Their eyes were watching god
...Tea Cake a thief? Is he married? Hezekiah replies that nothing like that is the case. The problem is that Tea Cake isn't used to anything. He does not make money, or spend it. Janie is not concerned about any of this; she tells Hezekiah not to worry. At night, Tea Cake is waiting for Janie at her doorstep with a string of trout to eat. They have dinner and then Tea Cake combs Janie's hair, scratching the dandruff from her scalp. Janie asks why Tea Cake brought a comb. Tea Cake replies that he had been wanting to touch Janie's hair for a long time; he's had trouble sleeping because he's been wanting to touch her hair so badly. He tells Janie that she has beautiful hair, and beautiful eyes and lips. She lets others enjoy her beauty but she, herself, should stare into the mirror sometimes and enjoy her own beauty. Janie tells Tea Cake that he probably says that to all the women and Tea Cake says that that is true: "I'm the apostle to the Gentiles; I tell them and then I show them." Janie is upset; it is her greatest fear that Tea Cake is just taking her for a ride. He seems to have confirmed her fear that he is a cold-hearted womanizer. She tells Tea Cake that she is tired and ready to go to sleep. Tea Cake tells Janie that she's lying; he realizes that he has upset her with what he has said and that she's making excuses to get rid of him. She must think that he's some sort of "pimp" or "rounder". Janie is cold; she says that he shouldn't care what she thinks, she's not his girlfriend. Tea Cake tells Janie that he loves her; Janie is cold again saying that those are his "night" thoughts; in the morning he won't feel the same way. Upset, Tea Cake hurriedly leaves. He cannot manage to convince her of his feelings; at least not tonight... In the morning Janie thinks loving thoughts about Tea Cake. "He looked like the love thoughts of women. He could be the bee in her blossom a pear tree blossom in the spring. He seemed to be crushing scent out of the world with his footsteps. He was a glance from God." Janie wakes up in the morning with someone knocking at her door: it's Tea Cake. He has come to tell her that he loves her. These are not just "night" feelings. He loves her all the time, morning and night. That night they have supper and sleep together. She asks Tea Cake about the problem of their large age difference. He says that age is only a matter of convenience, not love. Tea Cake disappears for a few days and Janie begins to doubt his sincerity. But on the fourth day, Tea Cake arrives in an old car. He has come to take her grocery shopping for the Sunday picnic. He wants her to have all the best things to eat. Janie asks him if he is certain he wants her to go to the picnic with him. He says, of course! He has worked very hard for four days to make enough money to buy good food for her. Janie says that she loves Tea Cake, too, but tells him not to pretend to love her if he really doesn't. He says that God can kill him if he's lying; no one can hold a candle to Janie; she holds the keys to the kingdom. Analysis: This chapter is about love. It is the first chapter in the novel where the real issues surrounding love are articulated: fear, doubt, sincerity, sacrifice. Since this is the first time these issues emerge, the reader can conclude that the relationship with Tea Cake is the first time that Janie has truly loved. One of the most interesting images of the chapter is the image of the battleship at the beginning of the chapter. With the image, the reader is reminded of the first image of the book ships on the horizon. Somehow Tea Cake brings Janie closer to the horizon, he offers her battleships to sail to the horizon with. There are many other important images that reemerge in this chapter that were introduced in the first chapters. First, the image of Janie's hair as being a symbol of Janie's freedom repeats. Tea Cake Is the first man in Janie's life to love her hair. He caresses it, dreams about it, combs it. His feelings toward her hair are markedly different from Joe's feelings. Joe, remember, tied Janie's hair back in hair rags, prohibiting it from showing. Also, the image of the gate reemerges here as well. Tea Cake comes through the gate to Janie. It is the first time that a man has come through the gate to her, as opposed to her having to leave through a gate to find a man. Gates are associated throughout the novel with new experiences as well; this is the third gate mentioned so far. The fourth reoccurring image is the image of the pear tree blossom. Janie searches for the bee for her blossom throughout the novel and is convinced, now with Tea Cake, that she has found her allusive bee. The final image that reoccurs significantly in this chapter is the porch. In this chapter, "Tea Cake mounts the porch for the first time". He takes over the porch by sleeping on it. He has claimed a place on it; and significantly, no other man has done this besides Joe Starks. Janie's identification with nature and the moon in the previous chapter is echoed by Tea Cake in this chapter; it is he who suggests that the moon is too beautiful too waste and that they spend the night fishing as to be able to admire it. Tea Cake's affiliation with nature is repeated throughout the chapter. He has no possessions; when a prop is necessary he pretends to have it, thus showing an independence from the material world. Tea Cake woos Janie throughout the chapter by relies on nature for his gifts. He provides her, for example, with fish that he catches and lemonade from lemons that he picks. Importantly, too, all the gifts that Tea Cake provides are edible; literally he feeds her; metaphorically he nourishes