mulatto stands for pretty, where does
56 she stand? And if she, as a black woman, is inferior to the mulatto prettiness, how soon is
John liable to leave her for a light-skinned girl? These questions drive Emma and her fear: she feels inferior, she believes it and, based on this fear, Emma thinks John perceives her inferiority too.
Towards the end of Scene I, John asks Emma, while kissing her: “Emma, what makes you always picking a fuss with me over some yaller girl. What makes you so jealous, nohow?
I don‟t do nothing” (Hurston, Color Struck 1.1.104-05). “[…]I want you to love me, you know I do. But I don‟t like to be accused o‟ ever light colored girl in the world. It hurts my feeling” (1.1.109-11). There is no doubt that John has appreciation for Effie, and her looks and cakewalking skills makes his girlfriend uncomfortable. John is certainly not portrayed as an innocent man who is being falsely accused. Hurston keeps hinting at his unfaithfulness and presents Emma as yet another female character in the author‟s fiction whose man strives to keep the upper hand in the relationship, keeping the woman succumbed.
Nevertheless, in the end, it is not only John‟s behavior that separates the couple, because Emma‟s love for John, though strong and earnest, is selfish and limiting as well:
“Then you don‟t want my love, John, cause I can‟t help mahself from being jealous. I loves you so hard, John, and jealous love is the only kind I got” (Hurston, Color Struck 1.1.115-16).
“[…] Just for myself alone is the only way I knows how to love” (1.1.117). Emma tries to save the disintegrating relationship by professing her undying love to John, but only on her own terms, just like John does to her. The couple seems on the verge of breaking up – because they are both preoccupied with skin color and desire to have a different one. John seems to want Effie and Emma yearns for Effie‟s skin color as well. Though neither of them says it out loud, they both seem to be concerned with the social position that their tone of skin ascribes them; they are color-struck.
57 As Scene I ends, it needs to be mentioned that the setting of the first scene is uncommon, to say the least, when one considers the plot of the scene. Dancing, arguing, sexual allusions all taking place in a Jim Crow car, “this frivolity is happening within a circumscribed space of racism [and] implicit behind the laughter is a painful reality that these characters have chosen to ignore temporarily” (Richards 75). It is a space familiar to Hurston the author and anthropologist. She uses her skills of an observer and a Florida-born African-
American to show a space which is real, believable on the stage, and so are, in turn, the characters embodying this space. Hurston loved trains, as she describes in Dust Tracks on the
Road, and she put a train car scene into a number of her works. Janie and Tea Cake (and Joe
Clarke as well) travel in a Jim Crow car in Their Eyes Were Watching God, and so does John in the autobiographical Jonah’s Gourd Vine. A Jim Crow car is an aspect of the reality that is the life in the South. In setting the first scene within this space, Hurston highlights not only this reality for the northern audience, and making theatrically realist what is happening on the stage. She also underscores Emma‟s consciousness vis-à-vis her skin color, her looks, and the value(s) her appearance relegate her to. She belongs to a Jim Crow car. The train car is thus not merely a setting, but a crucial aspect of Emma‟s being and worldview, too. It is a physical reality symbolizing her role of a black woman, alluding to the traditional double jeopardy theme.
The racially shackling scene setting disappears in Scene II and turns into “a weather- board hall,” where people “come in twos and three, laughing, joking, horse-play, gauchely flowered dresses, small waists, bulging hips and busts, hats worn far back on the head etc.”
(Hurston, Color Struck 1.2.10-11). The tension between Emma and John escalates further and so do the sexual allusions. Hurston introduces Joe Clarke here as the announcer of the cakewalk contest; Hurston‟s readers meet him later in her other works, mainly as the actual, though often fictionalized, mayor of Eatonville in Jonah’s Gourd Vine, Their Eyes Were
58 Watching God, and Dust Tracks on the Road. It is only symbolic that it is Joe Clarke, the oppressive husband and the Eatonville mayor in Hurston‟s most acclaimed novel and in
“Sweat,” who starts off the contest and thus puts into motion events, which will ultimately separate Emma and John for the next twenty years: “Git yo‟ partners one an‟ all for de gran‟ march! Git yo‟ partners, gent-mens!” (1.2.44). Before getting to the dance, all couples feast on the contents of their baskets. And so Effie‟s basket comes up again, this time more ominously and even more sexually.
As the couple unwraps the food from their baskets, John starts his half apologies, half accusations again: “Ah keep on tellin‟ you Ah don‟t love nobody but you. Ah knows heaps uh half-white girls Ah could git ef Ah wanted to. But Ah jus‟ wants you! You know what they say! De darker de berry, de sweeter de taste!” (Hurston, Color Struck 1.2.56-59). John does not really profess his love to Emma, but rather informs her that he can have plenty of half- white girls – calling them half-white, rather than half-black, thus stressing the admirable tone of their skin. In contrast to the white color, he describes Emma as a dark berry, showing how aware he actually is about the views on black women. In this, he only increases Emma‟s insecurity about her own skin, because there is nothing she can do, John in fact says, about his affinity to light-skinned women, it is his decision to make.
Emma “pretends to pout” (Hurston, Color Struck 1.2.60) and the two of them “begin to eat fried chicken” (1.2.63) from their basket. But then, Effie “crosses to John and Emma with two pieces of pie on a plate” (1.2.68). Effie, “with a timid smile to Emma,” offers to
John: “Y‟ll have a piece uh mah blueberry pie – it‟s mighty nice” (1.2.69), and John accepts by saying “Ah think ah‟d choose a piece uh pie, Effie” (1.2.72). Though seemingly an innocent gesture on both parts, this little exchange between Effie and John is probably the most sexual moment of the play. Effie, proclaiming at the beginning of the play that she does not let just anyone eat from her basket, offers a piece of her pie to John, who is there with his
59 partner. Although he knows how much Emma hates and is jealous of Effie, John accepts a piece of Effie‟s pie, as if accepting her body in offering. This is even more obvious when one realizes that what Effie is offering is a blueberry pie – John has just said that he prefers the darkest of berries, only to grab the next, lighter, berry that offers itself to him.
Emma‟s catches the sexual undertone of the pie exchange between John and Effie, her fears come true at this very moment and she cannot hold her anger any longer: “Naw, youse jus‟ hog-wile ovah her cause she‟s half-white! No matter whut Ah say, you keep carryin‟ on wid her. Act polite? Naw Ah ain‟t gonna be deceitful an‟ bust mah gizzard fuh nobody! Let her keep her dirty ole pie ovah there where she is!” (Hurston, Color Struck 1.2.85-88). Emma clearly perceives the pie as a sexual symbol, and she tries to get Effie to hear her and scare her away from John forever. But nobody can hear her, her screaming has no impact: “the people are laughing and talking for the most part and pay no attention. Effie is laughing and talking to those around her and does not hear the tirade” (1.2.94-95). The atmosphere is now very tense and John and Emma are about to break up. John has violated Emma‟s trust and heightened her sense of racial inferiority in front of everyone.
Emma, however, attempts for one last time to save their relationship by refusing to dance the cakewalk: “John, let‟s we all don‟t go in there with all them. Let‟s we all go home”
(Hurston, Color Struck 1.2.122-23). “[…] Ah‟m skeered. I loves you.” (1.2.134). “[…] I can‟t, I just can‟t go in there and see all them girls – Effie hanging after you” (1.2.144-45).
Emma is now so scared that she does not even want to show her dark skin next to John‟s light brown skin color on stage, because she would be judged against it as well as against Effie‟s skin tone. She rather wishes to go home, to a safe place. But now that John has tasted Effie‟s pie, he doesn‟t want to leave the contest, he feels he has an opportunity to win the cake: “I got to go in – (he removes her hand from his coat) – whether you come with me or not” (1.2.146-
60 47). The cake is now much too tempting and John rushes away, only to join hands and dance with Effie in the following scene.
Emma closes the scene with a desperate soliloquy, voicing, heard by no-one again, her fear of and frustration from being a black woman: “Oh – them yaller wenches! How I hate
„em! They gets everything they wants. […] Oh, them half whites, they gets everything everybody else wants! The men, the jobs – everything! The whole world is got a sign on it.
Wanted: Light colored. Us blacks was made for cobble stones” (Hurston, Color Struck
1.2.148-49, 160-63). Scene II then closes off with a voice announcing that “Miss Effie Jones will walk for Jacksonville with Mr. John Turner in place of Miss Emmaline Beazeley”
(1.2.164-65). Emma‟s short monologue is not dissimilar to the one by Janie‟s grandmother in
Their Eyes Were Watching God, where she likens the black woman to a mule. Emma is dispensable to John as shown by John‟s sudden choice of another dancing partner. Moreover, she feels like her possible social uplift is hindered by the light-skinned people, such as Effie, who tend to get the jobs inaccessible to dark black like Emmaline. Emma thus feels like a mule, now that her fears finally surfaced and came true. Her dark berry and fried chicken are not enough for John, he wants to pick lighter berries from the basket of a light skinned girl.
Emma summarizes her desperation and powerlessness – which are then to be highlighted in the next scene – in the metaphor of the mule; a metaphor Hurston will use in her other works as well. After the soliloquy, she ends up humiliated and alone on the stage.
Meanwhile, John is on the stage with his new partner: Effie, the light brown and younger girl, stands for opportunity here. Now that John has “been practicing almost a year”
(Hurston, Color Struck 1.2.140) and has new steps prepared for the cakewalk, which is a display of racial pride, he senses an opportunity to seize the cake by the side of the girl whose pie tastes so “mighty good” (1.2.78). In order to achieve that, he leaves his devoted yet
61 jealous and fearful partner, and literally tramples and dances on her dark black cobble stones and her racial pride with a „yaller‟ girl.
As a result, it is no surprise that Scene III begins with Emma “staring at the gay scene for a moment defiantly, then creeping over to a seat along the wall and shrinking into the
Spanish Moss, motionless” (Hurston, Color Struck 1.3.1-3). She has relegated herself into a marginal position by rejecting her own skin; and at an event signifying racial pride, she pays dearly by being left alone. This loneliness turns into a status quo as the readers learn in Scene
IV. As Richards interprets the action onstage, Emma “has decided not to compete rather than risk subjecting herself to a prejudicial slur” (78) and she isolates herself, though she does not stop watching the dance scene, hurting and confirming her darkest nightmares about both self and John‟s lust. There is not much speaking in this scene; it is rather a dance performance, which serves to highlight John‟s achievement in contrast to Emma‟s isolation. And so while
Emma watches motionless,
Effie takes the arm that John offers her and they parade to the other end
of the hall. She takes her place. John goes back upstage to the platform,
takes off his silk hat in a graceful sweep as he bows deeply to Effie. She
lifts her skirts and curtsies to the floor. Both smile broadly. They advance
toward each other, meet midway, then, arm in arm, begin to “strut.” John
falters as he faces her, but recovers promptly and is perfection in his
style. (Seven to nine minutes to curtain). Fervor of spectators grows until
all are taking part in some way – either hand-clapping or singing the
words. At curtain they have reached frenzy. […] People are departing,
laughing, humming, with quartet cheering, John, the cake, and Effie
being borne away in triumph. (Hurston, Color Struck 1.3.12-20, 34-35)
62 Scene III through the lack of dialogue and through dancing brings to light all the emotions hitherto sketched by Hurston. As Richards observes, there is “the physical-psychological momentum of dance that gradually envelopes all the characters in the construction of community, coupled with the inverse process by which Emmaline isolates herself and further internalizes a sense of racial inferiority” (78). The juxtaposition is extreme: Emma is motionless, while all the others, who were not afraid to show their skin onstage, dance together for seven to nine minutes. Moreover, as Krasner remarks, “Emma‟s silence during the moment of her greatest humiliation shows action carrying meaning within an unfolding theatrical process” (547). Emma‟s inability to speak up and be heard when she needs this ability the most is striking, and it underscores the importance of silence or voicelessness for
Hurston‟s artistic and political agenda. Emma is here both color-struck (blind) and mute, which are signs of resignation and powerlessness.
Also, her failure has a theatrical effect. Richards perceives this dichotomy as a performance where Emma‟s position on the stage “must almost become a dance, in the sense of a series of choreographed gestures that achieve a power to momentarily disrupt the spectacle of the cakewalk, so that viewers apprehend both joy and despair” (78). Hurston leaves Scene III with almost no directions as to Emma, apart from the section quoted above.
Even gesture-less, Emma‟s position vis-à-vis the rest of the merry group, which has shared a
Jim Crow train car experience and basket food with her, is clear. Emma has not only left the group voluntarily, but she has also left the black community – she looks down upon blacks as the readers learn in Scene IV, and she pities her life, the tragedy of which is so vividly exemplified in the cakewalk scene.
Moreover, Scene III does not only isolate Emma from the group by the visual and theatrical means Richards and Krasner (547) concentrate on. Although the juxtaposition is obvious, as pointed out above, the scene is also a reminder of a similar moment from Scene I,
63 where John and Emma dance down the train car aisle together. The significance of the repetition of this moment is twofold. First, the audience sees a similar scene as previously, but this time the female has been replaced with a “prettier” one, as Emma would have it. It is a theatrical symbolization of the exchange of John‟s dance and possibly life partners in front of the audience. The replacement is solidified visually. Second, and more importantly, the cakewalk of John and Effie is described as if the two of them have been meant for each other all along, thus confirming Emma‟s theory of her own racial inferiority and of John‟s fondness of light-skinned women. In Scene I, John says that Emma and him “don‟t wanta do our walking steps – nobody won‟t wanta see them when we step out at the hall” (Hurston, Color
Struck 1.1.81-82). He in fact reveals that it is only Emma and him who know their cakewalk steps. Yet when the time comes and John grabs the hand of another woman, Effie, his dancing does not worsen, nor does it look unprepared: it actually looks very natural, confirming the naturalness of Effie and John‟s new union. And he wins the contest and also the sweet pie he has been yearning for all along – Effie brings him luck, she truly turns into an opportunity. To sum up, the dance scene underscores and makes visual both Emma‟s position on the margin of her racial and peer group and confirms the newly formed union of John and Effie. When
John returns after twenty years in Scene IV, it is impossible for Emma and John to find a way to each another again.
Emma as a Cobble Stone
Hurston begins the last scene of Color Struck by describing Emma‟s apartment as “a one-room shack” into which “some light enters through the window and falls on the woman seated in the low rocker. […] As the curtain rises, the woman is seen rocking to and fro in the low rocker. A dead silence except for the sound of the rocker and an occasional groan from the bed” (Hurston, Color Struck 1.4.5-8). The audience thus sees Emma the same way she has been left at the end of the previous scene: almost motionless, silent, surrounded by darkness,
64 and virtually alone. She is, as if, in her element here – she has not moved, evolved, for twenty years. Into this dark and downbeat setting arrives the light-skinned John, twenty years too late to save the relationship: “I wants to marry you. I couldn‟t die happy if I didn‟t. Couldn‟t get over you – couldn‟t forget. […] I love you so much. Strike a light honey so I can see you – see if you changed much” (Hurston, Color Struck 1.4.32-36). John‟s request highlights the ongoing struggle between dark and light in the play. It seems as if John wanted to lighten her skin color a little, for his request goes unanswered for a while in the dialogue, emphasizing
Emma‟s reluctance to make herself visible to John. He has already left her once for her color.
When he finally sees her under the light, John exclaims happily: “You aint changed none atall, Emma, jus‟ as pretty as a speckled pup yet” (Hurston, Color Struck 1.4.57). It seems that despite his insistence on light be made in the room, he has kept his appetite for the dark as well. But then, gradually, despite John‟s cooing, Emma‟s old suspicions and sense of racial inferiority return. When John tells Emma that he believes she “got to marry me tuh get rid of me. That is, if you aint married” (1.4.67-68) she replies by “Naw, Ah aint” and “turns the lamp down” (1.4.69), hiding her racial and social shame, of which the readers are about to learn, into darkness once again. And now, in this darkness only, is she able to confess to John and tell him about the last twenty years. The fact that she is able to voice her thoughts in darkness only contrasts strongly with, for example, the final scene in Their Eyes Were
Watching God, where as the sun is setting down, Janie tells her whole emancipation story in her vernacular and her own words. Emma is, as has been stated above, a mere precursor of the strong, evolving Janie. Life has hit her hard, partly via John, and she is crumbling, hiding before it: “Ah been havin‟ a hard time, John, an‟ Ah lost you – oh, aint nothin‟ been right for me! Ah aint never been happy” (1.4.73-74). “[…] Thass mah chile. She‟s sick” (1.4.79).
Emma is so embarrassed of her daughter, or perhaps she is testing John‟s resolution to marry her, that she indirectly asks John to leave: “Comin‟ tuh see me agin soon, John” (1.4.82). Her
65 biggest secret – one, which confirms both her internalized fears of racial inferiority and externalizations of them through her treatment of other black people – is about to be uncovered.
John is not leaving even when he discovers that Emma has got a child; what is more, he shows interest in the groaning child, which only makes Emma act on her racial prejudices and stereotypes again: “Emma rushes over to the bed and covers the girl securely, tucking her long hair under the covers, too – before he arises” (Hurston, Color Struck 1.4.86-87). Her action, however, does not stop John from approaching the bed: “He goes over to the bed and looks down into her face. She is mulatto” (1.4.88). He teases her: “Talkin‟ bout me liking high-yallers – yo husband musta been pretty near white” (1.4.89-90). And Emma confesses that she “never wuz married” (1.4.91). This is a very intense moment in the play, and a telling one as well, for Hurston here uncovers all the fears which surround a black woman. First,
Emma despises her own skin so much that she lets John leave her for Effie and she gives in to her racial prejudices, she gives John and her own skin up, in fact. Then, during the twenty years that have passed between the third and the fourth scene, she conceives a mulatto child – a child of the same color she both so desires and hates – out of wedlock, thus betraying her chastity as well as her racial integrity. The readers see Emma at this moment as a broken, fallen black woman.
Despite the fact that Emma has an illegitimate mulatto child, John still does not leave her little apartment; he keeps wishing to marry her, and even urges her to catch a doctor for the little girl. Emma, however, does not want to leave the room; it looks like she does not want to leave John now that he has come back for her. One simple gesture changes this impression immediately as Emma “goes to the bed and again tucks the long braids of hair in, which are again pouring over the side of the bed by the feverish tossing of the girl” (Hurston,
Color Struck 1.4.123-25). Her daughter is probably dying and yet Emma‟s sole concern is that
66 John does not see the child‟s color. Social values and mores mean more to Emma than her child‟s life. But as the readers soon learn, it is not only the acceptable that Emma is on guard from. John keeps urging her to get a doctor for Lou Lillian, the mulatto girl, but Emma wants to stay in the room and watch her daughter: “You go git [a doctor], John” (1.4.132). It is not yet clear why she does not want to leave the child and go get a doctor.
Nevertheless, she finally yields and John gives her money for the doctor, saying
“Here, take some money and get a good doctor. There must be some good colored ones around here now” (Hurston, Color Struck 1.4.140-41). And Emma, surprisingly, reacts:
“(Scornfully) I wouldn‟t let one of ‟em tend my cat if I had one!” (1.4.142). It is at this point that we learn how much Emma now embodies racial stereotypes, even the ones she tried to fight against in the previous scenes. On the one hand, she tried in vain to save her relationship with John, struggling with her own dark color, only to lose the struggle to a mulatto girl, whom she called a “yaller” girl. She was aware of her own inferior position in contrast to the light-skinned Effie and John. But instead of raising her voice against it, she gave in. Now, twenty years later, she takes her views and fears to the extreme: she is embarrassed to show
John that she has given birth to a mulatto and out of wedlock, while, at the same time, looking down upon dark colored doctors19 – people, who have the same tone of skin color. As a result, she cannot stand both her daughter as well as herself. Her broken integrity as a chaste woman and a proud black person is shattered, and Emma does not know where she stands, what her place is, for, as we know, she rejected and was rejected by her own community in Scenes II and III. As Krasner succinctly points out, “Hurston‟s (Emma) exemplifies displacement and dislocation. Emma‟s dilemma resides in instability, of knowing and not-knowing, dwelling
19 Krasner sheds light onto Emma‟s reaction from another perspective as well – as an indication of mistrust for doctors in general: “Suspicion of the medical profession in African American culture has a long history, largely justified when one considers the Tuskegee medical experiments on blacks during the 1930s and 1940s. Blacks were denied penicilin for syphilis, even though the cure had already been discovered. This incident of mistrust was one of many dating back to slavery” (19).
67 and not-dwelling, presence and absence” (544). Color Struck here changes into a far-reaching tragedy of the black woman and there is still more to come at the end of Scene IV.
