| Lecture 13B: From the
Eye of the Storm A discussion of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (Reflections on Chapters 17-20) |
| By now you’ve finished reading the
novel and you can look back over Janie’s entire journey and her
various attempts to find love. How do we interpret the final chapters of
the novel, which contain Tea Cake’s "brainstorm," following
which "he had whipped Janie . . . . to [reassure] him in
possession" (Their Eyes 140). Prior to this chapter, Janie
and Tea Cake, in fits of jealousy, had fought each other around the
room, but this new beating, which we are assured was "no brutal
beating at all," seems different, disturbing (Their Eyes 140).
After several chapters celebrating Tea Cake’s charm and tender
treatment of Janie, we read: "He just slapped her around a bit to
show he was boss" (Their Eyes 140). And the public aspect of
the incident, the community’s response to it, disturbs me as well:
"It aroused a sort of envy in both men and women" (Their
Eyes 140). Those of us who are familiar with the cycles of violence
and enmeshment that characterize domestic violence can see the pattern
emerging here: "The way he petted and pampered her as if those two
or three face slaps had nearly killed her made the women see visions and
the helpless way she hung on him made men dream dreams" (Their
Eyes 140). Readers may breathe a collective sigh of regret, here, as
we watch Janie’s dream of finding a "bee for her blossom"
seem again out of reach.
A key to understanding the turn in this relationship may be found in Hurston’s autobiography, Dust Tracks on the Road, in which she describes her passionate relationship with a man she identifies as A.W. P. In the following excerpt, she describes how his possessiveness leads to jealousy and ultimately violence:
Following this incident, the relationship between Hurston and A.W. P. further disintegrated, and Hurston departed for Jamaica, where she wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God at a feverish pace in just six short weeks. In fact, Hurston herself suggested that she "processed" her relationship with A.W. P. through her writing: "The plot was far from the circumstances, but I tried to embalm all the tenderness of my passion for him in Their Eyes Were Watching God" (Dust 260). Hurston’s mixed feelings for A.W.P. are evident as we read between the lines of her autobiography. Similarly, readers may have mixed feelings about Tea Cake. But why, we wonder, does Janie go on after the beating without questioning her lover’s behavior? Can we explain her uncritical view by considering the time period of the novel, the 1930s? Even if Janie fails to speak out, can we get any sense of how Hurston herself viewed Tea Cake’s possessiveness and violence? Some critics, like Mary Helen Washington, in her introduction to the novel, questions "its uncritical depiction of violence toward women . . . ." (xiv). Another critic, Kathleen Davies, suggests that Hurston uses a "double" voice, incorporating suggestive imagery rather than direct criticism of Tea Cake, because it has been "difficult for black women writers to criticize the sexism of black men without appearing to corroborate white racism" (148). Although indirect, through imagery Hurston could "both tell [about the abuse] and protect the black man" (148). Davies points out that although no woman in the novel rises up in anger about Tea Cake’s violence (on the contrary, they "envy" it), Nature itself, through the hurricane that strikes the ‘Glades unmercifully, expresses "rage at the victimization of women" (154). This connection between anger and the hurricane is subtly foreshadowed in Sop-de-Bottom’s description of what his wife’s reaction would be if he beat her: "Mah woman would spread her lungs all over Palm Beach County, let alone knock out mah jaw teeth . . . . She got ninety-nine rows uh jaw teeth and git her good and mad, she’ll wade through solid rock up to her hip pockets" (Their Eyes 141, emphasis added). Within just a few pages, the hurricane strikes and "[U]nder its multiplied roar could be heard a mighty sound of grinding rock and timber and a wail" (Their Eyes 153, emphasis added). Certainly, one could view Tea Cake’s decision to stay on the muck as the hurricane threatened and nearly everyone else had left as a kind of fatal arrogance, ultimately resulting in his death. In the final scene between them, Janie faces a choice between dying at her rabid lover’s hand or killing him in self defense. In perhaps her most radical act of self-preservation, she chooses the latter. How, finally, do we assess Janie’s journey? Did she ever achieve her dream? Here’s one critic’s summation: "An incredibly affirmative novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God also portrays a black woman’s poignant yearning to merge her quest for liberation with that of the black man, while maintaining her right to live without his abuse. It illustrates how the double voice of one black woman provided a way for her to speak, to write—to create art—and, thus, to survive" (Davies 157). If nothing else, Janie’s journey brought her wisdom, a rare commodity in her community. As she tells her friend at the end of her tale: "It’s a known fact, Pheoby, you got tuh go there tuh know there. . . . Two things everbody’s got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin’ fuh theyselves" (Their Eyes 183). Probably what’s most remarkable about this novel is that it’s one of the first—and still one of the best—to tell the story of how one woman found out about living for herself. |
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