Anda di halaman 1dari 10

Oral Narrative and Literary Text: Afro-American Folklore in Their Eyes Were Watching

God
Author(s): Klaus Benesch
Source: Callaloo, No. 36 (Summer, 1988), pp. 627-635
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2931547
Accessed: 26-03-2018 21:53 UTC

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms

The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and
extend access to Callaloo

This content downloaded from 165.230.224.54 on Mon, 26 Mar 2018 21:53:43 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
ORAL NARRATIVE AND LITERARY TEXT:
AFRO-AMERICAN FOLKLORE IN
THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD

By Klaus Benesch

When Their Eyes Were Watching God was first published in 1937, two earlier books
had already proved Zora Neale Hurston's particular interest in black oral culture:
Mules and Men (1935) and Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934). Hurston had collected the material
for Mules and Men, a compilation of folk tales, folk songs, folk speech, conjure for-
mulas, root prescriptions, and various hoodoo rituals, during a two-year stay in Flor-
ida under the supervision of Franz Boas, then one of the leading anthropologists in
the United States. This book, dealing for the first time with Afro-American folklore
from the perspective of the black rural community, is notable because it ties together
the numerous stories in an overall narrative structure and thus gives the reader a sense
of the original context that produced them. But although this leads to a certain fic-
tionalization of the text, Mules and Men still retains an anthropological approach. It
was not until Jonah's Gourd Vine that Zora Neale Hurston tried to embed her experience
of black oral culture in an elaborate literary form, the modern novel.'
Both Jonah's Gourd Vine and Their Eyes Were Watching God are set in Eatonville, Flor-
ida, Hurston's birthplace, which, in the words of Robert Hemenway, was "a proud,
self-governing, all-black village that felt no need of integration and, in fact, resisted
it, so that an Afro-American culture could thrive without interference. Furthermore,
both texts are in some ways related to incidents and persons in Hurston's life. Al-
though this autobiographical impulse is less perceptible in Their Eyes, she tells us in
Dust Tracks on a Road that after receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship and leaving for
Jamaica, she took the opportunity to come to grips with a muddled love-affair and
wrote a new novel: "So I sailed off to Jamaica and pitched into work hard on my
research to smother my feelings. But the thing would not down. The plot was far from
the circumstances, but I tried to embalm all tenderness of my passion for him in Their
Eyes Were Watching God."3 The result, however is no ordinary love-story. Janie not only
struggles against the anxieties and expectations of a slave-born grandmother who
raised her, but also tries to resist the violent attempts of her later husbands to break
her will to self-determination and to restrict her behavior to traditional female roles.
Only with Tea Cake, her third husband, is Janie able to arrive at something like ro-
mance. But even this relationship, far from being harmonious all the time, is not free
from oppression and violence. Finally, after shooting Tea Cake in self-defense, Janie
returns to Eatonville where she sits down on the veranda to tell her story to Pheoby,
an old friend.
At first glance, it looks as if Their Eyes is the story of a woman's resistance to male

627

This content downloaded from 165.230.224.54 on Mon, 26 Mar 2018 21:53:43 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
___ __ __ __CALLALOO

oppression and of her search for identity. If it were not for the abundant use of Black
English, which in itself ties the text to a specific cultural background, Their Eyes might
as easily be taken for the story of a white woman and thus to refer to ubiquitous
problems of human existence. Yet, numerous textual oppositions show that there is
more at stake here than a confrontation of gender-related interests: oppositions such
as people versus things, communication versus isolation, blackness versus whiteness.
Mary Helen Washington argues that "the black frame of reference is achieved in
Ms. Hurston's novel in three ways: 1. the language is the authentic dialect of black
rural life; 2. the characters are firmly rooted in black culture; and 3. Janie's search for
identity is an integral part of her search for blackness."4 Blackness, represented in the
text by the various forms of black folklore and black culture, functions as a kind of
barometer for Janie's development. Ultimate emancipation for her means far less to
renounce the traditional male-female relationship than to claim active participation in
the oral traditions of her environment. It is on the level of language that the reader
first encounters this tradition. Dialogue and oral communication are heavily empha-
sized, and authorial voice, using a so-called standard English, is frequently reduced
to a mere introductory function while meaning and content are constituted in the
subsequent conversation rendered in a transcription of black rural speech:

Some of them thought Starks ought not to have done that. He


had so much cane and everything else. But they didn't say that
while Joe Starks was on the porch. When the mail came from
Maitland and he went inside to sort it out everybody had their
say. Sim Jones started off as soon as he was sure that Starks
couldn't hear him.
"It's uh sin and uh shame runnin' dat po' man way from here
lak dat. Colored folks oughtn't tuh be so hard on one 'nother."
. . . "You kin feel a switch in his hand when he's talkin' to yuh,"
Oskar Scott complained. "Dat chastisin' feelin' he totes sorter
gives yuh de protolapsis uh de cutinary linin'." "He's a whirl-
wind among breezes," Jeff Bruce threw in. "Speakin' of winds,
he's de wind and we's de grass. We bend which ever way he
blows," Sam Watson agreed, "but at dat us needs him. De town
wouldn't be nothin' if it wasn't for him. He can't help being
sorter bossy. Some folks needs thrones, and ruling-chairs and
crowns tuh make they influence felt. He don't. He's got a throne
in de seat of his pants." (78-79)5

The figurative and metaphorical qualities of Black English are evident in this passage.
Verbal play and rhetorical improvisation ("speakin' of winds" et cetera) dramatize the
oral-aural orientation of the black community of Eatonville and demonstrate their lin-
guistic virtuosity, of which Zora Neale Hurston once said, "who knows what fabulous
cities of artistic concepts lie within the mind and language of some humble Negro boy
or girl who has never heard of Ibsen."6
But Black English and its specific characteristics are also thematically involved in
the text. The conflict between Janie and her second husband Joe Starks culminates in
an act of speech. As Henry Louis Gates, Jr. points out, Janie not only participates in
the rituals of the signifying but "is openly signifying upon her husband's impotency."7

628

This content downloaded from 165.230.224.54 on Mon, 26 Mar 2018 21:53:43 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
CALLALOO

To Stark's taunting insinuations about her being too old now to mingle with all the
men in his shop, she answers with self-confidence:

"Naw, Ah ain't no young gal no mo' but den Ah ain't no old


woman neither. 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. You big-bellies round here and put a lot of
brag, but 'tain't nothin' to it but yo' big voice. Humph! Talkin'
'bout me lookin' old! When you pull down y' britches, you look
lak de change uh life." (123)

After his impotence is publicly exposed, Starks's physical strength declines rapidly.
From now on he will not leave his bed, and even the intensive efforts of a root-doctor
cannot prevent him from dying soon afterwards. Whether or not his "kidney-failure"
is as Gates argues, only a pun of sorts, a hidden allusion to the 'actual' cause of his
death, to be 'kid-ded' upon, remains unclear. Yet, without doubt, by supplying Janie
with the specific technique of signifying at the point of her utmost resistance to ban-
ishment from the center of public communication Hurston draws our attention to the
preeminent role of oral speech in Afro-American culture. Even more than Langston
Hughes, who frequently uses Black English in his fiction and poetry, she emphasizes
the cultural autonomy of the Black vernacular, which for her is a language that even
the poorest and least educated blacks master and which should not flinch from com-
parison with any other language, be it American English or the classical European
languages. Certainly, when Hurston has Janie remark on the black audience attending
her trial- "they were there with their tongues cocked and loaded, the only real
weapon left to weak folks. The only killing tool they were allowed in the presence of
white folks" (275) - she recognizes the importance of language in Afro-American his-
tory, a strategic instrument for both survival and resistance. Yet, by reading/hearing
the 'voices' of Eatonville it becomes evident that beyond those vital functions Black
English has an aesthetic quality of its own, worthy of preservation and cultivation.
Although Their Eyes omits any direct confrontation between blacks and whites, a
distinct opposition of whiteness and blackness pervades all levels of the text. Janie's
search for identity turns out to be primarily a search for blackness, a coming to terms
with the various forms of Afro-American folk and oral culture. In her teens Janie had
to face the anxieties and demands of a grandmother whose attitudes toward life still
reflected the experience of slavery. Completely deprived of self-determination and
free will, Nanny directed all her ambitions toward her children, and after the raping
of her own daughter, toward Janie:

"You can't beat nobody down so low till you can rob 'em of they
will. Ah didn't want to be used for a work-ox and a brood-sow
and Ah didn't want my daughter used dat way neither. It sho
wasn't mah will for things to happen lak they did. Ah even hated
de way you was born. But, all de same Ah thank God, Ah got
another chance. . . . Ah been waitin' a long time, Janie, but
nothin' Ah been through ain't too much if you just take a stand
on high ground like Ah dreamed." (31-32)