As Emma is about to leave for the doctor, “she looks from John to the bed and back again. She fumbles about the table and lowers the lamp” (Hurston, Color Struck 1.4.155). As a sign of things to come, Emma has again embalmed the apartment in darkness in order to hide her daughter from John. She does not want him to see the mulatto. John “gives (the girl) a drink. Feels her forehead. Takes a clean handkerchief from his pocket and wets it and places it upon her forehead. She raises her hand to the cool object” (1.4.168-170). John is thus holding hands, once again, with a mulatto girl, and it is at this moment that Emma runs in:
“When she sees John at the bed she is full of fury. She rushes over and jerks his shoulder around. They face each other” (1.4.170-71). Emma‟s fears have come through once again, it seems. That is why she has been fussing around John for the whole fourth scene. That is why she has been hiding Lou Lillian in the shadows of her little apartment. That is why she hesitated to leave John alone with the mulatto girl. “I knowed it! (She strikes him). A half white skin. (She rushes at him again).” (1.4.172-73). “[…] Let me go so I can kill you. Come sneaking in here like a pole cat!” (1.4.175-76). She is hysterical, because she is certain John was about to be unfaithful to her again, now that he has proposed to marry her.
It is unclear what John‟s motivation is here as he helps Lou Lillian, but, given his previous betrayal and his insistence on having, both the symbolic and actual, light in the room and trying to keep the mulatto girl alive, calling it “our child,” Emma‟s reaction is understandable – because she cannot do but act upon her fears. Her experience of a southern black woman, abandoned by her partner for a younger and lighter-skinned girl, being a single mother of a mulatto, Emma is left with nothing but hysteria and fury. And so when John rightly assesses Emma‟s outburst by “So this is the woman […] who so despises her own skin that she can‟t believe any one else could love it!” (Hurston, Color Struck 1.4.178-79), he is
68 not commenting on Emma only, but also on the black woman‟s position Emma exemplifies so painfully. Only bleak future awaits Emma in this apprentice work of Hurston‟s, and so as
John leaves the scene, Emma welcomes the white doctor, who has come to tend to Lou
Lillian. The doctor gives her and the child some medicine. The scene ends with Emma returning to the same position where she was at the beginning of the last scene: “She seats herself and rocks monotonously and stares out of the door. A dry sob now and then. The wind from the open door blows out the lamp and she is seen by the little light from the window rocking in an even, monotonous gait, and sobbing” (1.4.200-03). The play thus finishes in a symbolic, theatrical, and vivid manner – Emma is hidden in darkness again, in the same darkness that prevented her from seeing how sick her daughter was; “I couldn‟t see”
(1.4.195), she says to the doctor. She is motionless, alone, and sobbing as in Scene III. She has nothing to say, there is nothing to add.
Even though, as quoted above, Robert Hemenway overlooks Color Struck as an unimportant and ineffective piece, Hurston‟s play seems quite effective, especially when considering how short the text is. There is not much action or even dialogue, the cakewalk itself takes seven to nine minutes. But Hurston‟s skills of an astute observer help her to create a realist, yet utterly poetic, work. What one sees in the natural world beauty imbued Their
Eyes Were Watching God, is here expressed in simple, yet vivid, theatrical terms, underscoring Hurston‟s renaissance-like artistry. The settings of all scenes – the Jim Crow car, the cakewalk hall, and Emma‟s shack – are all extremely telling spaces, in which the muted and hurt body of Emma is thrust and swayed around.
Hurston creates, on the stage space and in limited time, a very effective tragic tale of the dangers of accepting the morals and values, which both the white and the black middle class imposed on the female black body. As Genevieve M. West aptly points out, “Hurston‟s critique of values [embodied in Emma‟s character] within the black community exposes the
69 tragic, warping effect white standards of beauty [and, in turn, sexuality as well] have when internalized by black women. Society [both white and black] constructs women as objects for the male gaze; to be beautiful is to be desired and loved” (27). One sees this internalization any time Emma speaks of Effie and her color – she accepts John‟s term “pretty.” And then, in her tragic soliloquy, she summarizes the struggle between the black, the inferior and ultimately left alone, and the light-skinned, pretty and desirable. As shown in the last scene,
“Emma has internalized gendered norms, but her race – and particularly her dark skin – make hegemonic standards of beauty unattainable and incredibly destructive” to her (West 27).
Thus, the settings of the play and Emma‟s desperate actions symbolize the narrowness of her life – as a dark black woman, she cannot keep her man, when he tastes a lighter-skinned woman‟s pie.
Emma is not as pretty as Effie, meaning her skin is not light enough. Ashamed of her skin, she rejects the rest of her peers precisely because of their skin. She cannot stand them looking at her skin and her looking at their skin – even though she shares the same Jim Crow and southern life experience with the other women. Later on, Emma conceives with a white man – although the reader does not know how, whether by rape, or willingly – thus becoming a fallen woman, which only worsens her anxieties and fears about her future as a black woman. Lou Lillian, her mulatto child, is there to remind her of her past and fears; the child turns into an ominous symbol of a tragic existence, filled with pain, anxiety, and regrets.
Emma‟s fears, however, were fed by the standards and norms, which have been imposed on her. The discourse on the black sexuality does not leave her any space, as evidenced by the last scene taking place in a one-room shack, increasing the tragic proportions of Emma‟s tale. Emmaline comes to represent the adrift girl who feels branded and judged for her color, and now even for her mulatto baby. Her tale ends on a sad note, pinpointing the extent to which the standards and norms saddled upon black women could
70 affect their lives. Thus, though Hemenway says that this play of Hurston‟s is merely a beginning, Hurston‟s concern with sexual discourse about the black female body surfaces clearly, and the author voices her impressions and opinions on it in a powerful way. Her opinions and views, appearing in Color Struck offer a strong statement about the paths black women should not take. Being color struck is not the way to go and Hurston offers better, empowering resolutions to her characters‟ tales in her novels.
71 4. TEWWG: A Quest for Independent Black Female Sexuality
Hurston‟s TEWWG has come to be regarded in academic circles as a novel probing self- consciousness, female identity, quest for love and voice. The novel is imbued with symbolism and multilayered imagery: descriptions of the landscape as well as portrayal of the main characters in terms of plants pervade the novel and make TEWWG an artistic high point of
Hurston‟s. While much has been written on voice, blues, marriage, gender and class in the novel, this section of the thesis discusses these issues in combination with the natural-and- sexual imagery of the novel in order to show Hurston‟s approach towards black female sexuality and the middle-class discourse surrounding the black female body.
As pointed out in the previous sections on “Sweat” and Color Struck, the quest for voice and the fight against male oppression are omnipresent aspects of Hurston‟s prose. In the tale of Janie, Hurston does not deviate from her traditional themes and techniques, but rather intertwines them into a complex story of a female quest for, in general, liberation and, in particular, for claiming her body and sexuality.20 Janie‟s sexuality is by no means the novel‟s sole theme, but, as Elizabeth Fox-Genovese rightly sums up, Hurston here “offers hints of her real feelings about what it means to be a black woman. She reveals the extent to which the black community – or black men – have embraced the gender conventions of white bourgeois society” (196). At the same time, Janie “retains her commitment to equality and partnership with the man she loves [and] above all, she retains a commitment to the possible joy of love and sexuality” (196). The issue of Janie‟s sexuality is thus in the forefront of the novel and its design and TEWWG represents Hurston‟s most complex treatment of black female sexuality.
20 On the other hand, not all readings of TEWWG see the novel as probing the rights issues, or probing them sufficiently. Hazel Carby, for example, rejects Hurston‟s novel as “a vision which in its romantic evocation of the rural and the folk avoids some of the most crucial and urgent issues of cultural struggle” (175), and Robert
Stepto sees TEWWG as “of course […] neither entirely new nor entirely ‟feminine ‟” (164).
72
The American South: The Mule Woman and the New Woman
Hurston, like in many of her other works, situates TEWWG in the American South, namely in
Florida, her home state; and in Eatonville in particular. While she has been criticized for this setting of her novel,21 it is in fact a logical move for the cause she is proposing, it reflects the integrity of her works and it promotes her approach to black female sexuality. The South is imbued with numerous places that remind the African Americans of their violent and oppressive past – a past, which forms a part of the discourse on the black female sexuality discussed above. The South is also a rural setting, a distinct space where middle class urban morality can be clearly contrasted with the overt sexuality of the novel‟s main, originally working class, character. Finally, it is a place which W.E.B. DuBois calls “common
Fatherland” (44; emphasis mine). The appropriation of this place by a working-class, uneducated, sexual black woman is a redefinition of DuBois‟s vision and a clear statement of
Hurston‟s own sexual politics.
21 Alain Locke, to name one example of the number of critics of Hurston‟s celebration of folklore and primitivism in TEWWG, stated that “as always thus far with this talented writer, setting and surprising flashes of contemporary folklore are the main point. Her gift for poetic phrase, for rare dialect and folk humor keep her flashing on the surface of her community and her characters and from diving down deep either to the inner psychology of characterization or to sharp analysis of the social background. It is folklore fiction at its best, which we gratefully accept as an overdue replacement for so much faulty local color fiction about Negroes. But when will the Negro novelist of maturity who knows well how to tell a story convincingly, which is Miss
Hurston‟s cradle-gift, come to grips with motive fiction and social document fiction? Progressive southern fiction has already banished the legend of these entertaining pseudo-primitives whom the reading public still loves to laugh with, weep over and envy. Having gotten rid of condescension, let us now get over over- simplification!” (qtd. in Stewart 260).
73 The setting comes to play a crucial role in TEWWG. Though this is also true for her other novels, especially the autobiographical Jonah’s Gourd Vine and the late Seraph on the
Suwanee, the fact that Janie matures sexually with the historically and continually oppressive and masculine South as the background is a powerful aspect of Hurston‟s novel. It is a telling approach Hurston adopts in TEWWG, but also one which stems from and perpetuates a black literary tradition, for, more than twenty years later, James Baldwin will portray the South in
Nobody Knows My Name as a place where everything “has to do with political power [and] with sex” (qtd. in Long, Collier 530). Janie is born in the South and her whole story takes place there. She undergoes all the suffering of three oppressive marriages in the South and returns triumphant to Eatonville, despite her being a black woman living in a community which is used to looking up to middle-class morals and treating any attempt at liberation and revolt against these morals with scorn. The setting thus highlights how sexually charged the setting has always been. Janie‟s quest, however, reverses the charge, so to speak, and presents a new look at the southern black female and her sexuality.
At the end of the first chapter, the reader sees Janie talking to her friend Phoeby, who is “eager to feel and do through Janie” as she starts listening to Janie‟s oral narrative. Hurston sexualizes Janie‟s oral narrative through a brief glimpse of homoerotic imagery, for Janie‟s
“tongue is in [her] friend‟s mouf” (Hurston, TEWWG 17-18). Janie‟s story of “emerg[ing] and quest[ing] about her consciousness” (23) then opens with a passage which Carla Kaplan pronounces to be “one of the sexiest passages in American literature” (115):
Janie had spent most of the day under a blossoming pear tree in the back-
yard. She had been spending every minute that she could steal from her
chores under that tree for the last three days. That was to say, ever since
the first tiny bloom had opened. It had called her to come and gaze on a
mystery. From barren brown stems to glistening leaf-buds; from the leaf-
74 buds to snowy virginity of bloom. It stirred her tremendously. […] She
was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant
of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the
breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-
bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes
arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from
root to the tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with
delight. So this was a marriage! She had been summoned to behold a
revelation. The Janie felt a pain remorseless sweet that left her limp and
languid. (Hurston, TEWWG 23-24)
This imagery combining nature and eroticism sets the framework for the rest of the novel. Janie judges her lovers and husbands through unsuitability to or compliance with the pear tree image and the blossom that is her sexuality.22 All of her future husbands are described in terms of plants and flowers, and this natural imagery is filled with underlying, yet rather overt, sexual meaning, which always refers back to the pear tree scene. In this manner, Janie‟s quest for voice and dignity is sexualized by Hurston.
Also, the fact that Hurston thus sexualizes the southern landscape and describes the main characters in terms of the landscape, underscores the sexual charge of the South.
Finally, as Janie returns to Eatonville, sexually emancipated and experienced, she comes back having lain claim to the place through getting rid of her partners – she has gained
22 To offer another interpretation of the scene, Susan Meisenhelder claims that “for Hurston, this image represents the ideal relationship – both sexual and emotional – between women and men. The male bee is not aggressive or rapacious: he gently ‟sinks‟ into the blossom, and the female flower is not passive: she ‟arches to meet the love embrace.‟ It is the marriage of such active femaleness and gentle masculinity, its fundamental equality, that results in fruit” (1441). Interestingly, Janie never finds her ideal partner in the novel, because all her partners are aggressive. Despite her increasing activity, the ideal is not attained.
75 strength and power from the experiences and the landscape, despite its being a place of the haunting history of slavery and sexual abuse for African Americans.
Janie was raised by her grandmother, Nanny, who comes to symbolize, through her memories of slavery and notions of marriage as security, the past that Janie, at first, unwillingly succumbs to, and, at the end, tries to incorporate into her experience. As Susan
Hegeman puts it, the South represents in Hurston‟s text one of “the often painful zones between the past and the present, […] register[ing] the conflicts and paradoxes of America‟s uneven modernity” (Hurston, TEWWG 24). The novel‟s setting is a place charged with the tensions produced from the clash between Nanny as the embodiment of the past and Janie as a questing figure for the new. Nanny, though an ex-slave woman, imposes on Janie standards and morals typical of the middle class – as Caroline Batker sees it, “Nanny practices a version of […] bias, reproducing stereotypes by reading working-class sexuality in general as dangerous” (205). She wants Janie to marry the wealthiest black man in their village and make Janie as close to being middle class as possible. Also, as Jennifer Jordan points out,
Nanny “sees marriage as a haven from indiscriminate sexual exploitation (as opposed to the particular abuse of a loveless marriage) and as a shelter from financial stability” (109). Janie‟s hand is therefore, through her ex-slave grandmother, promised to Logan Killicks.23
Janie is, from the very beginning of the novel, in a special relationship with the natural world of the South around her. Through the highly sexual pear tree vision, Janie sets an ideal of her future lover, an ideal which her grandmother shatters to pieces. When Janie kisses
Johnny, Nanny reproaches her and calls on her to come to her and talk. “The old woman‟s voice was so lacking in command and reproof, so full of crumbling dissolution, - that Janie half believed that Nanny had not seen her. So she extended herself outside of her dream and
23 According to Kaplan, for example, “Nanny‟s position, however unrealizable, is a feminist alternative to the male radicalism of African American cultural politics of the 1920s” (125).
76 went inside the house. That was the end of her childhood” (Hurston, TEWWG 26). What follows is a talk by Nanny, who forcibly turns Janie into a woman, imposing her own views molded by the past of slavery and rape of herself and Janie‟s mother.
When Janie comes back to the house, “Nanny‟s head and face looked like the standing roots of some old tree that had been torn away by storm. Foundation of ancient power that no longer mattered. The cooling palma Christi leaves that Janie had bound about her grandma‟s head with a white rag had wilted down and become part and parcel of the woman. Her eyes didn‟t bore and pierce. They diffused and melted Janie, the room and the world into one comprehension” (Hurston, TEWWG 26). Nanny is portrayed here as a kind old woman but also as a dying tree. She is too tired to reproach Janie and she serves as a voice of the past, to which Janie is too young to listen. “Yeah, Janie, youse got yo‟ womanhood on yuh. So Ah mout ez well tell yuh Ah been savin‟ up for uh spell. Ah wants to see you married right away.” The reason why Nanny wants Janie married is because she is afraid that Janie will end up in a bad relationship, or like her mother, Leafy, who got raped by her schoolteacher. “What
Ah seen just now is plenty for me, honey. Ah don‟t want no trashy nigger, no breath-and- britches, lak Johnny Taylor usin‟ yo‟ body to wipe his foots on” (26-27). In fact, Nanny is here trying to protect Janie‟s purity and chastity – her potential virtues in becoming a middle- class woman; Nanny also tries to get across to Janie how easy it is to fall prey to both white and black men. Unfortunately, Nanny tells all this in a similar fashion, though in a much coarser language, as the black women‟s clubs mentioned earlier. Nanny does not want Janie to experience, but to abide by her advice.
Nanny reveals her views on marriage and sexuality further when Janie is trying to protest against marrying the man Nanny proposes, Logan Killicks. “So you don‟t want to marry off decent like, do yuh? You just wants to hug and kiss and feel around with first one man and then another, huh? You wants to make me suck de same sorrow yo‟ mama did, eh?
77 Mah ole head ain‟t gray enough. Mah back ain‟t bowed enough to suit yuh” (Hurston,
TEWWG 28). This argument for marriage seems to be Hurston‟s reflection of the arguments that the black women‟s clubs proposed in their middle class morality, adopted here by a working class woman. Marriage rather than sexual promiscuity, though only shown so far in
Janie‟s innocent kiss with her peer, is a solution to the black woman‟s fate in this racist and sexist world. The argument here is, according to Nanny, that “honey, de white man is de ruler of everything as fur as Ah been able tuh find out. […] So de white man throw down the load and tell de nigger man tuh pick it up. He pick it up because he have to, but he don‟t tote it. He hand it to his womenfolks. De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see. Ah been prayin‟ fuh it tuh be different wid you” (29). Marriage will, according to Nanny, save
Janie from becoming a mule; from becoming an object used for fieldwork, a mere beast of burden.
Nanny here clearly warns Janie of the racism that surrounds her, her sexuality and her body as she is likened to a mule. Nanny offers her a safe place in a marriage with a quite well- off black man. This, however, shows the contradiction in Nanny‟s speech. In saving Janie from the white man‟s sexual oppression in the form of rape so common during slavery, she thrusts her into the embrace of a black man, who has been, however, the person that participated in making the black woman the mule of the world in the first place. This way, to reiterate, Hurston critiques the black middle class morality and discourse on sexuality adopted by Nanny and imposed on Janie: in order to present an image of normality in the white man‟s eyes, the black bourgeoisie, and the working class with it, falls back on a patriarchal model of community. Janie and Nanny are to find this out soon after Nanny‟s speech.
As Lillie P. Howard would have it, “[Nanny‟s] intentions are wholly good, her actions understandable, her advice well-meant. […] Nanny‟s only flaw is that she wants to keep the romantic Janie from finding about living for herself” (“Nanny and Janie” 404-05). The
78 contradictions in Nanny‟s opinions do seem to portray her as an unfortunate character, whose good intentions, stemming from her moral views, shaped by the treatment of her body during slavery, have a profound effect on Janie‟s love life. Nanny limits Janie at the first signs of budding sexuality and talks Janie into marrying Logan Killicks. Although, “Tain‟t Logan
Killicks [Nanny] wants [Janie] to have, […] it‟s protection” (Hurston, TEWWG 30), Nanny realizes her fault soon after Janie gets married. Janie comes to her and complains “cause
[Nanny] told [her] [she] mus gointer love him, and, and [she] don‟t” (41). The boring and patriarchal Logan is nothing Janie had imagined, although he does seem to stand for the security that Nanny has wished for. The incompatibility of Janie‟s vision of a husband and marriage of love and natural sexual attraction with Nanny‟s notion of marriage as security clash here and show Nanny‟s obsolete views on marriage and the inadequacies of the middle class impositions on black female sexuality.
Nanny tries to console Janie: “Tain‟t no use in you cryin‟, Janie. Grandma done been long uh few roads herself. […] Better leave things de way dey is. Youse young yet. No tellin‟ whut mout happen befo‟ you die. Wait awhile, baby. Yo‟ mind will change” (Hurston,
TEWWG 38). But when Janie leaves, Nanny realizes her outmoded thinking and the fact that, as Carla Kaplan puts it, “Nanny gives up on female desire [rather than on security]” (127) and
“enter[s] […] infinity of conscious pain again on her old knees. Towards morning she muttered, ‟Lawd, you know mah heart. Ah done de best Ah could do. De rest is left to you.‟
She scuffled up from her knees and fell heavily across the bed. A month later she was dead”
(Hurston, TEWWG 43). From this point on, Janie develops her own views on marriage through three subsequent marriages only to end up alone, yet more experienced and sexually liberated.
The memory of Nanny comes later on in the novel when, after Joe‟s funeral, Janie is lying in bed looking back on her marriage and Nanny‟s opinions:
79 She hated her grandmother and had hidden it from herself all these years
under a cloak of pity. She had been getting ready for her great journey to
the horizons in search of people […] but she had been whipped like a cur
dog, and run off down a back road after things. […] Here Nanny had
taken the biggest thing God ever made, the horizon […] and pinched it in
to such a little bit of a thing that she could tie it about her
granddaughter‟s neck tight enough to choke her. She hated the old
woman who had twisted her so in the name of love. (Hurston, TEWWG
138)
In this dramatic refusal of Nanny‟s heritage, Janie claims a different way of looking at marriage than her grandmother. She claims a place for love, which she associates with her strong sexual drive and desire. She “done lived Grandma”s way, now [she] means tuh live
[hers]” (Hurston, TEWWG 171). Now Janie knows what to look for: a relationship where her sexual desires will be fulfilled and cultivated, not a choking sense of security protecting her from the white man‟s racist sexism.