her spirit. He provides her with Coke, lemonade, fish and, at the end of the chapter, a ride to a grocery story to buy food for the picnic. It is important to note that these are the only gifts that he provides her. Nothing is purely material. Contrast this against the gifts that Logan provides, a position as a farmhand on the farm, and against the gifts that Joe provides, fancy clothes. Also, the language of love between Janie and Logan centers around love. When Janie decides to accept Tea Cake's love the evening that he is sleeping on her hammock on the porch, her first words are, "I don't know about you, but I'm hongry." We can see how food serves, sometimes, as a proxy for the more difficult phrases of courtship and love. This chapter also provides the second major instance of personification of an abstract idea. In the chapter where Joe dies, Death is personified as a square-toed fiend. In this chapter, we are introduced to another similar monster: Doubt. "Doubt is the fiend from hell especially provided for lovers." It is important to try to think about the significance of personifying these abstract ideas. Why are doubt and death separated from the regular human experience by being capitalized and personified. Perhaps Hurston is signifying that doubt and death are uncontrollable and inevitable. We cannot blame Janie for the death of Joe, nor can we blame her for doubting. Death and Doubt are separate characters with their own volition. Chapter 12 Summary: After the town picnic, Janie's and Tea Cakes relationship becomes a public affair. The town criticizes Janie: how can she stop mourning the death of her dead husband so soon? Why is she with a man like Tea Cake, a man with no money and no power? One evening Sam Watson asks Phoebe to talk to Janie about her relationship with Tea Cake and warn her from making a mistake. Sam believes that Tea Cake is only spending money on Janie now so that he can take all of her Janie's money later. Sam reminds Phoeby of poor Ms. Tyler, a wealthy widow who had all of her wealth stolen by a man who pretended to love her. Phoeby talks to Janie the next morning. Phoeby asks Janie why she's allowing Tea Cake to take her to places she used to never go to: baseball games, fishing ponds, forests for hunting. Janie used to only do "classy" things, nothing that everyone else did. Janie explains that she never wanted to be "classed off"; Joe Starks forced her to remove herself from public society. Phoeby also tells Janie that she should stop wearing bright colors in public; it seems to everyone that she has stopped mourning for Joe Starks too soon. Janie explains that she's stopped grieving so why should she continue to mourn. Also, she wears bright colors, specifically blue, because Tea Cake likes to see her in blue. Joe Starks never once picked a color that he liked seeing Janie in. Furthermore, Janie intends to marry Tea Cake, sell the store, and move out of town. Janie's through with living a life of property and wealth, her "Grandma's way of life." She says, "Dis ain't no business proposition, and no race after property and titles. Dis is uh love game. Ah done lived Grandma's way, now Ah means tuh live mine." For her grandmother, a woman who lived through slavery, black people were subjugated: they could never own property or sit on a white porch on a high chair. That's why it seemed to Janie's grandmother that these things were so important and valuable. But Janie lived her grandmother's dream and almost died doing it: "Ah done nearly languished tuh death tuh death up dere. Ah felt like de world wuz cryin' extry and Ah ain't even read the common news yet." Janie tells Phoeby not to tell anyone about her upcoming marriage, not because she's embarrased, but because she doesn't want to have deal with a big chaotic affair in town. Phoeby says, "Ah jus lak uh chicken. Chicken drink water, but he don't pee-pee" meaning that information won't leak out of her into the public. Phoeby warns Janie that she's taking a big chance in running off with Tea Cake; but Janie tells Phoeby that it isn't really a big risk. Tea Cake has "taught [her the] maiden language all over." He's bought her a blue satin wedding dress, and someday soon she'll put on the dress and leave town to be married and start a new life. Analysis: This chapter is where Janie decides to marry Tea Cake. It is a valuable chapter because it is where Janie finally recognizes, in concrete terms, the differences between her grandmother's dream and her own dream. She finally develops the courage to strike out for her own dream life, a life of love, although she is haunted by stories of women who were misled by the illusion of love and died in disparity. Some interesting irony, ambiguity and understatement are found at the beginning of the chapter. Details of Tea Cake's and Janie's relationship are laid out through the events of their courtship: "Tea Cake and Janie gone hunting. Tea Cake and Janie gone fishing. Tea Cake and Janie gone to Orlando to the movies. Tea Cake and Janie gone to a dance. Tea Cake making flower beds in Janie's yard and seeding the garden for her. Chopping down that tree she never did like by the dining room window. All those signs of possession." This passage is interesting because the position of narration is ambiguous. Who believes that these events of courtship are signs of possession? Is this Phoeby's thought? Is it the voice of the community as a whole? Is it Janie's thought? Passages like this one are clear examples of free indirect discourse, a narrative technique where opinions float into the narration as first-person thoughts. Although it is quite ambiguous, one possible explanation is that it