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Thomas Bailey

Dr. Michael Hobbs

10-610: Intro. to Practical & Theoretical Criticism

December 6, 2010

Love, Marriage, Slavery (Not Necessarily in that Order)

“Inflam'd by love, and urg'd by deep despair, he leaves the realms of light, and upper

air; daring to tread the dark Tenarian road, and tempt the shades in their obscure abode,”

(Ovid 10.17-20) wrote the poet Ovid of the love Orpheus felt for Eurydice. His passion for

his bride, whose life was cut short by a viper on their wedding day, was so strong that he

dared to face the perils of the netherworld and to stand before Hades and Persephone to

request Eurydice’s return to the living. Romantic love stories, similar to those of the Greek

hero, have been told throughout Western history. The most famous having been told by

the Great Bard – Romeo & Juliet – in which the lovers cannot live without the other and

offer their lives so that they might join each other in the afterlife.

Human nature seems inextricable drawn to seek the perfect love. Nevertheless

more than half of all marriages in the United States end in divorce. Time ran an article to

examine the institution of marriage (the summit of love); and despite the statistical data

that Americans view marriage as obsolete, it is seen as an important step proving to

everyone else that they are successful (Luscombe 50). Belinda Luscombe’s overall

conclusions were surprising but intuitive; modern marriages that last are based on

mutuality, equality, and support structures (Luscombe 54). Religious leaders have

espoused as necessary for a sustained union the same principles. In 1930 Pope Pius XI

wrote that obstacles to marriage should be removed and “Christian charity towards our

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neighbor absolutely demands” that society has a responsibility to help those unable to

provide for themselves (Pius XI 119). Pope John Paul II stated, “[a]bove all it is important

to underline the equal dignity and responsibility of women with men” (John Paul II 22).

Supportive, equality, and mutuality are the ideal and as such are not always

consuetudinary. The lure of eros-philia-agape is inextricably bound to suffering, and yet

the human condition causes us to search for the fairytale endings – and they lived happily

ever after. In some cases, when the ideal is neglected to an extreme degree, marriage can

turn into servitude. The protagonist of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching

God, Janie Crawford, sought the perfect lover, but each time fell short – being engulfed with

bondage.

It is not surprising then that an early target of the feminist movement was marriage,

being condemned by prominent feminist writers like Kate Millet, Germaine Greer, and

Shulamith Firestone. Sheila Cronan provided an iteration of the prevailing sentiment when

she wrote,

The institution of marriage ‘protects’ women in the same way that the

institution of slavery was said to ‘protect’ blacks – that is, that the word

‘protection’ in this case is simply a euphemism for oppression … [m]arriage is

a form of slavery (Cronan 214, 216).

Given the history of African-Americans and the institution of slavery, the reference is not

one to be passed over quickly. Slavery included corporal punishment, compulsory labor,

ownership by another, and for African-American women it often involved forced

exogamous relationships. To some degree, examples of each are found in the marriages of

Janie Crawford.

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In opening her book, Hurston employs the heroine to tell her own story to her best

friend, Phoeby. The choice Janie makes as to where to begin her autobiography allows the

reader to understand her motivation. She was relaxed under a pear tree. She watched bees

move from flower to flower, a symbiotic relationship essential to pollination. The imagery

Hurston employs is orgasmic (“sink into the sanctum of a bloom;” “arch to the love

embrace;” “ecstatic shiver;” and “frothing with delight”) and Janie exclaims, “So this was a

marriage” (Hurston 10-11). Donald Marks equates this imagery with an organicist

ideology, which characterized her relationship with Johnny Taylor and Tea Cake. By this

Marks understands it as a pursuit of passion and one free from social constructs (Mark 152,

154) – pure love. It is carefree love that Janie desires. She sees harmony within it and finds

it to be part of the natural order. As such, she seeks it out and describes her first sexual-

encounter with Johnny in the same pollinical terms.

Her marriage with Logan Killicks appears to have changed Janie’s perspective – “She

knew now that marriage did not make love” (Hurston 25). Yet the allure of natural love,

even within marriage, did not leave her in the end. Love is her desire for freedom that

remained enkindled in the depth of her soul. It is evidenced in Janie’s meetings with each

of her lovers (Hurston 28,101-102). Three times widowed, Janie ends her Orphean quest

with the same desire. Natural love though is no longer found in the corporeal realm, but in

her animus (Hurston 179-180).

The ember that sustained Janie also contributed to her disillusionment for she did

not find the happily ever after in her lovers. Her marriages were then transformed into

slavery – oppressive and murderous. The specter of slavery is introduced early in the text

as Janie recounts the story told to her by her grandmother about Janie’s mother’s birth.