Three Times is the Charm: Janie’s Three Husbands
The three marriages Janie experiences in TEWWG influence the reader‟s understanding of the novel and Hurston‟s sexual politics, for the novel itself is partially a product of a failed relationship of Hurston‟s.24 Janie‟s three marriages can be seen as three different,
24 As William Ramsey points out, Hurston‟s “creative motives were enmeshed in the emotions of a failed relationship. […] She explains how an aborted affair with a man she identifies as A.W.P. […] gave rise to
[TEEWG]. […] In her words, “I did not just fall in love. I made a parachute jump” [and] though it was, as she said, “the real love affair of my love,” […] his wish that she give up her career for him began an “agonizing tug of war.” Hurston further explains that on her research fellowship in the Caribbean, she “pitched in to work hard on [her] research to smother [her] feelings. But the thing would not down. The plot was far from the
80 evolutionary, stages of Janie‟s and also Hurston‟s vision of marriage wherein the two partners in the relationship are equal and where the black woman‟s sexuality does not threaten the male partner. None of the stages, however, is the ideal one, for it is without a husband that
Janie in fact finds freedom and claims her own body and sexuality. This shows how mistaken the middle-class discourse on sexuality and morals seems to be in its emphasis on marriage as a tool for limiting women‟s sexuality. Hurston‟s novel leads Janie in the very opposite direction than the one set up by the black middle class.
The three husbands do not differ much from other male characters in Hurston‟s texts: while Logan Killicks stands for security and Booker T. Washingtonian work ethic, Joe Clarks represents an elitist model of a black man, raised in the white world and embodying black middle class morals (though without the emphasis on women‟s education). As pointed out,
Joe Clarkes‟s views on the relationship between men and women are introduced in “Sweat,” where he likens women to cane chew – and he executes his views in the marriage with Janie.
Both Logan and Joe try to suppress and exert control over Janie‟s beauty and sexuality; they attempt to confine her into a separate sphere, where Janie can be safe and policed, manipulated by her husbands. The third husband, Tea Cake seems to be a different kind of a man: neither he fits Janie‟s vision of an equal partner and he is smitten by God in a similar fashion to Sykes in “Sweat.”
Logan Killicks – The Middle Class Aspirant
As mentioned in the previous section, Janie gets married to Logan Killicks, fulfilling Nanny‟s wish for her to be secure.25 Soon after their wedding, Logan tells Janie that she “done been
circumstances, but [she] tried to embalm, all the tenderness of [her] passion for him in Their Eyes Were
Watching God” (52).
25 SallyAnn Ferguson, for example, points out the resemblance in the financial incentive of Janie‟s marriage to
Logan with Chaucer‟s “The Miller‟s Tale,” thus highlighting the short-lived marriage to Logan as the traditional
81 spoilt rotten” because she cannot take care of the household and does not do chores. Later on, he also tells her that he is planning to buy a second mule, a one “all gentled up so even uh woman kin handle „im” (Hurston, TEWWG 45-46). Thus, Logan clearly states his intentions for Janie: he wants to make her a mule of the world, a housewife, who would be equal in her workload with him, but in nothing else. In Shawn Miller‟s words, “Logan Killicks […] insist[s] too severely on Janie‟s obedience to [him] and to conventional sex-role and class-role stereotypes” (75). This is not, however, something Janie had in mind in her pear tree image.
To further support the claim that Logan subscribes to traditional sex-roles and hard work for both men and women, it might be useful to propose another interpretation of what
Logan stands for. According to Ryan Simmons, “Logan Killicks, who attains modest financial success and respectability as a farmer, models the path advocated by [Booker T.] Washington: gradual progress that would neither threaten whites nor complicate the capitalist infrastructure they had built” (187). To elaborate, Logan certainly seems to care more about his farm than his wife, seeing her mainly as a desirable workforce rather than an object requiring sympathy and feelings, let alone kind treatment. He confines her to a sphere of work, which does not involve Janie as a wife, as a sexual being; her body being only used as a resource. It thus comes as no surprise that “long before the year was up, Janie noticed that her husband had stopped talking to her in rhymes. He had ceased to wonder at her long black hair and finger it”
(Hurston, TEWWG 45). Janie becomes yet another possession for Logan.
The couple quarrels all the time over what kind of house and field work Janie can perform. It seems then that Logan embodies Washington‟s ideas, where promotion of the race through economic success and hard work is the first and foremost goal of black men – women fit into those plans only as sexless workforce. With the realization that Logan violates her
motif of “social and economic advancement (of) the girl” in folkloric literature, example of which TEWWG certainly is (186).
82 ideas of marriage, Janie leaves Logan for Joe Clarks, leaving an embodiment of becoming middle class through hard work for a flashy, urbanized man.
Joe Clarks – Hurston’s Omnipresent Mayor of Eatonville
Joe Clarks is quite different from Logan, he does not seem to be a limiting force to Janie when he lures her away from her first husband. He “[is] a cityfied, stylish dressed man with his hat set at an angle that didn‟t belong in these parts. His coat was over his arm, but he didn‟t need it to represent his clothes. The shirt with the silk sleeveholders was dazzling enough for the world. He whistled, mopped his face and walked like he knew where he was going.”
Although “he was a seal-brown color […] he acted like Mr. Washburn or somebody like that to Janie.” In fact, he has “been workin‟ for white folks all his life” (Hurston, TEWWG 47). Joe obviously knows a lot about the way white people behave, dress and what impact such behavior has on black people, both women and men. Since he embodies the white behavior in the novel, he comes to represent a „whitened‟ black person; and as Deborah Clarke states,
“what Janie sees [in him] is whiteness, and her valuation of this sets her on a path that will take twenty years to reverse” (204). Joe symbolizes aspirations, ambitions, and self- confidence needed to evolve into a successful, middle-class man. He is in his white manners an opposite of Logan‟s black yeoman‟s plans, ambitions, and behavior. At the same time, however, his embodiment of whiteness means embodiment of white middle-class morals as well: he comes treat Janie in a similar way to Logan and later even more.
Joe brings Janie from a rural place to the more urban Eatonville, severing her bonds with the rural past represented by Nanny and Logan. Janie is happy as she believes that “from now on until death she [is] going to have flower dust and spring time sprinkled over everything” (Hurston, TEWWG 54). She thinks her pear tree vision is coming true. Joe‟s behavior on the train ride to Eatonville, however, comes as a warning of what is to come in their relationship: “On the train next day, Joe didn‟t make many speeches with rhymes to her.
83 […] Mostly he talked about plans for the town when he got there. They were bound to need somebody like him.” But for the time being, Janie is content: “Janie took a lot of looks at him and she was proud of what she saw. Kind of portly like rich white folks” (Hurston 56).
Suddenly, there appear certain similarities between Logan and Joe – they both cease to talk in rhymes to Janie once they possess her and they both have plans in which Janie has no say and is relegated to a passive position of a workforce in Logan‟s case and a trophy wife, who later becomes workforce, in Joe‟s case.
Gradually, Joe takes over Eatonville and becomes its mayor, with Janie as his silenced wife. When they are welcome, Janie is beauty itself: “She couldn‟t look no mo‟ better and no nobler if she wuz de queen uh England” (Hurston, TEWWG 67). Janie comes to be called Mrs.
Mayor, called in terms representing her husband, not her. Moreover, Joe makes her work in their grocery store, which “was a pleasant place if only she didn‟t have to sell things” (81). As time passes, however, Joe‟s imitation of whiteness turns into his adoption of white morals. He forbids Janie to show her hair in public, the same hair that Logan used to finger and that is a symbol of Janie‟s sexuality and her budding body.
This business of the head-rag irked her endlessly. But Jody was set on it.
Her hair was NOT going to show in the store. It didn‟t seem sensible at
all. That was because Joe never told Janie how jealous he was. He never
told her how often he had seen the other men figuratively wallowing in it
as she went about things in the store. [One] night he ordered Janie to tie
up her hair around the store. That was all. She was there in the store for
him to look at, not those others. (Hurston, TEWWG 86-87)
He also forbids her to speak on the porch. In this way, he tries to control the image of Janie as a sexual being and exerts power over her sexuality – he is to be the only person to say when and where she is to be sexual. In Bertram Ashe‟s words, “the tying up of Janie‟s hair is clearly
84 an exertion of power on Joe‟s part. Not only does he seek to send a message to the men of town, through Janie‟s hair, that Janie is for him and him alone, but in the process he also sends a message to Janie that her hair is not hers to wear the way she wants” (582). Joe possesses Janie‟s body and their marriage closes Janie away from the rest of the town; he creates a separate sphere for Janie, which he dominates. Moreover, it seems that Joe expresses a certain lack of trust in Janie and her sexuality, the sexuality of the overtly sexualized black female. In curbing her sexuality and controlling her body, Joe can rest his mind and, perhaps, not worry about his own inadequate sexuality, which Janie reveals later on.
This scene with hair is followed by the story of a mule, in which Joe, again, decides the poor creature‟s fate. Combined with the reference to a mule in Nanny‟s speech above, this structuring of Joe‟s possession of Janie‟s hair and, in turn, her sexual expression, ties Janie to the mule, completing Nanny‟s fear of Janie‟s becoming the mule of the world. At the end of the mule story, however, the reader sees a glimpse of Janie starting to fight for her place in the world. “She got up without a word and went off for the shoes. A little war of defense for helpless things was going on inside her. People ought to have some regard for helpless things.
She wanted to fight about it” (Hurston, TEWWG 90). As if realizing what happens to a passive mule and to its corpse, Janie decides to stand up to Joe and her potential fate of a bodiless mule. However, she does not voice her views and her trouble, but rather, as Kaplan observes, “Janie‟s view of voice seems private and personal, even privatistic” (126). This is especially true when one realizes that “Janie‟s desperate – and largely unfulfilled – need for a listener” (133) pervades the entire novel. Janie has no one to talk to, no one to listen to her tale, Joe being no exception. That is also why the reader does not see Janie speak much, except for the fact that much of her tale is told by her to Phoeby, and why most of her monologues are internal, often told by the narrator rather than Janie herself.
85 Along with the incipient fight against her own helplessness, Hurston also shows
Janie‟s grievances. After one argument between Joe and Janie, “Janie stood where he left her for unmeasured time and thought. She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside her.
Then she went inside there to see what it was. It was her image of Jody tumbled down and shattered. […] She found that she had a host of thoughts she had never expressed to him, and numerous emotions she had never let Jody know about” (Hurston, TEWWG 112). The movement, the “falling off,” inside her expresses the process of Janie‟s realization that her body has been taken away from her and that Joe is not the pear tree ideal bee for her blossom.
Their marriage does not function on equal terms and her sexuality is being restricted by Joe‟s jealousy and possessiveness.
The incessant fights between the increasingly conservative and jealous Joe and the repressed Janie project into their sexual life. After one big quarrel, during which Janie is likened to “chillun and chickens and cows” because “somebody got to think for women” and these creatures, “the spirit of the marriage left the bedroom and took to living in the parlor. It was there to shake hands whenever company came to visit, but it never went back inside the bedroom again. […] The bed was no longer a daisy-field for her and Joe to play in. It was a place where she went and laid down when she was sleepy and tired” (Hurston, TEWWG 110-
11). Hurston shows here a process, in which Joe, seemingly manages to suppress Janie‟s sexuality and any of her opinions along with her voice. It seems to Joe and to the citizens of
Eatonville that he controls Janie, but Janie keeps all of her feelings inside along with her vision of marriage and sexual desire and gradually stands up to the oppressive and abusive
Joe.
In the end, Janie destroys Joe‟s manhood and the self-confidence that has helped him become the mayor of Eatonville. She breaks free when Joe‟s mocking of her looks becomes the last drop: “You ain‟t no young girl to be getting‟ all insulted „bout yo‟ looks. You ain‟t no
86 young courtin‟ gal. You‟se uh ole woman, nearly forty.” Janie retaliates: “Ah reckon Ah looks mah age too. But Ah‟m uh woman every inch of me, and Ah know it. Dat‟s uh whole lot more‟n you kin say. […] When you pull down yo‟ bricthes, you look lak de change uh life”
(Hurston, TEWWG 122-23). Joe is stripped down in front of everyone‟s eyes and his power thanks to which “they bowed down to him” (80) disappears as Walter answers back to him:
“You heard her, you ain‟t blind” (123). In this scene of “castration” of Joe (McGowan 117;
Clarke 205), Janie questions Joe‟s, and in turn his middle class‟s sexuality and morals. She, in fact, lays bare their inadequacies, their repressiveness and the detrimental effect they have on her.
Later on, when Joe is lying in his death bed, Janie sums up Joe‟s treatment of her: “Ah run off tuh keep house wid you in uh wonderful way. But you wasn‟t satisfied wid me de way
Ah was. Naw! Mah own mind had tuh be squeezed and crowded out tuh make room for yours in me” (Hurston, TEWWG 133). Janie accuses Joe of having behaved repressively and possessively towards her, her body and mind, and of having betrayed her vision of marriage that he once promised. To reiterate, one of the goals of black men in their uplifting of the entire race was to put up an image of normality, often through marriage and their management of it, which could only be achieved, however, by suppressing black women‟s sexualities, as these were viewed as overt, inappropriate, and dangerous. Black men feared the women‟s sexuality‟s raw power and tried to control it. Joe tries to do the very same by disallowing
Janie to show off her hair in front of other people, forbids her to speak and tries to keep her in the store as an asexual workforce.
Janie, however, challenges Joe‟s treatment of her, his notions of marriage as expressed in his behavior towards her. These views only bring repression and submission, they do not bring freedom of (sexual) expression on the part of the black women. And so, when Joe dies, she looks at her image in the mirror: “the young girl was gone, but a handsome woman had
87 taken her place. She tore of the kerchief from her head and let down her plentiful hair. The weight, the length, the glory was there” (Hurston, TEWWG 134-35). Janie thus gets rid of
Joe‟s morals that tried to mold and shape her sexuality, her beauty and her opinions; morals which literally imprisoned her body. She sets out for one more marriage – this time with a more developed voice, which is no longer so privatized, and with a more mature outlook on marriage.
Tea Cake – The Aggressive Glance from God
Tea Cake comes onto the scene as a man who “looked like the love thoughts of women. He could be a bee to a blossom – a pear tree blossom in the spring. He seemed to be crushing scent out of the world with his footsteps. Crushing aromatic herbs with every step he took.
Spices hung about him. He was a glance from God” (Hurston, TEWWG 161). Janie seems to believe that she has just found her desired lover, the one who will allow her to externalize the libido she has been suppressing due to Joe‟s morals. He is truly a glance from God at what the ideal male partner for Janie might look and behave like. At the end of the novel, however, he remains just that – a glance which never became reality, as the use of “crushing” in the quote above foreshadows. Though never realized completely, Tea Cake stills represents a look at, or a search for a different approach to black woman‟s sexuality – as liberated, unrepressed, fulfilling, and existing on equal terms – for some time, at least – with that of the man‟s.
Especially when Eatonville “began to notice things and got mad” (166), displaying its middle class morals taken after their deceased mayor Joe. Finally, Janie sees Tea Cake as a solution to her dissatisfaction with men and their treatment of her when she says that “Jody ain‟t never in his life picked out no color for me. De world picked out black and white for mournin‟, Joe didn‟t. So Ah wasn‟t wearin‟ it for him. […] Tea Cake love me in blue, so Ah wears it”
(Hurston 170). For the time being, Tea Cake seems an ideal partner.
88 Janie‟s relationship with Tea Cake is, however, as Kaplan points out, “double-edged
[and] within the positive and sometimes idyllic depictions of Janie and Tea Cake‟s love affair there is also something suffocating, almost sinister” (Hurston, TEWWG 132). When Janie tells him to “make no false pretense wid [her],” he answers “Janie, Ah hope God may kill me, if
Ah‟m lyin‟. Nobody else on earth kin hold uh candle tuh you, baby. You got de keys to de kingdom” (Hurston 165). Despite this vow that he will treat Janie as an equal, Tea Cake gradually develops into a repressive, jealous, and possessive character. As McGowan notices,
“though her relationship with Tea Cake is the liberating relationship, the one which seems to allow Janie to emerge fully as a subject, […] at the same time, this relationship also extends and strengthens the hold of domination over Janie [on the part of men], because Janie no longer even recognizes the domination as domination” (111). After their marriage, the once faultless relationship begins to show cracks and Janie is slow to notice them. It is as if getting married incarcerated Janie once again and kept her away from reality; it is as if Hurston were suggesting that the whole institution is faulty at some level.
After Janie and Tea Cake get married, starting Janie‟s third attempt at a successful marriage, they travel to Jacksonville, where Tea Cake leaves Janie alone, worried and without the money that he has stolen from her – only to come back badly cut with three hundred twenty-two dollars in his pocket. By winning them in a game and a fight, he then tries to establish his dominance over and possession of her: “Put dat two hundred back wid de rest,
Janie. Mah dice. Ah need no assistance tuh help me feed mah woman. From now on, you gointuh eat whutever mah money can buy yuh and wear de same. When Ah ain‟t got nothin‟ you don‟t git nothin‟” (Hurston, TEWWG 191). This is a familiar scene, in some aspects, to what happens in “Sweat:” the male character is jealous of his wife‟s money and possessions, because they in fact emasculate the man and show the male as incompetent to provide for his wife. Both Sykes from “Sweat” and Tea Cake wish to reverse this situation, but while Sykes
89 tries to chase off or even kill Delia, Tea Cake simply tells his wife to put her money away – he is now the provider. In either case, the men try to strengthen their emasculated manhood by putting the woman and her financial power down.
Ignorant of Tea Cake‟s gradual domination over her, Janie is happy – “he drifted off into sleep and Janie looked down on him and felt a self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from its hiding place” (Hurston, TEWWG 192) – because Tea Cake is so spontaneous and because they seem to work well together sexually. “They wrestled on until they were doped with their own fumes and emanations; till their clothes had been torn away; till he hurled her to the floor and held her there melting her resistance with the heat of his body, doing things with their bodies to express the inexpressible; kissed her until she arched her body to meet him and they fell asleep in sweet exhaustion” (205). But then, Tea Cake, without her knowing it, claims to have possession of her. One day, he beats her out of jealousy, although it is nothing serious as Hurston‟s third person narrator suggests: “before the week was over he had whipped Janie. Not because her behavior justified his jealousy, but it relieved that awful fear inside him. Being able to whip her assured him in possession. No brutal beating at all. He just slapped her around a bit to show he was boss” (218). The beating, however, does not come out of nothing.
While Tea Cake is working on the muck, Janie spends a lot of time talking to Mrs.
Turner, “a milky sort of a woman that belonged to a child-bed. Her shoulders rounded a little and she must have been conscious of her pelvis because she kept it stuck out in front of her so she could always see it.” Mrs. Turner symbolizes a return of the black middle-class morals to the narrative. Mrs. Turner‟s “nose was slightly pointed and she was proud. Her thin lips were an ever delight to her eyes. Even her buttocks in bas-relief were a source of pride. To her way of thinking all these things set her aside from Negroes” (Hurston, TEWWG 193). Mrs. Turner takes to Janie because of her “coffee-and-cream complexion and her luxurious hair,” which
90 Joe tried so hard to cover under a scarf, telling her that the two of them “oughta lighten up de race” by not marrying black men; they “oughta class off” (194-5). Hurston devotes an entire chapter to Mrs. Turner, her looks, her beliefs, and to what she tells Janie – Mrs. Turner comes out a color-struck woman, much like Emma is in Color Struck. As Howard points out, “[Mrs.
Turner‟s] thinking is akin to that of mulatto characters in early black novels: like them, she disregards snubs and ill treatment, grovels before whiteness, and simultaneously subjects dark folks to insult and humiliation” (Zora Neale Hurston 110). Hurston here brings back the color consciousness of some of her black characters but, moreover, she makes a middle-class, entrepreneur character extremely color and class conscious. This way, she seems to underscore the two main aims of renewed patriarchal system: becoming indistinct from the whites in morals and curbing female‟s sexuality.