629

This content downloaded from 165.230.224.54 on Mon, 26 Mar 2018 21:53:43 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
_ A__ _ __ _ C LLALOO

This vision of Nanny, to "take a stand on high ground," is one of the earliest efforts
in the text to exclude and isolate Janie from interaction with her black community or,
to modify an epithet of Langston Hughes's, from "the ways of the black folks." Of
course, Nanny's plans for her granddaughter are not in line with the blatant imitation
of white behavior exhibited by Killicks, Starks, or Mis' Turner. However, as a major
impulse throughout Janie's life, they do not prove ineffectual. At the end, Janie con-
fesses to Pheoby: "She [Nanny] was borned in slavery time when folks, dat is black
folks, didn't sit down anytime dey felt lak it. So sittin' on porches lak de white madam
looked lak a mighty fine thing to her. Dat's whut she wanted for me-don't keer whut
it cost. Git up on uh high chair and sit dere. She didn't have time to think whut tuh
do after you got up on de stool uh do nothin'. De object wuz to git dere" (171-72).
This sort of attitude was by no means unusual during slavery. As Mary Helen Wash-
ington has pointed out, the mere idea of idleness was attractive to a slave. One slave
is even supposed to have declared "that if he ever got free he wasn't ever going to get
up any more, and stayed in bed until he starved to death."8 Moreover, Nanny is cer-
tainly molded by her experience as a black woman, "de mule uh de world," as she
herself puts it, and also manifests in many ways what Ralph Ellison, talking about the
blues, once called a "sheer toughness of will." Yet, wanting "protection" for Janie, she
finally pushes her into the loveless marriage with Logan Killicks, a representative of
a rather 'white' value system.9
Without any considerable contact with members of the black community, Janie's
early life is primarily distinguished by its lack of personal communication. With Kil-
licks she is about to experience for the first time that "to be safe" (which in itself, in
the sense of a depository, connotes seclusion) to her means isolation from the bustling
life of black culture in favor of at least questionable, white middle-class aspirations.
However, it is in the all-black community of Eatonville that this tension reaches its
climax. Starks's store-porch, "where people sat around ... and passed around the
pictures of their thoughts for the others to look at and see" (81), is the central meeting-
place for the town folks, a true forum for Afro-American folklore. Here tale telling
and lying sessions take place, courtship rituals are acted out and every conceivable
business of the town is talked over. In these passages Hurston's representation of
black rural life is at its most vivid and brilliant. Since she grew up in Eatonville herself,
the intimate knowledge of this milieu enables her to render the various folk forms in
their genuine cultural context and to transcribe spoken language with a sensitivity
rarely achieved since. She defies all efforts to view black oral culture as a mere reaction
to repressive conditions. For her, the playful and artistic use of language is a natural
gift, more often than not motivated by sheer pleasure:

"It takes money tuh feed pretty women. Dey gits uh lavish uh
talk."
"Not lak mine. Dey loves to hear me talk because dey can't
understand it. Mah co-talking is too deep. Too much co to it."
(59)

Joe Starks, the "citified, stylish dressed man" who came to Eatonville, as Hurston
puts it ironically, to become "a big voice," is set off from the very beginning against

630

This content downloaded from 165.230.224.54 on Mon, 26 Mar 2018 21:53:43 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
CALLALOO

the community's bent for idleness and communication. In a town where fixed political
structures are totally unknown, he starts out to persuade the people of the need for
a mayor and to enthrone himself in that position. His rigorous way of "buyin' in big"
soon raises him to the top and, as the most powerful man in Eatonville, he begins to
signify on every level his 'otherness' and superiority:

Take for instance that new house of his. It had two stories with
porches, with banisters and such things. The rest of the town
looked like servants' quarters surrounding the "big house." And
different from everybody else in town he put off moving in until
it had been painted, in and out. And look at the way he painted
it-a gloaty, sparkly white. The kind of promenading white that
the houses of Bishop Whipple, W. B. Jackson and the Vander-
pool's wore. It made the village feel funny talking to him-just
like he was anybody else. (75)