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She was a slave and “Marse Robert” used her for his sexual gratification, which produced a

child (Hurston 16-17). Nanny used her own story to persuade Janie to be a proper lady

who makes choices based on reason, i.e. prosperity and social mobility. Judie Newman

believes that Nanny attempts to show Janie the path out of slavery – slaves were denied

choices and stability – and that Janie needs a respectable marriage to a man who can

provide material needs (Newman 820). The irony is that the “choice” is taken away from

Janie because Nanny arranged the marriage with Logan Killicks over the objections of Janie.

Janie’s choice is her natural love and all else is slavery.

Janie’s first marriage began loveless, but on the authority of Nanny and the “old

folks” she believed that love would eventually enter the marital relationship. Logan did his

best to court Janie after their marriage. He cut and delivered the wood for the kitchen and

kept the water buckets filled (Hurston 20-21). It was not enough for Janie because she and

Logan had contradictory ideas of marriage – to Janie it meant love and to Logan it meant a

life together. Elements of their life together however fed the love needs of Janie and when

Logan “had stopped talking in rhymes to her … [and] ceased to wonder at her long black

hair and finger it” (Hurston 25) a change came over Janie. A life together was no longer

enough for her.

Logan appeared to be oblivious to the change that was overcoming his wife. A

simple move from honeymoon to reality arrived when he asked Janie to help him with the

chores, which was symbolized with the purchase of a mule. The mule is a prominent

symbol in Their Eyes Were Watching God appearing on two different occasions. The first

referenced by Nanny when she tells Janie that “[d]e nigger woman is de mule uh de world”

(Hurston 14). The second was the hapless creature that is the laughing stock of Eatonville.

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Dianne Sadoff sees a direct connection between the idea of a mule and slavery, even slavery

within slavery. It was sexual exploitation and political oppression that hampered African-

American slave women’s ability to dream higher (Sadoff 8). The mule then implies more

than physical labor, which she willing does this with Tea Cake. It is an animal that is yoked

and driven by its owner to do someone else’s bidding. Derek Collins equates this revelation

in Janie with a “movement toward self-determination” (Collins 146). Though moving in the

right direction, Collins does not capture the totality of the movement. It must be centered

within the framework of her desire for natural love, of which self-determination is only a

part. She realizes that she will never attain her ideal with Logan. It cannot be mere

coincidence that Jody Starks enters the story the very afternoon Logan decides to purchase

a second mule (the beginning of Logan and Janie’s life together).

Janie now needed to seek out a way to maintain her passion. She flirts a little with a

stranger and tells Jody Starks her story. Jody says the right words to peek her attention:

“You ain’t got no mo’ business wid uh plow … [or] cuttin’ up no seed p’taters neither.

(Hurston 28). A path to freedom has been offered to her, though she is cautious. Jody did

not fulfill everything she understood in natural love (Marks 153). The final demand of

Logan that Janie’s place was wherever he said and his threat to kill her with an axe if she

did not comply was enough to have her risk potential happiness with Jody rather than a life

of slavery with Logan.

The initial fears that Janie had concerning Jody – he was not her bee – seem to

disappear immediately.

From now on until death she was going to have flower dust and springtime

sprinkled over everything. A bee for her bloom. Her old thoughts were going

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to come in handy now, but new words would have to be made and said to fit

them (Hurston 31).

The words used by Hurston immediately recall the reader to Janie’s revelation under the

old pear tree. She, unlike Orpheus, has persuaded Charon to allow her to cross the River

Styx in search of her beloved again. Though the seed for her enslavement has been planted

at the same time. Janie recognized in Jody what she thought as a natural-like love, but it

was not and required adaptation. Compromise is often the way toward stability (Nanny’s

freedom). Successful compromise requires however an acceptance of the terms; and Janie

cannot accept anything less than a pure form of love.

Again it did not take long for Janie to discover the differences between her own view

of marriage and Jody’s. Jody was a self-made man and saw his marriage as a step to

respectability and power. In his personal quest “Janie soon discovers that she is merely

one of his possessions, a beautiful status symbol” (Smith 29). Her personhood was denied

by being treated merely as an object. She had work to perform, but not allowed to have a

voice. The most striking example was Janie’s banishment from the porch of the store,

which was the center of the social life of Eatonville (Lupton 46).

Jody Starks provided Janie with everything she could possibly desire: she was the

wife of the mayor; they possessed the largest house in town; and she did not want for any

material possession. If Nanny were still alive, she would have certainly approved of the

marriage. Along comes the mule.