To elaborate on the episode with Mrs. Turner and her embodiment of middle-class morals, Mrs. Turner subversively tries to introduce her anti-black and anti-work brother to
Janie: “Ah wants yuh tuh meet him mo‟ special. You and him would make up uh swell couple if you wuzn‟t already married” (Hurston, TEWWG 197). Mrs. Turner‟s brother is an elitist just like his sister, he strives to represent the proper middle class and be as white as possible, and so does Mrs. Turner. Also, Mrs. Turner wishes to have her brother and Janie acquainted, saying that a marriage between the two of them would be beneficial. Judging from her views on race and looks, such a union would produce almost white middle-class children, would put
Janie in the right(ful) place and both direct Janie‟s overt sexuality, which shows in her marriage to a dark black man, to procreation for the betterment of the race and to her sphere as a middle-class mother beside and supportive of her husband. It is no surprise that Tea Cake is sad when he overhears Janie and Mrs. Turner‟s discussion – he disapproves of such eugenics-like talk and despises such middle-class elitism. His reaction is logical, but he reacts in a wrong way. His reaction of appropriating Janie‟s body through violence, as mentioned
91 above, is both a violation of Janie‟s pear tree vision and Tea Cake‟s adoption of the possessive behavior so typical of Joe.
By the beating, though not a serious one, Tea Cake tries to establish power, superiority over Janie. Moreover, when Sop-de-Bottom praises him for doing that, Tea Cake further boast that “Janie is wherever Ah wants tuh be” (Hurston, TEWWG 219). And Janie and her newly found voice is nowhere to be found when Tea Cake does all of this. As Shawn Miller points out, “we usually see Janie in absolute submission to [Tea Cake].” She, in fact, “accepts all manner of negative behavior from her new husband with a quiet passivity uncharacteristic of the Janie we have come to know” (83). Tea Cake becomes even more aggressive after the storm, during which he gets bitten by a rabid dog. Although it might seem that Tea Cake does a good and heroic deed in saving Janie from the rabid dog, he merely undoes a mistake he had made before by not leaving the muck earlier and by leaving Janie in the middle of the road, not protecting her. He promised to protect her, treat her well, or else God shall kill him, as he himself had said. Also, as highlighted above, he boasts of having power over Janie and tells her to do as he does. He does not keep up to his promise and dies at the end.
In his last days, Tea Cake increases his possessiveness and accuses Janie, similarly to
Logan and Joe, of not being a good (house) wife: “He was not accusing [Janie] of malice and design. He was accusing her of carelessness. She ought to realize that water buckets needed washing like everything else. He‟d tell her about it good and proper when she got back. What was she thinking about nohow?” (Hurston, TEWWG 259-60). In his last hour then, Tea Cake tries to kill her, so that nobody else can have her the way he has, expressing his possessiveness one last time: “Whut you slip off from me just now for? […] Whut didja slip off from de house „thout tellin‟ me you wuz goin‟. You ain‟t never done dat befo‟. […] You only sound ole when you tell folks when you wuz born, but wid de eye you‟se young enough tuh suit most any man. Dat ain‟t no lie. Ah knows plenty mo‟ men would take yuh and work
92 hard fuh de privilege. Ah done heard „em talk” (266-67). Tea Cake here sounds almost as if
Joe were speaking to Janie. He accuses her of going behind his back after men, prostrating her beautifully sexual body in front of them. He would have none of that.
Just about to die, Tea Cake accuses Janie for the last time of wanting to betray him:
“Ah ain‟t goin‟ tuh no hospital no where. Put dat in yo‟ pipe and smoke it. Guess you tired uh waitin‟ on me and doing fuh me. Dai ain‟t de way Ah been wid you. Ah never is been able tuh do enough fuh yuh. […] He gave her a look full of blacnk ferocity and gurgled in his throat.
[…] Janie, how come you can‟t sleep in de same bed wid me no mo‟? […] How come you ruther sleep on uh pallet than tuh sleep in de bed wid me?” (Hurston, TEWWG 273). The bestial behavior and Tea Cake‟s subsequent attempt to kill Janie forces her to shoot him, killing the seeming bee to her blossom.
Despite the initial idyll of Tea Cake‟s manners and treatment of Janie, he becomes another version of a possessive man who at first respects Janie‟s sexuality and seems to fit into her vision of it, but, in the end, turns out to be as furious with jealousy as a rabid dog.
Thus, even though he is a free spirit and an irresponsible man, whom Janie comes to love dearly, he betrays her trust and the pear-tree ideal by beating her and trying to assert forcefully and boastingly his power over her. Then he is killed as he himself has predicted.
As, for example, Meisenhelder quite correctly points out, the storm that kills Tea Cake is described as both black and female and it has come to avenge all the injuries Tea Cake has inflicted on Janie. “Given the changes that occur in Tea Cake‟s sense of racial and gender identity […] his death is not merely a tragic ending to a love story, but rather the symbolic expurgation of the false values he has come to represent, values and behaviors that directly threaten Janie‟s identity as a black woman” (1444). The marriage to Tea Cake thus turns out to be a failure as a working-class man, whose sexual drive is supposed to complement the working-class women‟s libido, tries to put Janie down the same way as Logan and Joe did.
93 He, too, subscribes to the patriarchal system of controlling the black woman‟s sexuality and is killed by Janie as the exertion of power and control breaks out into a murder attempt.
Janie’s Return to Eatonville: As If Their Eyes Were Watching God
The novel does not end with Tea Cake‟s death, however, but rather leaves space for Janie to finally become an independent black woman, who controls her own body and, consequently, her destiny. The same day she kills Tea Cake, Janie is on trial for the murder: the court room is filled with both white and black people. “The white part of the room got calmer the more serious it got, but tongue storm struck the Negroes like wind among palm trees” (Hurston,
TEWWG 255) Janie testifies, but all this is told in the third-person narrative; white people keep talking and black people shouting, but Janie is quiet. While Kaplan explains that “Janie is silent throughout most of the trial, merely looking on as a series of white men tell her story for her. [She] is trapped” (128), it is argued here that the matured Janie is simply awaiting a more proper audience than the jury as the final and opening scenes of the novel reveal. It is her story to tell and although she does testify in front of the court, she leaves the important act of actually telling her entire story to Phoeby, to someone who can relate and learn.26
As she finishes telling her story to her kissing friend in the last chapter of the text,
Janie reveals to her the most important learned thing: “love ain‟t somethin‟ lak uh grindstone
26 Kaplan extends her argument about Janie‟s silence further: “Janie is silent, like African Americans denied their right to testify, vote, or learn to read and write. And Janie also speaks, taking on the role of post-
Reconstruction blacks who agitated and argued on their own behalf. […] By having Janie deliver her testimony in court, [Hurston] acknowledges the relatively recent historical amelioration of the most overt and brutalizing forms of enforced African American silence. By also opting no to render Janie‟s voice directly at this most crucial of narrative moments – Janie‟s very life and freedom are, after all, on the line here – Hurston is suggesting that black female voice is still constrained, although perhaps now in more covert, complex, and less absolute ways! (128-29).
94 dat‟s de same thing everywhere and do de same thing tuh everything it touch. Love is lak de sea. It‟s uh movin‟ thing, but still and all, it takes shape from the shore it meets, and it‟s different with every shore” (Hurston, TEWWG 257-58). As Phoeby hears out Janie‟s adventurous story, she claims she “done growed ten feet higher from jus‟ listenin‟ tuh […]
Janie” (266). Janie, the ever-learning and experiencing young woman has matured through her marriages and can now dispel knowledge to other women. She has found her voice and actually has something to tell.
The final scenes of the novel are very empowering. Not only does Janie return alive, whereas all her abusive husbands are dead, but she also has things to tell and share, other than gossip on the porch. Janie likens the gossip of the Eatonville community to alcohol, highlighting its detrimental effect on the both the object of the gossip and the gossipers:
“Course talkin‟ don‟t amount tuh uh hill uh beans when yuh can‟t do nothin‟ else. And listenin‟ tuh dat kind uh talk is jus‟ lak openin‟ yo‟ mouth and lettin‟ de moon shine down yo‟ throat. It‟s uh known fact, Phoeby, you got tuh go there tuh know there. Yo‟ papa and yo‟ mama and nobody else can‟t tell yuh and show yuh” (Hurston, TEWWG 267). In these last words of the novel, Janie denounces once again Nanny‟s advice as well as the behavior of the
Eatonville community, which, helping their mayor Joe, tried to impose middle-class morals adopted by Joe to Janie‟s body and her social and sexual behavior. The community is enraged when she marries Tea Cake, a working-class dark black man, and when she starts dressing in nice and showing dresses not long after Joe‟s death. Their control and their morals amount to nothing, says Janie, because these are not supported by life experience. Janie has lived, has experienced various ways of living in the South through her marriages and she is now self- confident and aware of her body.
The novel begins in a third-person narrative voice, in which Hurston presents her model of a man and a woman as two different kinds of people: “Ships at a distance have every
95 man‟s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by time. That is the life of men” (Hurston, TEWWG 9). Men are portrayed as passive creatures, always waiting for their dreams to come true, never doing anything to achieve them themselves. In this way, Hurston points out the passivity of the men
Janie has encountered and their passive reception of the woman that she is and their inability to satisfy or control her. The passage then continues with an image of women: “Now, women forget all those things they don‟t want to remember, and remember everything they don‟t want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly” (9). Women are active, strong, and executors. Also, dreams are said to be true, which alludes to Janie‟s dream and vision of a pear tree and marriage connected to it. Her consequent struggle for its coming true is then a real struggle.
This prologue scene summarizes Janie‟s experience: being written at the beginning of the novel, this short scene foreshadows the kind of men Janie will have to put up with, but, above all, it foreshadows the way Janie will deal with the experience gained. She will remember what she wants to remember and will forget what she does not want to remember – the abusive behavior, the hair rag, the repressions, the jealousy, the sexless love, and loveless sex. Through this selective memory, she manages to return triumphant, alive, and rich to
Eatonville, despite having refused the middle-class morals: “The people all saw her come because it was sundown. […] It was the time for sitting on porches beside the road [and] they sat in judgment. [Janie‟s] speech was pleasant enough, but she kept walking straight on to her gate. The porch couldn‟t talk for looking,” as their eyes were watching a new God. “The men noticed her firm buttocks like she had grape fruits in her hip pockets` the great rope of black hair swinging to her waist and unraveling in the wind like a plume; then her pugnacious
96 breasts trying to bore holes in her shirt” (Hurston, TEWWG 2-3). Janie returns with the sun in the background and the whole Eatonville community watching in silence, speechless.
The scene of Janie‟s return is a powerful and an empowering one, the readers finally see Janie standing upright, bold, and confident. She shows her body the way Joe and Tea
Cake were trying to avoid for fear of her overt sexuality: “As Janie walks back into town, she is a complete, proud woman, unashamed of herself and her actions. […] Janie is heroic; she has endured, and the means by which she demonstrates this survival is through her physical being. Her body is strong, proud and demanding much deserved attention for her past accomplishments” (Marquis 83). Moreover, „she shows in this bold walk through town that she is certainly not one who wants to disappear, hide, or go unnoticed” (85). She passes the porch-sitters in a display of beauty; in a scene so different from what the readers see in
“Sweat” where Delia is humiliated in front of the store. In TEWWG, Janie is back with her body as a weapon and her experience as a shield. The horizon is with her, suggesting how in succeeding in freeing her body and her now mature sexuality, Janie has managed to get rid of the oppressive landscape of mules, too. The working class community with middle-class morals taken from Joe is silent in Janie‟s presence, rendered speechless in the display of
Janie‟s physical and sexual power.
To conclude with, it is important to reiterate that Hurston fills the novel with symbolic imagery of nature which alludes to the main character‟s budding and developing libido, thus transforming a negative notion of female sexuality into literary art. Also, through these symbolic images, the author lets Janie assert her place in the natural landscape of the
American South, claim and connect with this land biologically through linking the portrayals of Janie‟s sexuality with local trees, shrubbery and fauna. Moreover, the author likens all the characters who die or are left by Janie as dying trees, something that needs to be gotten rid of, done away with. Finally, it is the landscape which Janie is in such harmony with that rids
97 Janie of her third oppressive husband, Tea Cake, by unleashing a deadly black storm, which eventually kills the abusive man.
Hurston questions the middle-class discourse on black female sexuality through three marriages of Janie‟s and her refusal of Nanny‟s notions of marriage as security. While Logan
Killicks comes to represent security in the form of working for economic success with his wife on his side as workforce, not a sexual being, Joe Clarks charms Janie with his overt adoption of white morals, white elitism and manners. It is these morals reflecting black middle class views of morality, however, that lead him to imprisoning Janie‟s hair in a rag and forbidding her to speak – he allows her to be there only for him. Janie breaks away from this marriage too, only to encounter Tea Cake, who at first seems to be the bee for her blossom. His increasing jealousy of and violence perpetrated against Janie, along with his possessiveness and breakings of promises given to her, force Janie to shoot him.
Through the failure of the three marriages, which all represent various forms of the same notion that the overtly sexual woman needs to be kept down and put under a patriarchal system of morality, Hurston argues against limitations imposed upon black women‟s bodies and sexual behavior. In letting Janie return to Eatonville alone and tell her story to another woman, while homo- and hetero-eroticizing the very orality of that narrative, the author, however, creates a new space for Janie‟s discourse on black woman‟s sexuality. Though the reader catches mere glimpses of what the features of such a discourse are, the central idea is clear: the working-class female is not necessarily an overtly sexual being, which threatens the integrity of the community, but rather a woman aware of her own sexuality, looking for a framework to express and develop it in.27 In the case of Janie, the initial framework seems to
27 To offer a starkly different interpretation of what the novel achieves, Jennifer Jordan claims that “although
Their Eyes Were Watching God provides a most effective examination of the stultification of feminine talent and energy within traditional middle-class life, it ultimately belittles the suffering of the majority of black women
98 be marriage, although it is, according to Hurston, difficult and exhausting to find a black male, who would treat his partner on equal terms. Hurston does not discard the possibility of marriage as a solution, but only on equal terms between the new kind of woman and her man.
As the novel ends, however, this ideal of the pear tree with the unaggressive bee for her blossom is not attained. Rather, instead of another attempt at marriage, what Hurston presents here is black woman‟s sexuality as independence and as a driving force for standing up for the black woman‟s cause against suppression and the imposition of rules on her. Instead, Hurston accentuates that this is a positive vision, wherein sexuality is not threatening black communities and morals, but rather it is a liberating force of the new black woman.
whose working-class existences are dominated by hard labor and financial instability. Furthermore, Janie‟s struggle for identity and self-direction remains stymied. She never defines herself outside the scope of her marital or romantic involvements and, despite her since relationship with the black women around her or with the black community as a whole. As the novel ends, Janie chooses isolation and contemplation, not solidarity and action” (108).
99
5. Seraph on the Suwanee: From Getting Raped to Learning How
to Handle His Case
While TEWWG has been long viewed as Hurston‟s highest artistic achievement ever since
Alice Walker proclaimed that “there is no book more important to me than this one” (xiii),
Seraph, Hurston‟s last novel did not receive much attention or praise until the 1980s.28 The same writer who celebrates Hurston‟s most acclaimed novel has only words of scorn for
Seraph as a “reactionary, static, shockingly misguided and timid. [It] is not even about black people, which is no crime, but is about white people who are bores, which is” (xvi). Published in Robert Hemenway‟s Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography, Walker‟s sentiments represent the perception of many critics dealing with Hurston‟s work. Hemenway himself holds that “in writing Seraph on the Suwanee Zora Neale Hurston largely turned her back on the source of her creativity. She escaped the stereotype of the ʽpicturesque‟ black by giving up the celebration of black folklife, replacing the storytellers on Joe Clarke‟s porch with a family of upwardly mobile Florida crackers” (307). Also, “the plot is frequently implausible,
[…] [it] is an unsuccessful work of art” (310, 14). However, it is argued here that though criticized by two foremost experts on Hurston the novel has much to offer. It is a tale worth examining; it provides insight into yet another story of an oppressed and repressed woman, whose body, originally a source of anguish, turns into a powerful weapon.
One of the main aspects of the criticism of Seraph is the fact that the main characters are white, as opposed to the remainder of Hurston‟s work which focused primarily on black
28 Although the initial reviews and sales of the novel were good, “Zora was accused of sodomy [a few weeks after the release of the novel,] and a national black newspaper had given the story lurid front-page coverage. […]
The damage had been done” (Hemenway 320-21).
100 rural folk.29 In terms of the framework of this thesis, this whiteness does not diminish the novel, but rather gives a certain twist to what has been argued so far. Instead of focusing on the black female body, Hurston puts a white female body in the forefront. Notwithstanding its whiteness, it is still a body of a female who is striving to become middle-class and is thus policed in a similar fashion to black women. Moreover, marriage is still seen as the means of controlling the potentially oversexed body, and repression of the body and the mind of the middle-class female is an omnipresent process in the novel. As Ann DuCille points out, “the focus on white men and women allows Hurston to take up in explicit detail the sexual subject matter (and) allows her to scrutinize with unmatched intimacy the passions and problems of heterosexual coupling – including the previously unexamined issues of courtship and marital rape – without subjecting herself and her fiction to charges of pandering to white stereotypes of black sexuality” (115). Hurston‟s quest for liberating the female body in her art thus continues in Seraph: Hurston makes it universal and more pressing, veiling her critique of the institution of marriage and the middle-class mores in an ambiguous narrative, which, as is often the case with the author, allows numerous pathways of interpretation.
There is, again, an agenda involved in the novel. Instead of liberating the black female like she did in TEWWG, Hurston takes as her subject the southern working-class white, another group which stood low in the hierarchy of the society. As mentioned in the overview section dealing with sexological discourse, the working-class whites were one of the targets of the eugenic movement, much like the non-white people. As Chuck Jackson notices, there is evidence that Hurston‟s interest in the Florida crackers stems from her anthropological work, so-called FWP papers, passages from which were placed by Hurston “in the mouths of her
29 In an interesting reading of the novel, Claudia Tate interprets Jim and Arvay to be black: “Hurston portray[s]
Jim and Arvay with white bodies and what her readers identify as black voices. […] Thus Jim and Arvay seem to possess white exteriors and black interiors” (“Hitting A Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick” 148).
101 novel‟s characters” (643). The condition of cracker white women was similar to that of the black women, though with a different and distinct history; their bodies were policed and labeled impure, their procreation was termed dangerous and undesirable. Hurston takes up this cause in Seraph and attempts to liberate the poor white woman‟s body from middle-class oppression as well.
Hurston‟s Seraph follows the tale of a young cracker woman, Arvay Henson and her marriage to Jim Meserve, a descendant of southern aristocracy. It is a tale of love, sex, humiliation, oppression, and finding oneself – in this manner, it does not differ from other works by the author. However, unlike “Sweat,” Color Struck, or TEWWG, this novel “is a story about female desire gratified, [it] is a veritable treatise on heterosexual love,” says
Claudia Tate (Psychoanalysis and Black Novels 149-50).30 This gratification, however, takes a long time coming, and it materializes in the form of a subversive feminist tale.
In her seminal essay, “The Courageous Undertow of Zora Neale Hurston‟s Seraph on the Suwanee,” Janet St.Clair argues that there is a “narrative of resistance and self-discovery that exists not between the lines but solidly on every page” of Seraph. In sum, “this submerged narrative concerns an oppressed woman who ferociously conceals and protects an embryonic sense of self until she gains the space and safety to nurture it and bring it to light and life” (38). However, in the novel “every character and incident is rent by dualities; every narrative assertion self-destructs. Nothing is as it seems; nothing retains its shape” (42).
Arvay‟s quest for finding the self is imbued with natural imagery the same way Janie‟s quest in TEWWG is. There is the marriage to a possessive and often tyrannical husband, and the struggle of the main character to break free of the husband‟s hold on her body and soul.
30 However, Tate‟s reading of the novel leads her to a conclusion that “Seraph dramatized the theme that appears throughout Hurston‟s works, whether intentional or not. This theme expresses Hurston‟s ambivalence toward a woman‟s pursuit of romantic love. Indeed, the theme suggests that romantic love is a deterrent for female self- discovery” (Psychoanalysis and Black Novels 177).
102 Arvay‟s tale is, similarly to Delia, Emma, and Janie‟s tale, an often violent struggle to claim her own body and voice, and to emerge as a full-fledged female character, on par with the male counterpart. In Seraph, this quest takes a long time because of the multilayered narrative which offers various possible interpretations of events, characters‟ actions, and motivations.
Looking at the imagery surrounding Arvay‟s body, however, provides one possible pathway of analysis of the novel.
Arvay Raped to Submission
The narrative opens with a description of the town of Sawley where Arvay has been living for twenty one years – it is Sunday, the time of the church service. “Sawley was boiling like a big red ants‟ nest [because] it was rumored that Arvay […] was a‟courting at last” (Hurston,
Seraph 601). This first scene of the text provides information about the town and its people: everyone is interested in Arvay‟s fate, and they want to see who is courting her and how it is going. It reminds the reader of the policing of the young female‟s body by the community.