His "golded-up spitting pot" and somewhat smaller "lady-size" one for Janie are ad-
ditional examples of his grotesque ambitions to copy and even exaggerate emblems
of the white upper class. But the most striking caricature of Starks as a representative
of whiteness is yet to come. Ironically, one of his first public acts as mayor of Eatonville
is the installment of a street lamp. During a barbecue preceding the occasion, he says:
"Dis occasion is something for us all tuh remember tuh our dyin' day. De first street
lamp in a colored town. Lift yo' eyes and gaze on it. And when Ah touch de match
tuh dat lamp-wick let de light penetrate inside of yuh, and let it shine, let it shine" (73,
my emphasis). In his attempt to bring 'light' into the 'darkness' of Eatonville, Starks
is evoking a two thousand year-old investment of blackness with negative and white-
ness with exclusively positive attributes. Since Plato's Phaidros and his metaphor of
the soul, the arbitrary merging of a physical phenomenon, such as the color of one's
skin, with moral idiosyncrasies has proved to be one of the most fateful biases against
black people. As a notorious belief throughout the history of Western civilization, a
European 'fetish' as Hayden White would call it, this equation soon became a powerful
instrument for the discrimination against and stigmatizing of the black race. In her
poem "On Being Brought from Africa to America" Phillis Wheatley defies this very
preconception as early as 1773: "Some view our sable race with scornful eye, / 'Their
colour is a diabolic die'. / Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain, / May be refine'd,
and join th' angelic train." 10 In Their Eyes, Starks's notion of illumination and enlight-
enment(!) from 'within,' that is the internalizing of the 'white' point of view, is ingen-
iously set off against the vision of the spiritual expression of 'black' experience and
tradition: "We'll walk in de light, de beautiful light / Come where the dew drops of
mercy shine bright / shine all around us by day and by night / Jesus, the light of the
world" (73, my emphasis). Here, light as a metaphor is applied to envisioned condi-
tions, things 'outside' an individual self, which are supposed to guarantee freedom
and peace for all people, regardless of either race or color. By signifying upon Starks's
preoccupation with light, Hurston succeeded in challenging, by way of connotation,
an ancient and firmly established stereotype.
It is no surprise, then, that Starks gradually withdraws from the store-porch, the

631

This content downloaded from 165.230.224.54 on Mon, 26 Mar 2018 21:53:43 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
_ A__ _ __ _ C LLALOO

center of black oral tradition. He rarely talks ("Saving his breath on talk ... weakened
people" [76]), and his role in the "mule-talking" and "lying sessions" is confined to
listening and occasional laughter: "Janie noted that while he didn't talk the mule him-
self, he sat and laughed at it" (85). This smug reticence as well as his continuing en-
deavors to acquire an aura of being 'white' and thus different are subjected to the most
subtle but at the same time extremely effective caricature. In chapter six, the longest
in the book, we are invited to eavesdrop on the talking and the performances on the
store-porch. At first, the full-length representation of a folk tale, a "contest in hyper-
bole," and the playful courtship rituals seem unintegrated into the rest of the plot and
may appear as flaws in the novel. At the forefront of those who have used this ar-
gument against Their Eyes, Darwin Turner illustrates a general tendency in criticism
and at the same time accentuates the pivotal role this chapter plays in the context of
Hurston's efforts to apply oral folklore to literary texts: "Digressive and unnecessary,
the chapter merely suggests that Miss Hurston did not know how to integrate the folk
material which she considered essential for local color." 11 Yet, considering the op-
position of whiteness versus blackness which can be traced throughout the rest of the
text, I wish to suggest that this chapter is more than a clumsy and slightly exaggerated
accumulation of "local color."
The beginning and the end of the chapter demonstrate two important stages in
Janie's search for blackness. Having been assigned to tend her husband's store, she
is frequently exposed to the performances of Afro-American folklore, acted out on the
store-porch. Before long Janie begins to enjoy the ever-new and fancy stories of her
customers, yet her own active participation in the telling is vehemently vetoed by
Starks: "Janie loved the conversation and sometimes she thought up good stories on
the mule, but Joe had forbidden her to indulge. He didn't want her talking after such
trashy people" (85). Some thirty pages later, however, Janie, for the first time, gains
her own 'voice.' Joining the tale-telling on the store-porch, she not only challenges a
taboo established by her husband but publicly corroborates her affiliation with black
folk traditions: "Janie did what she had never done before, that is, thrust herself into
the conversation" (116).
Prior to this event, we witness the "lying" and talking on the store-porch. The so-
called "mule talk" is one of the favorites: "He [the mule] was next to the Mayor in
prominence and made better talking" (85). "Brazzle's ole yaller mule," a popular and
widely known legend in Eatonville, and which Hurston also used for Mule Bone, the
play she co-authored with Langston Hughes, was a fixed part of the general repertoire.
Yet, these stories do not function as "local color." Hurston again confronts the reader
with the imagination and verbal versatility of people like Sam, Lige, and Walter, and
by rendering their stories with the least narrative distance, she elucidates the different
modes of oral and literary tale-telling. According to Robert Hemenway, "the reader
... learns a profound respect for men and women perpetuating an esthetic mode of
communication; the impulse is not to isolate oneself, but to lose the self in the art and
wisdom of the group.'2
But the "mule talk" still points to another frame of reference, which exceeds the
context of Eatonville. The comparable condition of mules and slaves-both are con-
sidered workhorses and, more often than not, treated in similar ways -made the mule