Matt Bonner owned a worn-out mule that often escaped its master. The mule

became a running joke amongst the townsfolk of Eatonville as they sat on the porch of the

Stark’s store. Janie, forced to go inside and work while the others carried on, muttered her

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distaste for the mistreatment of the mule. Unbeknownst to her, Jody overheard and

decided to act. He purchased the mule in order to set it free and to impress Janie with his

magnanimity (Hurston 53-54). It was certainly an act of kindness to the animal. Logan

Killicks had bought a mule for Janie, and now Jody Starks purchased a mule for her.

Perhaps in the mind of Jody he saw this as a symbolic act of Janie’s freedom, but Janie

herself interpreted it differently. It was not her freedom, but a symbol of her own slavery.

Jody owned the mule as he owned Janie and was capable of disposing of either as he saw fit

– the mule to retirement and Janie to silent shop work.

Jody’s promise that she would not work a mule or prepare seed potatoes while

married to him was true. He accomplished the life together that Logan could not. The

result of “Starks’s tyranny, his unwillingness to permit Janie to blossom, shatters her dream

of the pear tree” (Lupton 46). Hurston later describes Janie in the terms of a broken mule

and that her “soul” was affected (Hurston 72). Hurston’s use of soul can been seen as

analogous to that quest to search for natural love. As a woman of forty years old, Janie felt

she had failed and that she had settled. The ember was not snuffed out, but merely buried

deep within her. Janie required a choice analogous to the life or death one she made

between Logan and Jody.

A fateful day in the store provided the opportunity to enliven her passion. At first it

seemed ordinary, Jody and Janie working in the store with their friends gathered and

talking. Janie, always prone to errors, miscut a plug of tobacco and Jody berates her and

describes her with “yo’ rump hangin’ nearly to yo’ knees” (Hurston 74). Janie was livid and

found her voice, embarrassing Jody to his grave. The judging of Janie by her appearance,

particularly her muscle tone, cannot be seen as only an uncouth insult. Instead, it must be

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judged within the context of livestock – of which slaves were considered a part. The pity of

the mule was based on its lack of functionality as a work animal and now Jody was making

a similar claim toward Janie. The reminder of bondage awakened within her the possibility

of achieving and dreaming beyond her present state. The glow returned and Jody Starks

exits the picture.

After the death of Jody, Tea Cake – an unlikely drifter – finds himself the preferred

suitor of the widowed Janie. He is carefree, nonconforming, and, more importantly, he

treated Janie as a person – talking to her and playing checkers with her (Hurston 91). Janie

quickly warms to him and the reader begins to see the flickers of natural love. When Janie

asks him for his name, her response to Tea Cake was a flirtatious, “So you sweet as all dat”

(Hurston 93). The importance of symbolism has already been demonstrated, so it cannot

be assumed that the name ‘Tea Cake’ is meaningless. Janie has been away from natural

love for a long time and in the intervening period created her new vocabulary. Here she is

reclaiming the old words, but in a broken way. ‘Sweet’ is a remembrance of the honey,

which is the nectar produced from the love-dance between the bee and the flowers of the

pear tree. It is time to charm Charon once again.

Hurston implies at the end of Their Eyes Were Watching God that the relationship

between Janie and Tea Cake was the realization of her ideal love. If it were not for the rabid

dog, she would have continued to live her epic adventure. Tea Cake however is not a

liberating figure. One evening Janie returns from working in the store and discovers Tea

Cake sitting on her porch with a stringer of trout. Janie and Tea Cake had only the single

encounter previously, yet he divides the chores: “Ah’ll clean ‘em, you fry ‘em and let’s eat.”

Hurston immediately adds that his bravado was such that there was no possibility that he

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would be refused (Hurston 99). The chain of slavery in Janie’s marriage to Jody was that he

silenced her (banished her from the porch) and that she was expected to work. It can be

argued that Tea Cake’s addition of his role in the preparation of dinner is evidence of

mutuality between the two. Nevertheless both Logan and Jody were willing to do their fair

share of the work – Jody worked the store and Logan purchased a second mule for them to

work together. Tea Cake spoke on her behalf, usurping her freedom. Following their

amorous evening Tea Cake lies beside Janie combing her hair (Hurston 99). He had

previously decided to comb her hair in the morning (again assuming her choice), but it is

also reminiscent of Logan who used to run his fingers through her hair (Hurston 25).

In Romeo and Juliet, the story of Orpheus, and other cultural epics of love, they end

tragically; perfect love is always beyond the grasp of mortals. A natural assumption then

would be that the rabid infection of Tea Cake is another example. The manifestation of Tea

Cake’s obsession with jealousy in his delusional state may offer another view. As the

disease progressed, he slowly lost his humanity. Tea Cake may have been willing to attack

anyone in his condition, but he kept returning to focus on Janie and whether or not she was

faithful. The final and remaining element of his personality was jealousy, which is a form of

possession.