Though Sawley is not a middle-class community, there is much anxiety over whether or not
Arvay is finally going to enter the holy matrimony as is expected of every woman.
After all, “she should have been married five years ago” (Hurston, Seraph 601). Arvay is not married because she is not pretty: “her shape was not exactly in style in those parts, but that could easily be overlooked. She had breasts to her bosom, but elsewhere Arvay was lean- made in every way. […] True, she was said to be so slim that a man would have to shake the sheets to find her in bed, but there were many around Sawley who were willing to put themselves to the trouble” (601-02). Arvay has, however, given up on the world and has decided to become a missionary. Anyone who has tried to convert her back to normal by courting her had to witness her “hysterical seizures. [S]he was took down right after she got home from the service, and usually when some extra brash young gallant had forced himself upon her to the extent of seeing her home” (603-04). The introductory description of Arvay is
103 unlike any other examined in this thesis. The main character is, unlike Janie, portrayed as introvert, she does not seem to be searching for a soul- and sex-mate, and when a man comes her way, she withdraws “into sexual hysteria” (Hemenway 309). Therefore, Arvay shows from the very beginning that she does not intend to succumb to courting easily.
She stays like this until Jim Meserve, the new and much expected suitor, appears on the scene. “Jim had the nerve of a brass monkey, everybody agreed. But then, he made no bones about the fact that he was really stuck on Arvay Henson. She just suited him, he said, and was worth the trouble of breaking in” (Hurston Seraph 605). In describing Jim and his relation to Arvay, Hurston here brings up again the image of women as mules – Arvay needs breaking in, her stubbornness needs control and taming; the community and the men decide her fate. In perceiving Arvay as a mule in need of its master, Jim really is as Hurston describes him: “It looked like the brash devil was a‟courting Arvay” (605). The narrative here foreshadows that Arvay will have to go through hell alongside Jim in order to defeat his future repression of her body – the body that originally needs breaking in yet another version of the mule metaphor.
As their courting progresses, Jim tells Arvay that she “need[s] [his] help and [his] protection […] to keep [her] from hurting [her] ownself too much.” He asserts that Arvay needs a man: “You don‟t understand your ownself, Miss Arvay, and somebody stronger than you, and that can see further than you, and somebody that feels your care, will have to be on hand to look after you” (Hurston Seraph 613). What Jim claims here is what in fact happens in the novel later on, he paints a picture of what their relationship will be like – he will provide for her, will protect and help her, rendering her helpless and voiceless. Although Jim promises that he will be “around to look out for you and point out things” (614), he never delivers in this sense and, on the contrary, chastises Arvay later in the text for her negligence towards him and his doings. He claims he now “know[s] how to handle [her]” (614) and he
104 reveals to Arvay who he is: “Those who know me well call me by my right name, Peter Rip-
Saw, the Devil‟s high sheriff and son-in-law” (615). Though this hellish terminology and portrayal of Jim does not appear in the book again, it introduces Jim as a dangerously playful and ambiguous character. On the one hand, he wants to help Arvay escape her hysteria, on the other he wants to possess her like the devil.
The process of Arvay‟s deliverance from sexual hysteria starts as Jim and Arvay enter the opening Sunday service scene. Though she is quite self-conscious of her looks, by Jim‟s side, Arvay‟s “vanity put on a little flesh” (Hurston Seraph 617). After the service, Arvay is overcome by “a tremulous desire to take refuge in this man. To be forever warm and included in the atmosphere that he stirred up around him” (620). This wish will be granted to Arvay, but as the reader sees later, she becomes a rather passive participant in the marriage: she is repressed, distant, and withdrawn for a good portion off the novel. The main reason for this distance and passivity surfaces immediately after her feeling of desire mentioned above: “But with the intensity of desire stirred up in her came despair. This was the prettiest man that she had ever laid eyes on. […] What in the world did she have to win him with? [He] had given her something to wish for which she could never have. Nothing to do but submit herself to her fate. But submission tazzled you up inside” (620). Arvay suffers from a sense of inferiority which will haunt her for a long time. She does not resist it, but rather lets this inferiority take over her fate, thus making her passive.
This resignation on Arvay‟s part does not seem to bother Jim for the time being, her indecisiveness is something he has taken into account: “Women folks don‟t have no mind to make up nohow. They wasn‟t made for that. Lady folks were just made to laugh and act loving and have a good man to do for them all he‟s able, and have him as many boy-children as he figgers he‟d like to have, and make him so happy that he‟s willing to work and fetch in ever dad-blamed thing that his wife thinks she would like to have” (Hurston, Seraph 621). Jim
105 here voices his views on women; views quite similar to those voiced by Joe Clarke in “Sweat” and Joe Starks in TEWWG. As Christopher Rieger notices, “Jim‟s resemblance to Jody is unmistakable, and the actions of both men betray their words by revealing that they have very little understanding of their wives” (112). Like Joe and Jody, Jim ascribes Arvay a separate sphere, where she is to be kept throughout the marriage. Jim tells Arvay what he expects of her: subservience, male progeny, and happiness. He claims control over her well-being, but also over what gender their children will be, thus beginning to assert control over Arvay‟s body.
However, Arvay resists Jim‟s plan to make her submit to him. After he reveals his plan to her, Jim is invited to the Hensons‟ house, where Arvay gets another one of her fits.
Working as a defensive mechanism against forceful suitors, Arvay hopes it will work against
Jim as well. But Jim, the devil, fights Arvay‟s defense off and even comes up with the
“quickest cure for spasm-fits,” making Brock Henson declare that he “never knowed that
Arvay had that much life in her” (Hurston, Seraph 628). Yet again, the duality of Jim‟s actions reappears – he stirs life in Arvay, only to tame it next. He loves the lively Arvay, but only as long as he can control her.
After having her defensive move turned against her, Arvay finally considers the possibility of marrying Jim, she envisions life with him: “Love and marry me and sleep with me. That is all I need you for. Your brains are not sufficient to help me with my work; you can‟t think with me. […] She could do that and be more happy and satisfied, but it looked too simple. […] There was bound to come a time when he was going to feel outdone in not finding those other things in her” (Hurston, Seraph 631). Again, Arvay‟s fears resurface, revealing her feeling inferior – she can imagine a life with Jim, but she fears her inferiority will give her away and Jim will eventually leave her. Internalizing these fears of the limitations of marriage with Jim and the potential ascension from cracker to middle-class,
106 Arvay builds in itself a wall of fears which will keep her distant from her husband and her family for some time.
Having accepted the option of marriage, though, Arvay decides to open to Jim and she shows him her place of playing, the mulberry tree: “She wanted a cleansing of her sacred place. […] Jim just had to come here and broom out. […] It was a cool green temple of peace.
She stood looking up through the new green leaves, punctuated by tiny fuzzy things that looked like green, stubby worms. Those were the young mulberries coming on” (Hurston,
Seraph 632). In a scene reminiscent of Janie‟s pear-tree image in TEWWG, Hurston portrays
Arvay‟s budding sexuality in terms of a tree. This tree Arvay‟s haven and, while Janie never reveals her tree of life and sexuality to any man, Arvay decides to show it to Jim. She expects some kind of absolution from the tree, consent to her marriage to Jim, because she considers him the right partner. The language of “broom out,” however, suggests that this process of cleansing and beginning of Arvay‟s sexual life will be done by a sexual act, which comes shortly afterwards.
Despite Arvay‟s obvious giving in and submission to Jim, Jim becomes suspicious of
Arvay‟s behavior and asks his black friend, Joe Kelsey, for advice. Joe tells Jim that “most women folks will love you plenty if you take and see to it that they do. Make ‟em knuckle under. From the very first jump, get the bridle in they mouth and ride ‟em hard and stop ‟em short. They‟s all alike, Boss. Take ‟em and break ‟em” (Hurston, Seraph 640). The mule talk remerges here, this time voiced by a black man, Joe, who reminds the reader of Joe Starks by these words. As duCille interprets these words, “Joe‟s advice suggests the degree to which black men, like white, operate under the influence of patriarchal ideology: women are beasts of burden – mules of the world – to be bridled, broken, and ridden. […] The bedroom [is] where [Arvay] will feel most helpless, most possessed, most manipulated” (125). Acting in compliance with his devilish character and with Joe‟s sexually aggressive and abusive advice,
107 Jim visits Arvay the next day and tells her that he would “favor to see that playhouse you used to play in under that mulberry tree” (642). Veiling it in the language Arvay wants to hear, Jim prepares himself for an attack on the mule that needs breaking in. He feels there is no other way for him to attain and possess Arvay forever but to bridle and ride her. He needs to assert his masculine role sexually.
Jim continues in his playful ways, encouraging Arvay to show him how she used to play under the mulberry tree – Arvay cannot catch his meaning and his intentions. But after she is done playing, “she felt his arms suddenly thrust beneath her, and his hands digging into her side. […] In a fraction of the second she was snatched from the sky to the ground. Her skirts were being roughly jerked upwards, and Jim was fumbling wildly at her thighs”
(Hurston, Seraph 644). Jim is taking what he believes is his, he claims possession to Arvay‟s body. Arvay tries to protest, but she cannot find her voice: “Arvay opened her mouth to scream, but no sound emerged. Her mouth was closed by Jim‟s passionate kisses, and in a moment more, despite her struggles, Arvay knew a pain remorseless sweet” (645).
The usage of the words “pain remorseless sweet” is, as Rieger points out, a reference to the same phrase in TEWWG, thus suggesting “an affinity between the two female protagonists that is (understandably) easy to miss or ignore” (110). The fact that the masturbatory pear tree scene from TEWWG resonates in Hurston‟s last novel tells the reader something about how difficult it is to attain equal romantic and erotic relationship with someone who possesses you. What the phrase hints at is not the physical pain of rape – the presence of which is irrefutable – but rather at the pain in terms of emotions.31 Arvay realizes
31 At the same time, as duCille points out, “the fact that the scene climaxes in a “pain remorseless sweet” (an orgasmic metaphor Hurston uses in Their Eyes as well) should not mask the degree of terror the rape inspires in
Arvay or mitigate the impact that the violence of this assault has on the Meserve-Henson coupling. The rape confirms Arvay‟s fears that Jim‟s ardent courtship and marriage proposal are really part of a grand joke designed to bring her low” (126).
108 how much Jim now has a hold on her, he has just bridled and broken her in. Janie and Arvay‟s succumbing to love of a repressive male brings pain – Janie can never find a non-aggressive bee to her blossom, and neither can Arvay, it seems. The realization is present, but the power to fight this pain needs some time to emerge.
It comes as no surprise that Arvay is scared now, because her purity has been destroyed, she has become a fallen woman, quite literally as Jim violently took her down from the tree to the ground and raped her. It also comes as no surprise that Jim is now quite happy, he “love[s] Arvay a million times more” (Hurston, Seraph 645), because he controls her body and her orgasms now. Arvay has fully succumbed to Jim and his powerful, devil-like sexual drive. And Hurston underscores Arvay‟s submission by a scene even more important than the rape. Though Arvay has reached a climax with Jim, she does not have enough; though she feels humiliated by the rape, she clings to Jim even more than before: “Some unknown power took hold of Arvay. She pressed her body tightly against his, fitting herself into him as closely as possible. A terrible fear came over her that he might somehow vanish away from her arms”
(647). Arvay tries to merge into one with Jim, much like she did with the mulberry tree when she was a little child.
Yet because she has been raped by her man, because she is the passive person now trying to find her ground in the relationship where Jim has had and will have the upper hand, she cannot attain unity with the man as she tries to cling to Jim‟s body. She cannot overpower the aforementioned unknown, devilish power of Jim‟s, which is taking hold of her:
“Somehow, she seemed not to be able to get close enough to him. Never, never, close enough.
She must eat him up, and absorb him within herself. Then he could never leave again”
(Hurston, Seraph 647). But because she is unable to get as close to Jim‟s body as he has to hers, Arvay‟s fears that Jim may leave and that she is inadequate for him, remain present, internalized by Arvay. Also she now becomes repressed by Jim who is to tell her when to be
109 ready for him and when not. Her own body, as seen above, cannot do anything with Jim at this point.
Moreover, Jim tells Arvay that his power over her body and her sexuality will continue, because she is going to “keep on getting raped, […] rape in the first degree”
(Hurston, Seraph 650). And Arvay does not seem to mind this confession – as a devout
Christian, Arvay believes in confessions and is ready to give Jim and herself absolution for the rape. She thinks she “paid under that mulberry tree” (650).32 Despite the rape, the couple gets married immediately after and they move away from Sawley, though not very far; not far enough as it turns out. Arvay becomes pregnant and her sister, Larraine, comes to help her.
By her arrival, however, Larraine stirs up the old fears and jealousy in Arvay.
Arvay has been jealous and fearful of Larraine ever since Larraine married Carl
Middleton, the Sawley pastor. Though it seemed at first that Carl was interested in the young
Arvay, at one point he ceased to show interest and turned to Larraine. This is the reason why
Arvay gave up on the world, the reader learns – out of broken heart and broken trust. Nobody else but Arvay knows this and the internal struggle over whether to tell Jim that there was a man in her heart before him haunts Arvay. And so when Larraine comes to the tuppentime camp to help Arvay with her pregnancy, Arvay‟s old fears resurface – she is afraid Larraine will steal Jim and tell him about Carl. Arvay herself is not yet certain about her feelings towards Carl.
She starts having strange dreams in which she is after Larraine‟s breast and her throat
– after Larraine‟s body which has always been considered prettier than Arvay‟s. Moreover,
Arvay develops “strange moods and appetites. A great craving for meat, and for clay. […]
32 duCille interprets the rape scene and the following climax of Arvay‟s as a “comment on the complexities of female subjectivity and human emotions: the ways in which love and sex, passion and power, danger and desire, anger and affection, collide with each other and collapse whatever boundaries and separate spaces our emotions and desires are thought to occupy” (128).
110 Arvay hungered and retreated inside of her self with her fears” (Hurston, Seraph 657). All of this happens during her pregnancy and all the fears and appetites, all the longing, internal struggles, haunting love for Jim and jealousy of her sister combine to create a child in Arvay which is nothing like she has imagined.33
Eighteen Years of Marriage: From Earl’s Birth to His Death
Arvay‟s insecurities and her acute sense of inferiority are unfortunately mirrored and embodied in her first baby, son Earl. Her fears and uncertainty about the relationship with
Jim, her unresolved past with Carl help create a baby which becomes a symbol of the strange life and relationship Arvay has with Jim and with her own body. As Rieger posits, “Arvay‟s constant self-doubt stems from two main sources: her guilt over having secretly loved her sister‟s husband and her intransigent embarrassment of her poor Cracker roots. The Meserves‟ deformed first child, Earl, is a manifestation of this guilt and shame” (111-12). And so when
Arvay sees the baby for the first time, she “cr[ies] out in horror. […] Arvay studied the little bundle of flesh in her arms” (Hurston, Seraph 660) as if it were her nerves, meshed in an unrecognizable form – that seems to be why Arvay has so much trouble recognizing the baby‟s shape and why its shape is so deformed. As St. Clair adds, Earl “serves as an image of the deformed and illogical consciousness that restricts [Arvay‟s] growth and potential” (51).
Jim does not take to the child much and leaves Arvay alone with the baby that is the product of her internalized fears. The baby is hungry all the time, confirming its origins in Arvay‟s hunger for calm and security in her life, for some peace of mind. She was troubled by her past with Carl, the new life with Jim which has been up to now nothing like what he promised, and also by her inferiority.
33 St.Clair calls Arvay‟s fears “irrational remnants of an irrelevant past” (44). It really seems that Arvay is unable to make sense of her past and let go of it, even though she has a new and seemingly better life in front of her.
111 The hunger of the baby boy symbolizes this clearly and even Arvay realizes it herself:
“This is the punishment for the way I used to be. I thought that I had done paid off, but I reckon not. I never thought it would come like this, but it must be the chastisement I been looking for” (Hurston, Seraph 662). It is only logical then that Arvay comes to love the baby dearly, it is literally a living piece of her psyche and her past, and that is also why Jim resents the baby. Arvay hurries to name the baby before Jim does it, giving it the name Earl David, which is, according to Jackson, “a literal mutation of Carl. […] Since Arvay‟s body processes her past in the experience of abjection, then it only makes sense that the disabled Earl is an uncanny double of Carl, a figure who Arvay must learn to love and, eventually, of whom
Arvay must learn to let go” (647). Luckily for Arvay, Jim earns enough money to be able to relocate with Arvay to west Florida, where they begin anew.
Jim starts working in Citrabelle, picking fruit. Arvay is unaware of how hard Jim has to work to provide for the three of them – he is now finally doing part of what he promised to do. He tries hard to elevate Arvay and himself to middle-class. Now that they have moved to
Citrabelle and their financial situation is getting better, Arvay begins to forget her previous life in Sawley and, in turn, comes to silently resent Earl. At the same, her relationship with
Jim seems to be improving: “In spite of her silent resentment over Earl, and in spite of her lack of expression, there were times when they grabbed hands and mounted to Heaven together. They played music on the instrument of life. It was merely that two or three of the keys were out of fix, and there was a break in the tune when they were touched” (Hurston,
Seraph 667). Obviously, it is Earl that makes Jim uncomfortable in the marriage, and it is
Jim‟s distrust of Arvay‟s body, which he has thought he was in control of, that make Arvay out of tune sometimes: “Thus they fumbled and searched for each other in silent darkness”
(668). The silence is an important aspect of the marriage here – the struggle for voice is a recurring theme in Hurston‟s works, and it resurfaces here as well.
112 Arvay keeps to herself with Jim, her fears still seem to haunt her, and Jim, at the same time, is waiting for some appreciation “of his love as expressed by what he was striving to do for her” (Hurston, Seraph 668). Arvay‟s insecurities and sense of inferiority prevent her from appreciating Jim‟s work and that in turn makes Jim unhappy. There is a clear lack of communication and understanding between the two. While Jim expects active gratitude from the passive mule he has helped create and mold, Arvay is so molded by and fearful of her past and what her body might produce after giving birth to Earl that she remains passive. There is a big gap opening between Arvay and Jim and Earl‟s presence is only making it deeper and wider.
Hurston describes in detail how much effort Jim is putting into making Arvay happy, she describes in detail his (ad)ventures and his sadness over Arvay‟s lack of appreciation.
Arvay is preoccupied with her body and her past and, also, Jim does not point out things to her like he once promised. He said he expected women to deliver certain things and Arvay tries her best to do exactly that. Somehow, Jim wants more from her without letting her know.
Fortunately for the couple, Arvay becomes pregnant with a healthy child, a girl named Angie.
Angie is healthy because she is the product of the couple‟s new life, which is rid of much of Arvay‟s past and her cracker life. Jim comes to love the girl dearly, while Arvay seems to resent the baby a little, especially her affinity to Jim rather than to her. Angie is
Jim‟s first product of the possession he has managed to attain over Arvay‟s body. Arvay has finally delivered what Jim has been expecting of her. The duality of the novel, however, comes into play at the moment of Jim‟s happiness. He suddenly begins pondering leaving
Arvay: “There was not sufficient understanding in his marriage, Jim said inside himself. What help for it except by parting from Arvay” (Hurston, Seraph 693). Jim realizes that Arvay does not understand him and his efforts and he faults her for his unhappiness. He never considers his part in this lack of understanding.
113 For it is he who has been molding Arvay into a passive mule on a high pedestal; it is he who told her to lay back, produce babies, and enjoy the life he shall provide. Despite her passivity, strange moods, and lack of praise for Jim‟s achievements, Arvay has delivered. St.
Clair rightly points out that “despite his insistence that she neither worry nor think” earlier in the novel, “he forces her to do both under impossible conditions, for he refuses to tell her his expectations yet requires her to acquiesce in his will. Although she blossoms into a cooperative gratitude at the slightest reassurance, he consistently abandons her to a limbo of ignorance, neither leaving her alone not allowing her to participate as a partner” (46). This duality in Jim‟s character and in his treatment of Arvay resonates throughout the novel and makes it difficult for Arvay and the reader to actually understand Jim‟s motivations. Though
Jim is here pondering whether to leave Arvay or not and decides to stay for his own selfish reasons, it shows later on in the novel that leaving her would have been a better idea, because
Jim‟s act of leaving in fact provides space for Arvay to look around and see through Jim‟s actions.