632

This content downloaded from 165.230.224.54 on Mon, 26 Mar 2018 21:53:43 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
__ __ _ __ _CALLALOO

a favorite symbol of Afro-American folklore, a prominent object of identification for


many black people, even long after Emancipation. Mules are not only bought and
sold, driven to work and, most of the time, malnourished, but are also strong, stub-
born, and unpredictable. By way of a double-voiced strategy, the black story-teller
and his audience were able to play the role of the workhorse, which was imposed on
them by their white masters, and at the same time to use the story as an act of resis-
tance, by stressing the potential obstinacy of the mule:

"Ah does feed'im. He's jus' too mean tuh git fat. He stay poor
rawbony jus' fuh spite. Skeered he'll hafta work some."
"Yeah, you feeds'im. Feeds'im offa 'come up' and seasons it
wid raw-hide."
"Does feed de ornery Varmint! Don't keer whut Ah do Ah
can't git long wid 'im. He fights every inch in front uh de plow,
and even lay back his ears tuh kick and bite when Ah go in de
stall tuh feed him." (83)

To be sure, the identification of 'mules and men' is no longer the main impetus for
the tale-tellers in an all-black community like Eatonville. Yet, by using such stories in
Their Eyes, Hurston not only signifies on a collective past but also, in alluding to Nan-
ny's earlier remark that "de nigger woman is de mule uh de world" (29), signifies on
the role of black women as well as on the male-female relationships. This technique
of implying two or more levels of possible meaning is most evident in the mule's
"mock burial." Here, the lines between a particular incident in the history of Eatonville
(the death of Mat Bonner's "yaller mule"), the fictional device (the satirical exposing
of Starks's 'alienated' behavior), and the traditional folk tale (a part of the general
repertoire of black oral culture), are blurred together. And even more explicitly than
before, the mule is invested with human features: "Out in the swamp they made great
ceremony over the mule. They mocked everything human in death. Starks led off with
a great eulogy on our departed citizen and the grief he left behind him, and the people
loved the speech" (95). Although his "eulogy" makes him "more solid than building
the schoolhouse had done," Starks becomes again the main target of irony. At the end
of the burial, when the carcass is left to the buzzards, the animals, in a kind of call
and response, not only mock his greediness and voracity but anticipate on the level
of the plot, his own death: " 'What killed this man?' The chorus answered, 'Bare, bare
fat' " (97).
Already before this, Starks has been ridiculed through his role in the "mule talk."
To stop the store-porch crowd from playing tricks on Mat Bonner's mule, he purchases
the animal and, supplying his food, allows him to rest as a "free mule" in the streets
of Eatonville. Yet, notwithstanding the general approval of his deed, a mocking note
in Janie's remarks is hard to miss: "Freein' dat mule makes uh mighty big man outa
you. Something like George Washington and Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln, he had de
whole United States tuh rule so he freed de Negroes. You got uh town so you freed
uh mule. You have tuh have power tuh free things and dat makes you like uh king
uh something" (92). Again, it is extremely difficult to separate the 'real' incident, as
part of the plot, from one of the mule-stories. Hurston's constant skipping between