The presence of jealousy prior to Tea Cake’s infection is significant. Janie and Tea

Cake travel to the Florida Everglades, where he finds a job planting and picking beans.

Initially Janie stays at home, prepares his meals and takes care of the house chores. Tea

Cake begins to make appearances at odd times during the day. Though Tea Cake claims

that his journeys home are because “[a]h gits lonesome out dere all day ‘thout yuh,”

(Hurston 126) it raises the issue of the possibility of jealousy. Mrs. Turner comes by the

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house and talks up her brother, Janie refuses to even consider him, as she says, “Ah is

married now, so ‘tain’t no use in considerin’” (Hurston 137). Tea Cake had heard the entire

conversation. So when Mrs. Turner’s brother comes to town,

Tea Cake had a brain storm … [b]efore 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 reassured him in possession

(Hurston 140).

It was not rabidity that brought forth the jealousy. It was already present and not in a

tangential way; it was at the core of Tea Cake’s being. All that was left when his brain had

been ravaged by the disease was the need to continue to possess his wife. Taking it to the

extreme, if he could not possess her totally then no one could have a part of her.

Hurston was deliberate in placing the symbolism of the mule in each of the

relationships Janie Crawford had with her lovers. They were the markers of her slavery.

The reader must be more careful in seeing the mule in her relationship with Tea Cake.

Subtly, Hurston shifted the mule from being an external character to being personified in

Janie herself. Newman sees Janie’s participation in the work on the muck in a positive light,

“Janie becomes a field labourer, a participant in a world which originally seemed beneath

her, willingly working at her man's side and finally at one with her community” (Newman

320). Newman’s assumption is based on the false premise that Tea Cake was not being

coercive in asking Janie to work on the muck with him. Yet there is no request by Tea Cake,

“After dis, you betta come git uh job uh work out dere” (Hurston 126). No longer is the

mule doing the work, as with Logan, nor the mule acting as surrogate, as with Jody. Janie

has become the passive mule doing the will of her master. Sop-de-Bottom notes that Janie’s

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bruises are easily visible and that there is not a mark on Tea Cake (Hurston 140). She no

longer even defends herself.

Did Janie eventually come to this realization herself? Subconsciously, perhaps she

did. The killing of Tea Cake needed to occur to allow her the possibility to continue to seek

that which her heart desired – the flight of bees in search of sweet nectar. From the apian

revelation of her youth to the struggles on the muck of Florida, Janie Crawford refused to

accept anything less than perfect love. Her marriages lacked support, equality, and

mutuality; instead they became for Janie prisons. She was not one to sit idle; the fire was

too strong in her. The expectations of classical, renaissance, and romantic love stories have

elevated love and nothing short of the fairytale is acceptable. And so Janie returns to

Eatonville with the memories of Tea Cake. There he lives and they make “pictures of love

and life against the wall” (Hurston 184). Janie now is in control.

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Works Cited

Collins, Derek. “The Myth and Ritual of Ezili Freda in Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.” Western Folklore 55.2 (Spring 1996): 137-154

Cronan, Sheila. “Marriage.” Radical Feminism. eds. Anne Koedt, Ellen Levine, Anita Rapone. New York: Quadrangle Books, 1973. 213-221.

Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Harper-Perennial, 1990.

John Paul II. Familares Consortio. Washington: USCCB, 1982

Luscombe, Belinda. “Marriage: What is it Good For?” Time 29 November 2010: 48-56.

Lupton, Mary Jane. “Zora Neale Hurston and the Survival of the Female.” The Southern Literary Journal 15.1 (Fall 1982): 45-54.

Marks, Donald. “Sex, Violence, and Organic Consciousness in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.” African American Review 19.4 (Winter 1985): 152-157.

Metamorphoses by Ovid. The Internet Classics Archive. 30 November 2010 <http://classics.mit.edu/Ovid/metam.10.tenth.html>.

Newman, Judi. “’Dis ain’t Gimme, Florida’: Zora Neale Hurston’s ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God.’” The Modern Language Review 98.4 (October 2003): 817-826.

Pius XI. Casti Connubii. 31 December 1930. Vatican. 28 November 2010 <http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_31121930_casti-connubii_en.html>.

Sadoff, Dianne. “Black Matrilineage: The Case of Alice Walker and Zora Neale Hurston.” Signs 11.1 (Autumn 1985): 4-26.

Smith, Barbara. “Sexual Politics and the Fiction of Zora Neale Hurston.” The Radical Teacher 8 (May 1978): 26-30.