As Jim is deciding whether to abandon his wife or not, being a good wife and a mother does not become the incentive for Jim to rethink his decision to leave Arvay – he finds other reasons, “ones more in keeping with his conception of himself as a generous guardian of his vulnerable wife and family” (Akins 34). “What would poor helpless Arvay do with a place like this on her hands and nobody to tell her and show her what to do about it? And Arvay herself, what would become of the poor weak thing without the proper person to give her the right care? […] Some other dumb fool might come along, find her forlorn and take the advantage and brutalize her in some way or other” (Hurston, Seraph 694). Jim thus does not think about Arvay here in terms of her being a good wife, but rather as a woman in need. He is her proprietor, he raped her and so she is his to provide for and be helped. It is the
114 realization of possession and of Arvay‟s helplessness that drives Jim back to Arvay‟s embrace.34
However, in keeping with the ambiguity of the text and its characters, Hurston also portrays Jim in the same scene as a caring husband and a vulnerable man himself: “[Arvay] was a woman and women folks were not given to thinking nohow. […] That was what men were made for. […] He had no business pushing off nothing like that on her. He had played the fool, not Arvay” (Hurston, Seraph 694). Jim remembers his views on women and realizes, through his patriarchal opinions that he ascribed Arvay a certain role and she has tried her best to be a good wife. “There was something about Arvay that put him in mind of his mother.
[…] All the agony of his lost mother was gone when he could rest his head on Arvay‟s bosom and go to sleep of nights” (694). Though this shows Jim‟s need of Arvay‟s body, hence his violent taking of it, Jim also shows vulnerability; Hurston suggests to the reader the way
Arvay can close the gap between herself and Jim, how she can attain the unity she could not get after the rape. It will take some time, however, before Arvay finds this out.
When he comes home after this period of contemplating, Jim sees Arvay and realizes how much he loves her and how much possession she is in fact exerting over him, without knowing it. Arvay is unaware of her powers, much like Janie is in TEWWG before she kills
Joe and Tea Cake. He “held her tight and kissed her and murmured sweet soothing things until the mysterious green light appeared in Arvay‟s blue eyes. […] Each time that she succumbed to his love making, Arvay‟s eyes gradually changed from the placid blue to a misty greenish-blue like the waters of the sea at times and at places. […] He placed Arvay as
34 As Tate describes the marriage, “for most of the marriage Arvay deludes herself with the impression that all she needs to do is to be a submissive wife. […] Jim supplies the other half of the (marital) model; he is the active sadist of the dyad. Their unconscious devotion to sadomasochistic love undermines their marriage by scripting their oppressive sexual roles. Although they are aware that something is missing from their marriage – a mutual understanding – they do not know how to achieve it” (Psychoanalysis and Black Novels 157).
115 having powers that few women on earth had. The strange thing was that she did not know her own strength” (Hurston, Seraph 695). Even Jim thus knows that Arvay is powerful and that her power resides in her body. The green color of her eyes recalls the mulberry tree image which is described as a green haven.35
Hurston, typically of her prose, hints at the hidden power residing in the female body – because of the oppression and limitations imposed on the female body by the middle-class mores and by Jim‟s concept of marriage, however, it is difficult for Arvay to wake up to the realization that she is powerful. This is the case of Arvay as much as Delia and Janie; the very opposite is the case of Emma in Color Struck, who never attains this power and never claims her body. Jim, aware of Arvay‟s power, does not let her know, but rather lets her succumb to his love – he is holding the reins of this mule. “Knowing more, she might not have been so contented where she was. Twenty to twenty-five years later on, he could afford to let her know” (Hurston, Seraph 695). What she is now, a good mother, a loving wife, and a waiting- woman, is good enough for Jim, that is the result of his pondering.
Instead of talking to Arvay, pointing things out to her, Jim “expresses his feelings in physical terms and with such unrelenting fervor that her body seems to Arvay the major medium of the marriage” (duCille 130). This goes back to what Jim promised his marriage to be – lovemaking, child-bearing, and tending the house, all of them physical activities requiring the woman to use her body according to her husband‟s wishes. In Arvay‟s mind then, “it is her body Jim loves, not her being” (duCille 130). Jim, through possessing Arvay‟s body, claims the ability to “read [her] writing. Know you a lot better than you know your ownself, Arvays, and always have,” says Jim (Hurston, Seraph 704). In this knowledge, as pointed out above, he, however, thwarts her development, her growth as a mature woman and
35 Tate also argues that “the change in the color of Arvay‟s eyes is a physical manifestation of her corresponding unconscious desire for a similar union” (Psychoanalysis and Black Novels 174).
116 the female partner Jim ultimately desires her to be. He does not give space to Arvay, especially once Kenny is born and Arvay has three children on her hands. Jim thus constantly hinders Arvay‟s progress, while resenting her stagnation at the same time – there is a certain love-hate relationship on both Jim and Arvay‟s part which pervades the novel.
Arvays is secretly aware of Jim‟s power over her, it plagues her most of the time, and she is also aware of how little Jim thinks of her intellect. When Jim insists on having Earl sent to an institution, Arvay defends Earl‟s and, in turn, her own dignity and past and returns to
Sawley for a few weeks. When she arrives to Sawley, however, she notices the dilapidation of her family‟s house, “rats, roaches, and flies were simply taking the place” (Hurston, Seraph
719). Larraine and Carl look both like an “awful gang of crackers” (719), recognizes Arvay, and the reader realizes how much Arvay has become conscious of her working-class cracker origins and how much she has come to resent it and, in turn, appreciate Jim‟s providing for her. When she sits, after so many years, under her mulberry tree, “feelings […] swept over her. A memory inexpressibly sweet. No injury that she could conjure up could stand up beside the ecstasy that she had felt here. God, please have mercy on her poor soul, but she was a slave to that man!” (720). Realizing what Jim has done both for her and to her, Arvay writes him a letter telling Jim that she will leave Earl with her mother and return to Citrabelle alone.
She cannot stay away from Jim for too long, but she can give up, in a sense, her son, who represents her past plagued with feelings of inferiority.
After a while, as Arvay‟s resentment towards Jim‟s treatment of her reappear, Arvay however comes for Earl to Sawley and takes him back home. This proves to be a fatal mistake, for Earl later sexually attacks Lucy Ann, one of the Corregio‟s children. He attacks her neck and thighs, two vulnerable and utterly sexual spots on a woman‟s body and, more importantly, places which Arvay attacked in her aggressive dreams about Larraine. Earl thus brings back Arvay‟s memories and transforms them into actions: “Earl […] is full of
117 destructive potential; and like Arvay‟s deformed mentality, which invites and expects oppression, he is destroyed so that productive life can resume” (St. Clair 51). Thus, as
Citrabelle‟s men are searching for Earl, Arvay helps him escape with a rifle which Earl then uses and almost kills Jim in the swamp. He viciously attacks Jim in the swamp: “Earl, seeing his father where he had no chance of escape, advanced to get Jim exactly under his gun-sight again. Jim was helpless before him. […] One gun, two guns, then two or three more blazed.
The slight body jumped and fell forward with the rifle under it” (Hurston, Seraph 737). The other men protect and save Jim, the member of their community, whereas the disabled and hysteric Earl, the embodiment of the cracker woman‟s burdened past and her repressed feelings, dies under their fire. Jim stays, having gotten rid of the symbol of her fears. As mentioned several times, however, it takes time for Arvay to realize what Earl‟s death brings to her.36
Reaching a Breaking Point: The Repeated Raping and Jim’s Ultimatum
Though Arvay seems distant and passive in the numerous events of the Meserve family – due to Jim‟s dual treatment of her and his unclear motives as to her position in their marriage – she gradually comes to accept the middle-class position Jim has managed to elevate her to. On a number of occasions, Arvay displays resentment of foreigners, colored people, and even her very own crackers as shown in the scene of her first return to Sawley.37 She embodies the
36 In a starkly different reading of Earl‟s death, Jones claims that “as marginalized figures in the household,
Arvay and Earl feel an affinity for one another as marginalized – she due to her folk roots and Earl from his physical and mental handicaps. When Earl dies, it signifies one more link in her folk roots disappearing because he was the most like her” (110).
37 As Laura Dubek notices, “Hurston […] dramatically demonstrates how the racist ideology that gives meaning to whiteness inverts social reality. Throughout the novel she presents Arvay misinterpreting events, blaming any and all trouble on the Kelseys or the Corregios” (347). Arvay faults both her husband and the nonwhites for her
118 middle-class mores in her often perfect enactment of the middle-class repressed wife, who bears children, takes care of them and of her husband, and lets the man control her sexuality.
And when her daughter Angie begins to show signs of Arvay‟s own fears of inferiority which have plagued her up to now, the mother tries to act despite her lack of insight into the workings of her family.
Angie is infatuated with Hatton Howland and as she is parading in front of the mirror one day, “the girl looked sad and solemn” (Hurston, Seraph 752) – even though she considers her body fine enough, Angie does not feel confident enough to attract Hatton‟s attention and, ultimately, his love. When Arvay finds her little girl solemn because of this young man, she starts protecting Angie, shielding her from the potential danger this man represents for
Angie‟s purity. Aware of her own sin under the mulberry tree, Arvay protects first and foremost Angie‟s body, “making [her] look like [she] was some little old girl” (753). In trying to guard Angie‟s chastity, Arvay remembers Jim‟s violent attack on her young budding body and, at the same time, expresses the traditionally middle-class morals towards a young woman‟s body: “[…] I never thought a girl of mine would put herself in the way of a man like that. I thought that she would look upon herself more than that. I‟m hurt to my heart to hear it” (756). She tries to police Angie‟s corporeality the way her own body was not, and the way she has learned now that she is a member of the middle-class.
Moreover, from Earl‟s death onwards, Hurston keeps portraying Arvay as a character which reminisces about her past the more she is distanced from her family. Jim spends much of his time attending business, Angie has found a man and Kenny is attending college. As
Jackson notices, “since Arvay no longer possesses a functioning maternal body, she retreats into an abject realm of disuse” (652). Arvay reflects on her position with bitterness and
bleak situation, and it is only after Jim leaves her and she returns to Sawley that she realizes how much her views were flawed.
119 applies her experience to her behavior towards Angie and the girl‟s love for Hatton. When
Arvay is talking to Jim about Angie, Jim – keeping in with his views on women and relationships – says that “love is a funny thing […] Seems like that one person gets next to your heart, and you can‟t shake ‟em loose no matter which way you twist and turn. You just got to go on serving ‟em all your born days” (Hurston, Seraph 758). Jim thus reaffirms that he perceives love as a servitude of two people to one another – his marriage to Arvay is the same way, although Jim does not let Arvay know that she, too, exerts some influence over him.
As mentioned above, Arvay is going through hell and heaven at Jim‟s side, Hurston‟s portrayal of the marriage is multilayered. Thus, in response to Jim, Arvay “traveled the road that she had come for the last twenty years. Her love had mounted her to the tops of peaky mountains. It had dragged her in the dust. She had been in Hell‟s kitchen and licked out all the pots. She had stood for moments on the right hand side of God” (Hurston, Seraph 758). Arvay admits to herself that Jim is both the devil himself as well as god – he is able to treat her kindly as well as badly. When she realizes this, Arvay voices in front of Jim her opinion on their marriage – in the face of Angie‟s potential replication of Arvay‟s fate, Arvay, for the first time, finds her voice strong enough to tell Jim that she “hope[s] [her] child don‟t fall such a slave to nobody that they can just handle her anyway they will or may, and she be so under the influence that she can‟t help herself. I don‟t never want her to know the feeling of that”
(758). Jim retorts with a secret smile and yet another opinion about marriage which he sees as a black-and-white thing, as a gamble and as “nothing else but compellment” (759). Jim here finally reveals the true motives – as far as one can interpret the multilayered narrative – of his treatment of Arvay. Jim seems to want the same treatment he is giving Arvay; he wants her to abuse him and care for him with the same extreme yet deep affection he holds for her.
But Arvay still does not see Jim‟s meaning, she cannot decipher his text yet: “Love to her meant to possess as she was possessed. To be wrapped around and held in an embrace so
120 warm and so tight that […] the raw-head-and-bloody-bones of lonesomeness, could never come nigh her. An eternal refuge and everlasting welcome of heart to rest and rely on. Never had she been sure that she possessed anyone, though Jim had told her time and again that she owned him through and through” (Hurston, Seraph 759). Due to her inferiority complex,
Arvay does not believe that she can possess Jim the way he wants her to. She cannot get rid of her fears, her cracker past, and her admiration for Jim enough to resist the hold he has of her – she is unable to exert the same kind of possession over his body. Moreover, neither of the two is aware of what the other person is going through, the misunderstanding is still present.
This miscommunication and Arvay‟s increasing despair over her position in the marriage start bringing up more extreme events in the narrative. Jim‟s abusive behavior and his exclusion of Arvay from the family affairs reach a new high as he confesses to Arvay that he gave consent to Angie to get married. Arvay is furious and her eyes “took on that remote and unknowable look like the eyes of a python in repose” (Hurston, Seraph 779). For the first time, the image of a serpent emerges in the novel, although Hurston‟s readers know it from
“Sweat,” and the animal reappears later in the novel in a cathartic scene of Jim‟s embrace by a snake. Arvay does not go “into their communal bedroom” (780) only to realize later that night that “her resolutions against Jim Meserve were just like the lightning-bugs holding a convention. […] She would hold out until Jim came and carried her back across that hall by main force, which he did at midnight” (780). Arvay arrives at the old realization that she cannot let go of the man who has got her on a leash.
As mentioned, Jim keeps on adding to Arvay‟s grievances, driving Arvay to a point where she will realize she needs to change her position and situation vis-à-vis her marriage and Jim‟s power over her. At a Florida Gators game, where Kenny‟s band is playing at halftime, Arvay experiences an unprecedented humiliation as her son sits down next to her and Jim with Felicia, the Corregios family‟s daughter. Reminiscent of Earl‟s violent affection
121 for Lucy Ann, Arvay is horrified, but what irks her more is that Jim has not told her anything about inviting Felicia to the game. She is insulted like never before and there is more offensive and abusive behavior from Jim to come as, at a party after the game, Jim presents
Arvay as a trophy wife to a banker. Seeing Felicia with Kenny again, Arvay demands Jim to take her home, which he does furiously. When they arrive home, all hell breaks lose and
Arvay‟s proverbial last drop is about to come.
As they arrive home and enter the house, there is no retreat to the bedroom as usual.
Rather, the furious Jim “stood and looked down on her as if she were a chair. [H]e reached forward, caught her by the arm and flung her back into the room so forcibly that the back of her legs came up against the bed and sat down without planning on it” (Hurston, Seraph 793-
4). In this scene, Hurston reveals how angry Jim is with Arvay‟s lack of appreciation for his doings and plans. He regrets not treating her differently when he met her as he says: “where I made my big mistake was in not starting you off with a good beating just as soon as I married you” (794). Jim forgets about the rape of Arvay, and his constant raping and having possession of her throughout the marriage. He strips Arvay of her clothes violently, tells her not to dress again and leaves her standing in the communal bedroom “shivering with fright as naked as she had been born” (795). He commands Arvay to stay naked: “You‟re my damn property, and I want you right where you are, and I want you naked. Stand right there in your tracks until I tell you that you can move” (795). His treatment of her at this moment reminds one of giving orders to a mule, which Arvay represents in the marriage. She, again, surrenders to his power over her as they go to bed – “her fear of loss was much greater than her physical fear” (795). It seems that she succumbs to Jim‟s possessiveness completely again; this is the only way she knows love exists as the reader found out earlier. She hugs and kisses Jim just like he commands her to do.
122 However, unlike at all the other occasions in the text, however, Arvay does not stay passive throughout the entire scene, merely listening to Jim‟s demands and commands – this time she protests and later on in the narrative, she even acts through her apparent inactivity. “I can‟t stand this bondage you got me in,” she tells Jim. “I‟m tied and bound down in a burning
Hell and no way that I can see. […] I aim to kill myself” (Hurston, Seraph 797). After humiliating her in an unprecedented manner, both sexually and mentally, abusing her body and her love for him, Jim reacts to Arvay‟s threats with “happy arrogance” (797) and goes to sleep on Arvay‟s breast. This four-page verbal, physical, and mental abuse of Arvay represents the last straw and the last point in Arvay‟s seclusion from becoming a mature woman devoid of fears, repressions, and abuse. While many critics take Jim‟s departure as the point of Arvay‟s evolution as a full-fledged character, it is argued here that Arvay decides at this very point, after this extreme and intense evening of humiliation, that it is time for her to act. Though she does not kill herself as she professes, she attempts to kill her husband.
The Return of the Serpent: Arvay’s Journey to the Horizon
As pointed out, Arvay arrives at a point of no return to Jim‟s conception of love and marriage.
His extremely middle-class oppression of Arvay‟s body and her sexuality reaches a new extreme when he strips Arvay naked violently and tells her what to do in their bedroom.
Showing he is in charge, Jim displays his utter misunderstanding of Arvay in commanding her without letting her know his aims and motives. He does not let her help him make decisions about the family‟s future, in particular about the future of Angie and Kenny. After the crucial scene in the communal bedroom and the surprise at the Gators game, Arvay decides to get her own back.
As evident throughout the thesis, Hurston uses phallic symbols quite frequently in her works, and the symbol of a snake, a serpent signifying sin as well as a limp phallus, is one of the most recurring ones. Delia has to deal with ophidiophobia as Sykes tries to kill her,
123 ultimately turning that which she fears most into a powerful weapon with which she avenges
Sykes‟s abusive behavior towards her. Having abused Arvay for much of the novel, teasing her and mocking her into submission, controlling her body and sexuality, Jim seems to be asking for punishment from Arvay, much like Sykes in “Sweat.” While Sykes leaves the marital bedroom and sleeps with another woman, Jim turns the communal bedroom into a place of submission, a place where Arvay can only be repressed and possessed. The sexual behavior of both men is threatening both women and so the women decide to act. The serpent becomes Arvay‟s weapon of choice as in Delia‟s case.38
A python appears in Arvay‟s eyes when she finds out that Jim has been lying to her about Angie‟s marriage to Hatton; thus it emerges at the moment of Arvay‟s immense humiliation and despair. It resurfaces again, in the form of another snake, not long after the fatal night of Jim‟s abuse of Arvay in the bedroom. One day, Jim calls Arvay out into the grove, where “Jim had the biggest diamond-back by the neck that she had ever seen, and the snake was trying to get loose” (Hurston, Seraph 828). Paralleling their marriage wherein
Arvay is the snake trying to get out of Jim‟s grip, the scene becomes a decisive, breaking point in the novel. “Arvay had a deep-seated fear and dislike of snakes. […] Supposing that thing got a-loose. The thought of that possibility frightened Arvay so that she began to grow numb” (829). Her fearful wish comes true as “she opened her eyes a moment later on a truly frightening scene” (829), a scene she fears to look at but also a scene which seems to be enacting her desire to be rid of Jim‟s repressive grip. “Jim was no longer laughing. His lips began to slide back from his teeth. […] The tight coil about Jim‟s waist was terrible [and] the rattler was freeing its head, and Jim was grimly putting every ounce of the strength in his
38 Rieger notices that “Hurston does not associate Arvay with any powerful natural symbols for the vast majority of the novel. The predominantly pastoral landscape of Seraph is devoid of hurricanes, lightning strikes, and other signs of nature‟s power and resistance” (118). Associating the character with a snake, however, changes this.
124 hands and arms to hold onto the neck of that snake” (829-30). The rattler, at first symbolic of
Arvay‟s previous passivity and submission, begins to return Jim his treatment by trying to strangle him.
Arvay‟s revenge is taking place right in front of her eyes, it is a dream come true in a sense, and Jim cannot but watch the passively watching Arvay with his “eyes dilated with fear and pain, and sweat pouring down in great drops” (830). Arvay, instead of helping Jim, “went into a kind of coma standing there. […] In her consciousness Arvay flew to Jim and slew that snake and held Jim in her arms like a baby” (Hurston, Seraph 830). In reality, she never moves, she watches her husband suffer under the serpent‟s grip until Jeff rescues him.
Similarly to what she has been doing throughout the novel, Arvay does not act, but rather internalizes her actions, acts them out in her mind.39 This time, however, the same process brings a different result – while previously she wanted to act and liberate her voice and her body from Jim‟s clench, but could not do it because of her internalized fears, here she lets the snake, the powerful executor of her revenge, act on her behalf and she merely envisions saving Jim‟s life. It is a reversal of power and roles in the marriage which ultimately brings
Arvay‟s liberation.
In her discussion of the snake scene, duCille points out that “the snake becomes a feminine symbol, signifying the extent to which Jim has been encircled by Arvay‟s powerful grip, how the possessor has been the possessed” (136). The snake scene reiterates Delia‟s usage of the snake as a weapon against her male oppressor, and in Seraph Arvay begins to realize that she, too, has a powerful grip over Jim, just like Jim has told her many times. The fact that her power manifests in a murder attempt goes to show that Jim went beyond the limit
39 Hemenway also sees the scene as Arvay‟s (in)action against Jim‟s abuse, though in terms of the whole novel:
“Arvay‟s inability to act is related to Jim‟s initial violent sexual assault, to her sublimated resentment over her role in their marriage, to the evil that Jim‟s sexuality represents to her fundamentalist Christian conscience, and to her own pleasure – and guilt – in their tempestuous intercourse” (311).