633

This content downloaded from 165.230.224.54 on Mon, 26 Mar 2018 21:53:43 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
CALLALOO

two different levels of narration generates a creative tension which, by sarcastically


signifying on Starks, gradually directs our sympathies toward the black folk traditions.
The wordy dispute between Sam Watson and Lige Mose, and the playful "acting
out" of various courtship rituals, function in a similar way. On the one hand, they are
supposed to familiarize the reader with the inherent dynamic of black oral culture, its
tendency toward hyperbole and drama; yet, on the other hand, they again anticipate
the plot: Janie's ensuing courtship and her marriage with Tea Cake. Thus, a seemingly
arbitrary accumulation of folklore turns out to be the most powerful instrument of the
narrative strategy in Their Eyes. Here, Janie's so far rather vague search for identity
joins with the different forms of black oral culture. The "mule talk," the "mock burial"
and the "courtship rituals" are closely woven into the overall narrative structure. They
signify in various ways on the basic opposition of blackness versus whiteness and,
therefore, are indispensable for an understanding of the text. Last but not least, crucial
parts of the narrative are effectively emphasized in this chapter, either by way of an-
ticipation (Janie, finally gaining her own 'voice,' is able to signify on Starks's impo-
tency), or by recalling an already established frame of reference (Nanny's remark on
"de nigger woman").
Janie's third relationship is sharply set off against her former marriages. Like a true
blues hero, Tea Cake is deeply rooted in traditional folk behavior. He performs the
old courtship rituals, indulges in crap-shooting and razor fighting, plays the dozens
and the blues. Unlike Killicks and Starks, he prefers communication and people to
'things': "So us goin' off somewhere and start all in Tea Cake's way. Dis ain't no busi-
ness proposition, and no race after property and titles. Dis is uh love game" (171).
"Down in the muck," where their house is "a magnet, the unauthorized center of the
'job,' " Janie, having so far been denied involvement in Afro-American oral culture,
feels free to join the notorious "lying" and tale-telling sessions whenever she wants
to: "She got so, she could tell big stories herself from listening to the rest" (200). Yet,
even with Tea Cake, she has to face occasional crises and physical violence. S. Jay
Walker has argued that Hurston betrays Janie's gradual resistance to traditional role
stereotypes by confining her for a third time to the traditional pattern of the male-
female relationship.'3 However, according to my own argument, Janie's development
is above all a function of her meaningful participation in black folk traditions, and only
secondarily depends on the opposition of a woman to gender-related expectations.
Therefore, Their Eyes closes neither with an idealized love-affair nor with a feminist
challenge to male hubris and arrogance. Back in Eatonville, Janie does what might be
considered as the essential subtext of the whole book: she tells her story. This final
emphasis on communication and community is representative not only of Zora Neale
Hurston's affirmative attitude toward Afro-American oral culture, but also of a fre-
quently misunderstood narrative strategy: the merging of literary and oral style.

Notes

1. Mules and Men was actually Hurston's first book. Written as early as 1928-30, while Hurston was
on a research tour in the South, it could not be published until the relatively successful Jonah's
Gourd Vine (1934) prepared the way.

634

This content downloaded from 165.230.224.54 on Mon, 26 Mar 2018 21:53:43 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
CALLALOO

2. Robert Hemenway, Zora Neale Hurston-A Literary Biography (Chicago/London: U of Illinois P.


1978), 237.
3. Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road (Philadelphia/New York: J. B. Lippincott Company,
1971), 260.
4. Mary Helen Washington, "Zora Neale Hurston: The Black Woman's Search for Identity," Black
World, August 1974, 68.
5. Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937; Chicago/London U: of Illinois P, 1978).
All page numbers will refer to this edition.
6. Zora Neale Hurston 206.
7. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., "The blackness of blackness: a critique of the sign and the Signifying
Monkey," Black Literature and Literary Theory, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (New York: Methuen,
1984), 290.
8. "The Black Woman's Search for Identity" 70.
9. Like the idea of "a stand on high ground," referring to the "big house" on a slave plantation,
which, to signify the owner's omnipotence and superiority, was often situated on a higher level
than the slaves' cabins, Nanny's argument for Killicks, "Got a house ... and sixty acres uh land
right on de big road. . . " (41), is closely related to the sphere and standards of the former master.
10. Phillis Wheatley, The Poems of Phillis Wheatley (Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1966).
11. Darwin T. Turner, In a Minor Chord-Three Afro-American Writers and Their Search for Identity (Car-
bondale/Edwardsville: Southern Illinois UP, 1971), 107.
12. Zora Neale Hurston 166.
13. S. Jay Walker, "Their Eyes Were Watching God: Black Novel of Sexism," Modern Fiction Studies 20
(Winter 1974/75): 519-20.

635

This content downloaded from 165.230.224.54 on Mon, 26 Mar 2018 21:53:43 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Anda mungkin juga menyukai