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Department of English and American Studies Discourse on Sexuality in the Works of Zora Neale Hurston 2011

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Department of English and American Studies Discourse on Sexuality in the Works of Zora Neale Hurston 2011 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
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