125 in his treatment of Arvay. Also, the fact that Jim picks up the murder weapon himself and shows it proudly to Arvay, calling her out to the grove, signifies that Jim has brought Arvay‟s revenge on himself and, as St. Clair claims, “the [whole] snake incident […] encapsulates the cruelty, childishness, selfishness, condescension, and insensitivity that characterize [Jim] throughout the novel‟s subversively feminist story” (49). Exhausted, with his manhood humiliated and possessed by the powerful snake-Arvay, Jim declares he has been beaten and decides to finally leave Arvay who has just tried to kill him.
Confirming that he knows who has just tried to strangle him, Jim calls the snake the
“Old Stony Lonesome,” reminding the reader of the usage of “raw-head-and-bloody-bones of lonesomeness” by Arvay when describing Jim‟s love of her. “[N]ever had any idea a snake was all that strong,” says Jim to which Jeff replies, saying that snake can be “strong as a mule” (Hurston, Seraph 832). The two men both know that Arvay was the one trying to kill
Jim, and their language shows it clearly. The woman, who has been likened to a mule in need of breaking in, the mule in need of a possessive master, has levered up to the master‟s oppressive hold of her. Thus, Hurston here brings back the recurrent image in her prose, combining the phallic symbol that turns on its proprietor in combination with another piece of living property which turns out to be stronger than previously thought by the oppressive male.
The snake scene extends in this manner into a liberating scene for Arvay, though she remains silent throughout most of the incident. The mule has become the master and the snake the avenger – they both represent the revolting woman on a quest for her liberation.
When Jeff leaves Jim and Arvay alone, Jim unleashes a long tirade about how much he loves Arvay and how much she has just disappointed him, reproaching her for her cowardly love. Arvay retorts by telling Jim that he “craved after [her] body. Otherwise, [she] felt (him) looking down on [her] all the time” (Hurston, Seraph 837). Arvay tells Jim what she thinks about his kind of love – though she claims earlier to be satisfied with Jim‟s kind of
126 possessive, manipulative love, the many abusive incidents have opened her eyes. Jim goes on to explain all his doings to Arvay, realizing that she really has no notion about his
(ad)ventures – but it is too late. Though he reproaches her repeatedly throughout his monologue, it is ultimately Jim‟s fault that Arvay does not understand what he has been trying to achieve for her sake. Having been almost murdered by Arvay‟s rage with his behavior towards her, Jim declares that “your kind of love, Arvay, don‟t seem to be the right thing for me. My feelings inside is just how I look outside. Naw, Arvay. I done got my mind made up.
I‟m leaving you in the morning […] but if I ever see any signs of you coming to be the woman I married you for, why then I‟ll be only too glad and willing to try it again” (840-41).
Jim tells Arvay that she has to make the first move in the potential reconciliation and then leaves.
By leaving her, he opens up a space of potential for Arvay to materialize her own story and, possibly, find her way back to Jim, but stronger and assertive in her longing for a relationship based on equality, not sexual repression and possession. As St. Clair rightly sums up, “Jim does a genuine service. He leaves her […] and because she is left alone, she has the time, space, and safety for the search (of) the rediscovery, acknowledgement, and respect of her self” (51). Arvay now has a year to find out more about herself – after all, she has been under Jim‟s spell for more than twenty years and it is high time she found and explored her identity. She must, for the sake of Hurston‟s argument, return to Jim as a strong woman, not a desperate, crawling mule.
Hurston summarizes much of the year-period Arvay is given by Jim and devotes the rest of the novel to the rest of this period. The readers do not learn much about how Arvay spends this time, but towards the end of the year, she receives a letter, announcing that her mother, Maria, is dying. Arvay immediately leaves for Sawley. Knowing that “there was some hidden key to re-open the door of her happiness,” Arvay sets out to look for it in her
127 hometown, where, according to Arvay, “love and free-giving abided and not on decorated sun-porches” (Hurston, Seraph 845). She returns to the place of the origin of her fears, her insecurities, her devout Christianity; it is a return to the partial source of her unhappiness in the marriage. Arvay finds her old house in a horrible state, her mother dying, and Larraine and
Carl impoverished, lazy, and spiteful.
In her return to Sawley, Arvay resolves most of her burdensome issues, especially the one with Carl, which was one of the main causes of her giving birth to the deformed Earl. She learns that Carl used to love Arvay but Larraine stole him away. Arvay thus learns that her sister has been lying to and cheating her for more than twenty years now and that Carl is nothing like the ideal man she imagined him when she was sixteen. Having gotten rid of this burden and jealousy of Larraine, seeing her and Carl desperate and leading a tragicomic dead- end life, Arvay realizes her luck in finding Jim and leaving Sawley. The novel‟s duality comes into play here once again as Arvay realizes that without Jim and his sometimes amazing business adventures which made the Meserves successful middle-class people, she would have never been able to leave the place and would have lived an entirely different, probably tragic, life of a cracker. At the same time, Arvay knows that she cannot live this life with Jim under his terms only. She must put a stop to his repression and possessiveness if she wants to be happy with and equal to him.
It would not be Hurston if there was not a climactic scene of Arvay‟s liberation full of naturally imagery combined with sexual undertones. The mulberry scene in Seraph is a proud equal to how Hurston portrays Janie‟s quest in TEWWG, thus rendering the novel a full- valued novel despite the criticism it has received over the years. Visiting the old house after
Maria‟s funeral, Arvay returns to her tree: “[T]his mulberry tree was her memory thing. It brought back to her the happiest and most consecrated moments of her lifetime. As with other mortals, life is full of compromises and defeats with few clear victories to show. Here, Arvay,
128 the woman, had triumphed, and with nothing more than her humble self, had won her a vivid way of life with love” (Hurston, Seraph 877). The tree symbolizes her childhood, her meeting of Jim and his violent, yet ultimately freeing, possession of her. The duality is persistent here, for Hurston clearly asserts throughout the novel that Jim is both abusive and loving, repressive and wishful for Arvay to find her self. The mulberry tree and its significance for
Arvay‟s fate underscore this duality: if it were not for Jim‟s rape and the consequent marriage,
Arvay would have stayed in Sawley and turned into a complete cracker like her sister. But, at the same time, Jim‟s violent embrace and his rape throw the young girl into a chaos which ultimately brings her to her green tree of life to seek answers, solutions, and absolution.
Arvay here realizes that her old house, the place that housed her cracker family is in fact to blame for her earlier fears, for her feelings of inferiority: “The house had caught a distemper from the people who had lived in it, and had then diseased up people. […] The tree, the servant of the sun, was being made out to be nothing by that ill-deformed brute of a thing.
How much had it blinded her from seeing and feeling through the years!” (Hurston, Seraph
878). In the vivid portrayal of the house as a living, yet deformed, thing, the narrative reminds the reader of Earl, his deformation, brutality, and the origins of his character. Knowing this,
Arvay sets the house afire and finds peace at last: “She was no longer divided in her mind.
The tearing and ripping and useless rending was finished and done. She had made a peace and was in harmony with her life. [S]he knew her way now and could see things as they were”
(Hurston, Seraph 879). Arvay here literally purges her life of her cracker roots, leaves only her tree alive and vibrant, just like she is now.40
40 Jones reads the scene of burning down the house differently: “Burning it represents a parting with that aspect of her youth and a recognition that, try as she might, she can never return to her folk roots. Her ascension to bourgeois status and exposure to material comforts renders her incapable of living in her childhood home again.
Her romantic illusions about the folk past disappear as it burns down, and now she sees the house and her past differently. The burning of the house signifies an attempt to reconcile her past and present, the folk and the
129 By getting rid of her cracker roots, the roots of all evil and fearful in her, the limit to her feelings and sexuality, Arvay finds her identity, her place in life. As Rieger point out, “in her determined destruction of the house Arvay simultaneously reclaims the mulberry tree as her personal symbol, replaces her former passivity with decisive action, and refines her introspective vision” (120). She decides to turn the burned house and the garden into a park, and leaves for Citrabelle where she wants to live with her husband. Now that she has exorcised her fears, she can become an equal to her husband and resist any kind of possessiveness and oppression because she knows she deserves fair and equal treatment. She is not a cracker any more, she has become a Meserve.41
Arvay thus returns to Citrabelle a changed woman, and her transformation is immediately recognized by those people, for whom she previously had only words of scorn – the nonwhite people. “Just like Mister Jim, ain‟t she, Janie? And everybody knows that Mister
Jim is quality first-class. Knows how to carry hisself, and then how to treat everybody. Miss
Arvay‟s done come to be just like him. […] You‟se quality all the way,” proclaims Jeff
(Hurston, Seraph 884). Arvay in rejecting her cracker roots and adopting her middle-class position has finally been accepted by the less privileged, by those who are class-conscious.
Arvay, “without realizing, […] had come to prefer Jim‟s way of handling things” (885), and
bourgeois, and the Old and New South. As a consequence, she becomes neither folk nor bourgeois but somewhere in between in her sensibilities” (111).
41 As Rieger points out, alongside other critics, “the name Meserve implies that Jim demands that others serve him. A more ambiguous reading, however, adds the possibility that the name means that Jim serves himself.
Angeline and Kenny, like their father, possess a certain brashness and self-assuredness that ensures they will take care of their own needs and desires – serve themselves – before worrying about those of others. In this sense, Arvay is surely not a Meserve, but, as she says, a servant to the other members of her family. Her discovery of how to serve herself as well is signaled by her re-identification with the mulberry tree and coincides with a more visibly active natural worl” (118-19).
130 she sets out to visit Jim at the sea. It is the end of the year-period given to her by Jim and
Arvay, having made a conscious choice – unlike before when she was raped and helped and abused by Jim – rejoins her husband. This time by his side; not crumbling under his body and his sexual power.
Jim has owned the shrimp business for many years now, but Arvay has never visited the port with the Arvay Henson boat, she does not know that the whole fleet is named after the
Meserve family. The final scenes of Seraph remind the reader of the prologue scene in
TEWWG where ships in distance have dreams of all people on board. Hurston extends the metaphor here in a powerful episode on the sea, where Jim and Arvay reunite. Though
Hemenway scorns the ending as a mere “demonstrating [of] Hurston‟s knowledge of shrimping” (310), the connection with TEWWG gives the ending of Seraph merit and depth; it is not merely a romantic ending but also a painful portrayal of what freedom of choice brings to Arvay. As Jim is steering the Arvay Henson through “havoc […] with her mouth open”
(Hurston, Seraph 898), thus reminding Hurston‟s readers of the storm scene in TEWWG, he is attacked by his Mate who does not want to go any further. Seeing the attack on Jim, Arvays undoes her murder attempt: “Arvay saw and acted almost instinctively. She flung the door open, leaped upon the mate and grabbed him by his hair to pull him away from Jim‟s leg”
(899). Once they overcome the havoc, there appears a new horizon for Arvay: “The sea vastness, the unobstructed glory of the rising sun, the delicate and forming colors on horizon and sea made new sensations for Arvay” (900). The sea becomes the new space where Arvay is able to reunite with Jim, there is potential all around them and the experience of this sight shall strengthen Arvay‟s union with Jim.
As pointed out above, Hurston here works and keeps on extending the sea metaphor into new levels. Arvay enters a conversation about the sea and its origins with Jim, as if discussing their shared journey through the twenty years of marriage. Jim tells her that “the
131 very same water that you see out there was right here when the world was formed. Changed places and forms too many thousands of times for you to imagine, been off from home and come back just that many times. […] I look at it and think about it, and I never get tired of looking and thinking” (Hurston, Seraph 903). Of course, Jim is talking about Arvay, but in metaphors. Through Jim‟s words, Hurston here connects Arvay‟s color of eyes with the sea, her journey from poor and inferior cracker roots to the queen of the high seas. It explains
Jim‟s fascination with both Arvay and the sea, and reminds the reader of the enigma Arvay‟s eyes are to Jim. Finally, it explains the incessant fights and Jim‟s moody behavior towards
Arvay – the sea never gives in, it is an ever-moving force in need of taming if one wishes to stay alive. Though this is no excuse for Jim‟s abusive yet loving behavior, the sea metaphor does offer a way of looking at some of his motives. For the sea can both kill, like Arvay tried earlier, and provide spectacles such as Arvay‟s beautiful eyes and her devoted love for Jim.
Arvay finally catches Jim‟s meaning here, she understands that the metaphor is aimed at her: “Maybe it‟s like that with everything and everybody. If it‟s in there, it will return to its real self at last,” she says (Hurston, Seraph 903). The mutual understanding Arvay and Jim have been waiting for has finally arrived, it seems. As Rieger would have it, “the ocean makes a fitting setting for this vision of mutual power and reciprocal need. Its vastness and fluidity permit Hurston to portray the ocean as an encompassing opposing forces in its oneness”
(122); the marriage can encompass the tumultuous characters of Arvay and Jim. However,
Hurston waits with Arvay and Jim‟s reunion a little longer, showing Arvay‟s patience and her resolution to really return to Jim. This waiting shows the pain that is involved in her decision to become Jim‟s partner again. It is not an easy and a typically romantic one, because Arvay willingly re-enters a union which has scarred her for life.
Keeping in with the ambiguity of the text, Hurston as a narrator lets the reader see
Arvay in deep thought, reminiscing about her marriage, jumping from Jim‟s love for her and
132 her lack of appreciation for him to assurance that she has in fact done all that Jim told her he expected from his wife. Arvay‟s inner monologue displays the apparent chaos her marriage has been up to now and though she is strong and changed, Arvay still does not seem to be sure what to make of it, apart from the fact that she loves Jim deeply. The monologue reiterates
Jim‟s varying treatment of Arvay and his own insecurities, his struggle with Arvay‟s power over him. Nevertheless, Arvay decides to act, talk to Jim, seduce him, and finally embrace him again. She is waiting for Jim in the cabin, almost naked, and when he enters the cabin upon her call, she tells him: “You‟re not going down there and crawl into no bunk, not until I get through with what I want with you” (Hurston, Seraph 914). There has never been so much will and power in Arvay‟s voice, not towards Jim that is. She clearly asserts that she has something to say, as opposed to the numerous scenes where Jim reproaches her for being passive and dumb.
Jim is teasing Arvay after her bold command, he is testing her resolution and strength, as if he was trying to break her in again. But Arvay reacts accordingly, telling him that she
“was born with all [she] ever needed to handle [his] case” (Hurston, Seraph 915). Arvay clearly adopts Jim‟s vocabulary and his style of speaking to her. She knows how to „handle‟ him, and she has got „power‟ over him. She has found the dormant power in her that Jim has always talked about but was too possessive to ever point it out to her; he merely told her.
Hurston here brings back the mule talk as “Jim‟s eyes flew wide open. His body gave a jerk.
“There now! The mule done kicked the Rucker” (915). The rider who has been trying to break the mule in has just been kicked by the now active mule – the mule is in fact no longer a mule, a beast of burden. Arvay tells Jim that she will not accept such behavior any more.
Arvay emerges as Jim‟s equal, she is now strong enough to handle his original vision of love and marriage.
133 As Jim succumbs to Arvay‟s sexual power and comes near her bed in the cabin, this becomes “a moment of great revelation for Arvay. […] Jim, Jim Meserve, Lord, had his doubts about holding her as she had hers about him. She was not the only one who had trembled. All these years and time, Jim had been feeling towards her and grasping at her as she had been towards him” (Hurston, Seraph 916). As Tate explains, “Arvay at last perceives the insecurity behind Jim‟s aggressive mask” (“Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick”
146), and her knowledge becomes her power – she not only learns about her cracker roots and their detrimental effect on her psyche and sexuality, but she also learns that Jim is vulnerable and she can exert power over him, much like he has been doing to her. The fact that this happens once they are in bed again purges the bad memories about the Gators game night and the bedroom humiliation of Arvay. It also underscores the importance of their sexual interaction for the marriage.
Jim gives Arvay one more chance to escape, telling her she did not have to return, that now she is “going to do just what I say do, and you had better not let me hear part your lips in a grumble” (Hurston, Seraph 917). Knowing his vulnerability, however, this talk does not offend Arvay any more; it does not make her fears of inferiority resurface and haunt her again, but rather confirms her newly-found knowledge about her power over Jim. Thus, when
Jim tells her to hug his neck one more time, just like he has been telling her in almost every moment in their bedroom, Arvay is content. And when he “sighed and went off into a deep and peaceful sleep” (917) on Arvay‟s breast again, repeating the humiliation scene from before, Arvay accepts it, because she now knows she has become Jim‟s mother on whose breast Jim can rest his troubled head and find solace.
Jim mentioned in his pondering of leaving Arvay that he cannot leave her because, among other reasons, she reminded him of his mother and her nurturing breast which offered a place of solace for him. He needs Arvay‟s body in order to rest his; he, too, needs a bee to
134 his blossom, to reiterate the TEWWG metaphor. Without Arvay, he is half the man. As Tate points out in the discussion of Arvay‟s new role as a mother to Jim, “Arvay perceives her newly discovered self-confidence, not so much as an independent woman but as an omnipotent mother. […] Arvay gives birth to herself as the knowing mother” (Psychoanalysis and Black Novels 176). This new role of Arvay‟s does not necessarily mean a new form of succumbing to Jim‟s demands and whimsy, but rather a new, deeply sexualized role for
Arvay‟s now old, non-reproductive, yet still beautiful body. The reader has now noticed that
Jim and Arvay have not consummated their marriage for quite a while and that Jim usually falls asleep on Arvay‟s breast. By accepting this role as a mother to Jim, “Arvay has at last begun the process of owning herself as a physical human being, […] she strips and seduces
Jim into bed in what amounts to her first important […] act of sexual aggressiveness” (Powers
242), only to find compromise for her and Jim‟s sexual aggressiveness in the new role of a mother.
Her body and her knowledge of both her self and Jim combine in Arvay‟s newly found power. As the last lines of the novel suggest, Arvay realizes the power of flesh and sex in a relationship. This is not to say that she did not know this before – as the reader learns, she is aware of the immense power Jim‟s body exerts over her. But she does not really know how much power resides in her own body and her sexuality. In accepting this power, she ultimately accepts her role as a wife and a mother of Jim: “Within her own flesh were many mysteries. […] What all, Arvay asked of herself, was buried and hidden in human flesh? […]
If you just could know, it would be all the religion that anybody needed” (Hurston, Seraph
918). Along with her cracker roots, Arvay shed her devoutly Christian views of the world and turned to herself for answers. “Yes, Earl had been bred in her before she was even born, but his birth had purged her flesh. […] Somebody had to pay off the debt so that the rest of the pages could be clean. […] Earl had served his purpose and was happily removed from his
135 sufferings” (918). Arvay is now reading her text through the prism of her body; her entire life opens up in front of her like the sea she is floating on and Arvay, finally understanding her body‟s doings, comprehends the various episodes of her life, and finds out why and how she arrived at this point.
Arvay accepts her past finally, because she finds out that her bodily power, sexual and nurturing, gave birth to Kenny and Angie, and helped re-unite her with Jim. “The good that was in her flesh had taken form. Angeline, female beauty, had come out of her, and Kenny, as handsome a boy as you would find anywhere. […] Jim was the other part. Joined together, they had made these wonders. Human flesh was full of mysteries and a wonderful and unknown thing” (Hurston, Seraph 918-19). Having thus arrived at the point in her quest for her self, Arvay “made the sun welcome to come on in, then snuggled down again beside her husband” (920). Her search for peace and marital bliss is finalized.42
The closing moments of the novel are quite similar to the closing scenes in TEWWG, where Janie “pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the
42 The ending of Seraph has received mixed reactions from scholars. Keeping in with the ambiguity of the whole novel and the duality of some of the characters, it is difficult to decipher the underlying meaning of the seemingly romantic ending. Dubek, for example, interprets the ending this way: “The position Arvay gratefully assumes at the end of the novel – that of selfless service to her husband – virtually ensures her continued ignorance of how race and racism shape her life. Hurston shows […] that, as long as white women are socially constructed to have relationships with their husbands only (or in Arvay‟s case, with the mere idea of a husband), they will remain both victimized by and complicit in social forces intent on maintaining white male supremacy”
(350-51). Jackson calls the ending “un-Hurston-like” and claims that “there is a level of facetiousness to it”
(656). Hemenway perceives the ending as inadequate as “Arvay is created without adequate potential” (313).
Tate sees the ending as “offering [the] readers the conventional notion of conjugal happiness by regarding a woman as a mother figure for her husband” (Psychoanalysis and Black Novels 155). Finally, in a more positive reading, duCille views the ending as “heroically comic,” a joke on [Jim], a claiming, rather than a surrendering, of self” (141).
136 world and draped it over her shoulder. So much life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see” (Hurston, TEWWG 268). Though the two female characters accept different roles at the ends of their respective tales, there is a connection between the two. They both claim their bodies, accept the power that resides in their bodies – they gain experience which they then apply to their future. While Janie‟s future is uncertain, she, nevertheless, is not afraid to show her beautiful sexual body to all men, for she is now experienced enough to know what to expect from men, she is ready to resist and overpower the men‟s repression and possessive behavior. To reiterate, the body becomes a weapon. In a similar manner, Arvay accepts her body and sexuality as a weapon of motherhood – the body is a wonderful thing which produces life and beauty. It is something she can use if Jim ever returns to his abusive and rapist manners for “the more self-assured Arvay who chooses to actively submit to Jim
Meserve in the final pages of Seraph is not the same insecure Arvay Henson who has passively resisted his domination throughout the novel” (duCille 141). Thus, both women come to learn that they can withstand whatever limitations the surrounding world imposes on them and, in particular, their bodies and their previously repressed sexualities.
Seraph then does not seem to be such a boring read as Walker suggests in her critique.
It stands side by side with TEWWG, for its treatment of one woman‟s quest for selfhood and for waking up her dormant sexual power over men equals to Janie‟s tempestuous tale of finding love in marriage. Arvay, a cracker girl with a developed inferiority complex, is raped by Jim who thus overpowers and blinds Arvay for more than twenty years. The ambiguous male character loves Arvay immensely, yet does not let her understand herself, and it is only after she tries to kill him, and thus avenges Jim‟s abuse of her, that Arvay is provided space to purge her body of her cracker roots. In the end, she realizes that Jim‟s conception of marriage with her requires that she exerts power over Jim much the same way he does over her.
Following this newly-found knowledge, Arvay seduces Jim with her powerful sexuality, and
137 consciously, without Jim forcing her, accepts her equal role in the marriage, acting as both
Jim‟s wife and mother. She does not succumb to Jim again but rather makes him give in to her new role.
138 Conclusion: A Woman Is Born
On the preceding pages, the thesis sought to trace and analyze Zora Neale Hurston‟s representation of sexuality in four of her works, emphasizing Hurston‟s representation of black women as proud sexual beings, striving to lay claim to their bodies, to find their voices, and to oppose repression. It was argued that Hurston reworks stereotypical portrayals of black oversexed women into empowering tales of liberation and of coming to terms with one‟s sexuality. It was suggested that Hurston depicts some of her characters in terms of the landscape of the South, thus underscoring their claiming of the history-burdened space.
Through using the metaphor of a mule, Hurston transforms her characters from submissive into confident, sexually conscious, and powerful women. Finally, all these features of
Hurston‟s narratives combine to show the black women‟s gradual development from voiceless, fearful, and self-conscious into expressive, experienced, mature, and sexually liberated. This progression was particularly emphasized in Hurston‟s two novels.
One of Hurston‟s most acclaimed short stories, “Sweat,” reveals the first signs of
Hurston‟s devotion to exploring black women‟s sexuality and to her reversal of the imagery surrounding the black woman‟s body. In the depiction of Delia‟s marriage with Sykes,
Hurston describes the ways black women are repressed and limited in their expression of sexuality and in their control over their bodies. Sykes uses a bullwhip on Delia to make her listen to his commands, to subdue her to his will. When Delia finds it in herself to stand up to
Sykes, the husband decides to kill her using a snake, only to be killed by it himself.
Throughout the story, Hurston reiterates that Delia is the bread-winner of the family, but
Sykes is inappreciative of her hard work; he is in fact jealous of Delia‟s money. His abusive treatment then seems a projection of his own anxieties over his inability to provide for his wife and himself. Sykes comes to despise Delia‟s skinny body stigmatized by her toils and
139 refuses to sleep with her any more. Once his abuse of her body reaches a breaking point and
Sykes attempts to get rid of Delia by trying to murder her, Delia avenges Sykes‟s repressions.
Though one of Hurston‟s first works, “Sweat” involves all that later comes to be regarded as characteristic of Hurston‟s literary art. Delia reminisces about her marriage in terms of trees and shrubs, foreshadowing the natural imagery used in TEWWG and Seraph to depict the main characters‟ visions of their respective marriages. Moreover, the story ends with Delia standing under a chinaberry tree which becomes a symbol of her newly found, though uncertain freedom. Janie and Arvay come to be associated with trees as well, though in much more extensive manner. It is in this way one can interpret “Sweat” as an initial stage in Hurston‟s continuous discussion of sexuality as well as her work on portraying black women and their bodies in empowering ways, connecting them with the natural world and its forces, underscoring their budding and blossoming, no longer dormant sexuality.
Also, the mule metaphor surfaces in “Sweat” for the first time. Delia is viewed by
Sykes as a beast of burden, an animal used for hard work, whose body no longer serves other purposes than toiling. Sykes does not perceive Delia as a sexually viable woman and wants to get rid of her, just like Joe wants to rid Eatonville of the mule in TEWWG. Using bullwhip on her, Sykes highlights his treatment of his woman as well as the frustrations over his unemployment. Delia, however, stands up to the bullwhip, she refuses to be beaten and scared by the now limp black bullwhip – also hinting at Sykes‟s sexual performance – and in letting
Sykes die, she refutes being viewed as a mule. In addition, her revenge on Sykes comes in the form of a snake which turns against its alleged master: as a phallic symbol, the snake‟s turning against its own underscores Hurston‟s depiction of Sykes‟s patriarchy as an unsuitable environment for the liberation of black women. It needs to be destroyed by women and so
Delia‟s refusal to help Sykes when he is bitten signifies her conscious collaboration in the bringing down of that which has been repressing her sexuality and voice. The same process of
140 bringing down her oppressors occurs in TEWWG as two of Janie‟s husbands have to die for
Janie to become free.
Delia‟s tale, however, does not end on an entirely victorious note. Though she has gotten rid of the source of her anguish, Delia is uncertain about what her next step should be.
The open and ambiguous ending leaves things unsaid, without closure. The closure and resolution comes in Hurston‟s longer works, more than a decade later. Nevertheless, “Sweat” shows Hurston‟s first essential representation of black women‟s struggle to win control over their bodies and, in turn their fates, foreshadowing the manner in which Hurston will deal with sexuality in the future.
Hurston‟s Color Struck was published as the author‟s first play in the same year as
“Sweat.” Through theatrical techniques, Hurston is able to provide a slightly different view on a black woman‟s sexuality and acceptance of her body. There are no trees, no natural forces, or landscape of the South present in the play. Rather, Hurston sets the plot in a Jim Crow train car, a cakewalk contest, and Emmaline‟s little apartment. Color Struck tells the story of
Emma and John, a couple on their way to a cakewalk contest only to break up minutes before the contest starts. The reason for the break-up is Emma‟s anxiety over her body and over
John‟s supposed liking for mulattos, in particular for the light-skinned Effie. Emma is so color-conscious and jealous that she drives John into Effie‟s embrace and sets herself apart from the rest of her colored peers – this process is acted out in a seven-minute dance scene, where most of the stage is occupied by the dancers with John and Effie in the forefront, and
Effie on the side watching in tears. The last scene depicts John‟s return to Emma after many years: he wants to marry her and he even happily accepts Emma‟s illegitimate mulatto child as his. In doing this, however, he brings back Emma‟s fears and feelings of inferiority, and
Emma drives him away once again.
141 Overall, the play is a tragedy wherein Emma is portrayed as a class- and color- conscious young girl who ends up alone, with her out-of-wedlock child to remind her of the past. Throughout the play, Emma struggles with an image of beauty, embodied by the light- skinned Effie, which positions the dark black woman as the least desirable. Emma is constantly afraid that John will choose Effie over her because of the color of her skin. So regretful of the dark tones of her skin, she even suspects John later on of being attracted to her mulatto daughter. Emma‟s tale is a gloomy one, because instead of empowerment, her consciousness about her body brings fears, anxiety, depression and separation. However, it needs to be mentioned that John is depicted as an ambiguous character, his behavior does lend itself to suspicions, and Emma‟s jealousy is somewhat justified as John, immediately after the break-up, joins hands with Effie and dances better with the new partner than he has ever done with Emma. Finally, even this piece contains the mule, though slightly reworked, as Emma likens dark black women to cobble stones and mulattos to omnipotent queens. In conclusion, the play shows a development in the female heroine‟s claiming of the body which Hurston does not explore further, because it does not bring empowerment, but rather weakens the woman. In the context of the four works analyzed here, Hurston seems to suggest in Color
Struck that such anxiety over the body image and color-consciousness is not the path to take.
The paths Hurston does want black women to take are represented in detail in her novels, wherein the acclaimed TEWWG deals with a black woman‟s sexuality and Seraph with what Hurston terms a “cracker” woman. In her longer, more mature works, Hurston extends the natural imagery used in “Sweat” as well as the mule metaphor: Janie in TEWWG envisions her marriage as a blossoming pear tree and then experiences three marriages, all of which repress her voice, her body and her sexuality, as well as desecrate the pear tree image.
In the end, Janie decides to stay alone. Arvay from Seraph gets raped by her suitor, marries him, and then has to struggle with his possessiveness, abuse, as well as his overbearing love
142 of her and her own feelings of inferiority, to find an equal role in her marriage to Jim. The two novels end with their female characters‟ respective conscious decisions about their future.
Their fate is finally in their hands, their bodies controlled by them.
The natural images, present in “Sweat,” acquire new dimensions in these two works, especially through the two characters‟ association with trees - Janie‟s pear tree and Arvay‟s mulberry tree. As Rieger observes, “the most affirming visions of [Janie and Arvay‟s] inner natures are the […] trees and when these symbols are embraced and internalized, they foster a deeply rooted strength that is then projected out to the world” (124). As mentioned, Janie sees her marriage in the image of a blossoming pear tree: the blossoms of the tree are pollinated by a bee in a deeply sexualized ritual which Janie embraces as her ideal. Trying to find its equivalent in real life, Janie marries Logan Killicks who is a black yeomen concentrated on cultivating his fields and woods; he sees Janie only as an addition to his possessions, she is a working hand to him. Janie thus flees with the urban Joe and begins life anew in Eatonville only to find out that Jody Starks is even more neglectful, possessive, repressive, and abusive than Logan. Through gradual resistance and claiming of her voice, Janie gets rid of Joe, the omnipresent male character who readers encounter also in “Sweat” and in Color Struck. After
Joe‟s death, Janie marries Tea Cake who, though seemingly the bee to her blossom, turns out to be yet another possessive, jealous, and abusive man trying to control Janie‟s body.
Janie, however, returns home stronger, having survived her tree husbands. She comes back mature, experienced, conscious of her sexuality and with the body of a beautiful black woman. Instead of a walk of shame for leaving Eatonville with Tea Cake, Janie walks a walk of victory in front the porch-sitters who helped Joe keep Janie in his prison of a home. Janie realizes in her return that “[her] dreams [have been] mocked to death by Time” (Hurston,
TEWWG 1) and she revises her pear tree image in a new tree image, thus still keeping, in fact reinforcing, her connection to the natural world around her: “Janie saw her life like a great
143 tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches” (12). The scene of revising the tree association is a telling one in that it confirms Janie‟s gained experience and knowledge. The ideal vision of a love relationship cannot be attained without obstacles, without pain and suffering. It is a never-ending struggle for acceptance on the part of the black woman, and it requires power. Janie finds hers in her body as she frees her sexuality from attempts at repression from all three of her husbands. In the end, she makes a conscious decision to stay alone rather than submit herself to another shackling marriage.
A similar process of pain and suffering in attaining equality in a relationship unravels in Seraph as Arvay goes through hell, as Hurston depicts her quest, to finally claim power over her husband and find an adequate role in the marriage with the ambiguous Jim.
Originally a “cracker,” Arvay is haunted with feelings of inferiority and inadequacy because of her roots – this leads to her almost unchallenged submission to Jim once he rapes her under the mulberry tree. It takes Arvay more than twenty years to find a way of banishing her cracker past and accepting her middle-class role as well as her deeply sexual body to which
Jim succumbs more than he lets on to Arvay. Like Janie, Arvay also returns to her tree to find a source of power and make a crucial decision to return to Jim. Though their decisions differ, both female characters make a conscious act of deciding about their future – one does not see that in either “Sweat” or Color Struck, where the female heroines remain indecisive or desperately lonely, respectively. The association with the trees thus symbolizes the strength of
Hurston‟s characters as well as their budding and blossoming sexuality – in order to claim it properly, they have to go through good and bad experiences and then reclaim their bodies from men.
Further highlighting the development in Hurston‟s discussion of sexuality, the author extends the mule metaphor in both novels. Merely suggested in the form of a bullwhip in
144 “Sweat” and the cobble stones reference in Color Struck, the symbolism of the mule reaches new dimensions in the novels: while in TEWWG, Nanny warns Janie to beware of men for they tend to consider women their mules, Jim in Seraph declares that Arvay needs proper breaking in and bridling so that she listens to his commands. Both women refuse this treatment and decide to raise their voice and act. Janie tells Joe that his physical power over her, let alone his sexual vigor, no longer works as he is withering away while the woman, the alleged mule, gets rid of the head-rag and emerges mature and experienced from the marriage.
Arvay, too, gains control over her sexuality and her desires and shows Jim that she can handle him much the same way he has handled her in the bedroom for the past twenty years. The mule does not only kick back its master – Hurston reverses the metaphor in deeply sexual terms, for the two former mules, Janie and Arvay, overpower their masters by their sexuality, over which they have gradually gained control. In addition, Arvay also becomes associated with the powerful serpent whose grip over Jim‟s body comes to signalize the heroine‟s ascendance to power in the marriage.
One more aspect of Hurston‟s texts – physical violence – needs to be addressed in these concluding remarks. Violence is an omnipresent element in the four texts analyzed here and, in general, it seems to take two forms: violence of oppression and of revenge. In
“Sweat,” Delia is physically abused by her husband who uses a whip on her and beats her on a regular basis. In TEWWG, violence is also commonplace, portrayed as nothing out of the ordinary, as Janie is obviously physically abused by both Joe and Tea Cake, and Nanny herself describes how she was raped by her master. Hurston does not depict this violence in any exaggerated manner and she does not accentuate it either – it is as if the author wants to convey how imbedded violence is in the lives of her female characters. Arvay from Seraph is no exception as seen in the rape scene; Jim‟s abusive behavior further penetrates the marriage and the couple‟s bedroom, too. Aggression against and oppression of the female characters is
145 therefore one form of physical violence Hurston depicts. Moreover, to reiterate, she depicts it as something common.
In the revenge form of physical violence, however, Hurston, once again, transforms the status quo of her female characters and reverses the object of aggression from women onto men. Along with the gradual empowerment of her female characters, Hurston portrays them as gaining the strength to deal with their partners‟ abusive behavior. Delia uses Sykes‟s own murder weapon, the serpent, against him and thus gets rid of her source of anguish. In the final scene, Sykes can only helplessly watch Delia as she refuses to help him and rather lets him die a death he has envisioned for her. In TEWWG, Joe Starks becomes more ill the more he tries to control Janie‟s life and her appearance. Joe‟s physical deterioration affects his manhood and Janie mocks Joe the same way he used to mock her intelligence and her looks.
Joe eventually dies; and so does Tea Cake towards the end of the novel as he contracts rabies and then tries to kill Janie. In Tea Cake‟s case, what brings about his death is also a disease which is symbolic of his jealousy and abusive treatment of his wife. Janie has to shoot him like a rabid dog in order to save herself –she thus avenges all the wrong Tea Cake has done.
In Seraph, Arvay seduces Jim in the final scene. Though there is no violence on Arvay‟s part, equilibrium is established between her and Jim‟s physical power, thus putting a stop to Jim‟s abuse of Arvay. Finally, Emma from Color Struck has a mulatto baby in the fourth scene of the play and the reader does not know whether it is a product of a willing consummation of a relationship with a white man, or a product of a rape, a violent act. The pain and suffering
Emma experiences whenever she looks at and talks about her daughter, hints at a tragic story behind the child‟s conception. Violence thus comes to play a crucial role in the four texts – it serves to point out how the heroines‟ lives are permeated with physical violence, and how this violence turns against its perpetrators as the female characters claim their bodies, their sexuality, and become the masters of their fate.
146 To reiterate, the four works analyzed in the thesis display Hurston‟s profound knowledge of the discourse surrounding the black woman‟s body and the imagery of oversexed black females this discourse propagated. The rebellious and activist author transforms the fears about nonwhite women‟s overt sexuality, which were at the centre of the discourse, into empowering metaphors and portrayals of female bodies. The mule metaphor, wherein the toiling black female is treated as a working and breeding machine, is turned into a metaphor of resistance in terms of sexual power. The animal is transformed into a confident woman in control of her sexuality and her body. As Janie returns to Eatonville, she displays her beautiful body in front of everyone to see. Arvay seduces Jim and lures him into her now powerful embrace. These two women come a long way from what Delia and Emma have to deal with. While Delia struggles to get rid of her husband Sykes and Emma succumbs to her color-consciousness, the female characters from Hurston‟s novels proudly claim their bodies and make decisions about their future. There is a clear progression and development in
Hurston‟s portrayal of female sexuality in her works, yet what remains constant throughout the four works is that “the beginning of this was a woman” (Hurston, TEWWG 1) and that sexuality can be viewed as one of the most prominent themes in Hurston‟s fiction.
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153 Summary
The thesis deals with the theme of sexuality in four works by Zora Neale Hurston. It is argued here that Hurston transforms stereotypical imagery of black women as overtly sexual beings into images of black women as using their sexuality as weapons in their liberation from oppression by men. Hurston portrays black women as masters of their fates as opposed to previous representations of black women as beats of burden, as mere breeding machines. The thesis draws on secondary sources to provide context of the mainstream discourse surrounding the black female body – it points out the stereotypical imagery of black women in sexological, medical, and popular discourse which was projected into literary art as well. The thesis then uses this contextual framework for textual analysis of four Hurston‟s works:
“Sweat,” Color Struck, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Seraph on the Suwanee. In analyzing the four texts, the thesis focuses on Hurston‟s representations of sexuality, in particular on the process in which the author associates its main female characters and their bodies with the landscape of the South and lets them lay claim to this history-burdened space.
Also, Hurston extends the portrayal of black women as mules, as animals used for hard work and reproduction of other animals, into a metaphor of black women empowerment through standing up to their masters. Delia in “Sweat,” Janie in TEWWG, and Arvay in Seraph all rebel in some way against their male oppressors and use their newly-gained bodily power to get rid of their masters. Color Struck is the only exception: while the mule metaphor does appear in the play, the main character, Emma, is unable to fight the mule label. It is argued in the thesis that while the other three works display a progression in Hurston‟s discussion of black female sexuality, Color Struck serves as an example of a path Hurston does not want black women to take.
154 Resume
Diplomová práce se zabývá tématem sexuality afro-amerických žen v literárních dílech Zory
Neale Hurstonové. Práce nastiňuje kontext diskurzu o sexualitě černošských žen coby nadměrně sexuálních jedinců – tento diskurz převažoval v devatenáctém století a v první polovině dvacátého století a promítnul se také do tehdejší literární tvorby. Na základě tohoto kontextu práce analyzuje čtyři texty: „Sweat,“ Color Struck, Their Eyes Were Watching God a
Seraph on the Suwanee. Hypotézou práce přitom je, že autorka transformuje stereotypní zobrazování černoškých žen nejen v literatuře na vyobrazení černošek coby komplexních postav, jejichž sexualita se stává důležitou zbraní v boji proti mužskému útlaku. Namísto tradičního diskurzu, jenž hovořil o černoškách coby o mulách, tj. zvířatech pro práci na poli a na plození dalších zvířat, Hurstonová tyto ženy zobrazuje jako silné postavy, jež se postupně stávají vládkyněmi svého osudu.
Práce se zaměřuje především na zobrazení ženských hrdinek coby silně propojených s krajinou amerického Jihu – tímto propojením hrdinek s krajinou, zatíženou historií, autorka dodává hrdinkám nový rozměr. Zároveň Hurstonová dále rozvíjí metaforu muly a přeměňuje ji na metaforu získání moci ženy nad svým pánem. Metafora se objevuje ve všech textech s výjimkou hry Color Struck, kde hlavní hrdinka Emmaline nedokáže s osudem muly bojovat.
Ve zbylých třech pracích Hurston zobrazuje hlavní hrdinky coby postavy rebelující proti svému status quo, avšak Emmaline není podobnému vzepětí se schopná. Zatímco ostatní tři texty tak ukazují autorčino rozvíjející se pojetí sexuality černošských žen, Color Struck naopak ukazuje určité varování ze strany Hurstonové.
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