is the opinion of the community that these different events in the courtship are "signs of possession". Ironically, however, Janie would never perceive the events of her courtship as signs of Tea Cake's possession over her. Since it is generally her voice that permeates the narration, it seems like she might be commenting, ironically, on the community's perception of her affairs. However, it also unclear whether it is Tea Cake possessing Janie, or Janie possessing Tea Cake. Therefore there are many possible implications of the very short sentence, "All those signs of possession." Because the full implications of the idea are not fully fleshed out immediately in the text, the sentence is also a vivid example of understatement. Is Hurston here, herself, commenting in the text? Does she believe that, in some senses, full, reciprocal love is "possession". Another very interesting, but perhaps less obvious, development in this chapter is the deeper revelation of Janie's and Phoeby's relationship. Here, in chapter 12, we really begin to understand the depth of Phoeby's friendship with Janie. We understand her loyalty and her ability to surmount her own personal fears and jealousies in order to be a loyal, true blue friend. Phoeby is a great woman. She maintains her relationship with Sam Watson, despite their differences in opinion. Unlike Janie, Phoeby would never stand up against Sam. She never argues with him. She agrees with what he tells her; she does what he asks. From her position, Janie's must seem to be a life of liberty. Yet she is happy for Janie. She never gets catty or angry. She always maintains Janie's confidence; she never reveals Janie's secrets to anyone. She is supportive and kind, not judging or dismissive. Although quite understated, it is important to recognize Phoeby's importance to the story and the strength she provides Janie "behind the scenes". She is an invisible source of strength for Janie. One possible future tension between Janie and Tea Cake is foreshadowed in this chapter. Janie seems, now, very excited that Tea Cake chooses her clothes, chooses for example the colors that she should wear. But, one concern is how far this control will extend. Whereas Joe Starks never seemed to pay much attention to Janie, something she disliked, Tea Cake seems to take too much concern in how she looks, what she wears, etc. It will interesting to trace the extent of Tea Cake's control over Janie in future chapters. Chapter 13 Summary: Tea Cake writes a letter to Janie telling her to meet him in Jacksonville, Florida. So, one morning, before the town wakes up, Janie gets in a train and rides to Tea Cake in her blue satin wedding dress. Janie is so happy, "so glad that she scares herself." One week after they are married, Tea Cake wakes up in the morning and leaves before Janie awakes. Janie has breakfast with the landlady in their apartment, Mis' Samuels. Janie does not worry too much about where Tea Cake could be, until she realizes that a silk purse where she had been hiding two hundred dollars of emergency money has vanished. Janie, frantic, looks everywhere in her room for the money; she hopes that it is just lost in the room instead of being "stolen" by Tea Cake. However, after searching for a while in futility, Janie realizes the truth: Tea Cake has left without telling her where she was going, and he has taken her money without asking. Immediately, Janie thinks of the example of poor Ms. Annie Tyler. Annie Tyler was a woman in Eatonville; her husband died when she was fifty-two and she was left with a large sum of insurance money and a house. Annie spent all her time cavorting with younger men; one day a younger man named Who Flung came to romance her. He moved into her house and then convinced her to sell the house and move with him to Tampa. On the second day of living together, Who Flung ran off with Annie's money leaving Annie crushed and devastated. Annie returned home with a broken heart, penniless. Her daughter took care of her for some time and then she died. The thoughts of Annie Tyler haunt Janie all night. Finally Janie bucks up her spirits: even if Tea Cake does abandon her as Who Flung abandoned Annie Tyler, Janie would never return to Eatonville, as a failure. She has twelve hundred dollars in the bank and she would live off that if she needed to. At dawn the next morning, Tea Cake returns playing a guitar. Tea Cake says that he recognizes that Janie thinks that he had left with her money never to return. But he tells her that she should never feel that way. He tells Janie how much he loves her and that he would never leave her for another woman; and if he did leave her for another woman, he would only leave her for a woman exactly like Janie. Over breakfast Tea Cake explains where he has been all night. In the morning while getting dressed for breakfast he saw Janie's money. He took it and realized, on the way to the fish market, that he had to spend the money: he had never felt like a millionaire before and now he did. Tea Cake decided to spend the money buying a macaroni and chicken dinner for all his friends. He buys a guitar and pays the ugly women not to come in the door of his party. He and his friends feasted all night long. One ornery man tried to eat all the gizzards and livers, the best parts of the chicken. Tea Cake had a fight with the man, broke his teeth and he left. Janie is upset: why didn't Tea Cake invite her to the party? Tea Cake explains that his friends are all very ordinary and very rough. He wouldn't want Janie to think less of him by association. Tea Cake tells Janie not to worry about the two hundred dollars. He plans to win it all back gambling on Saturday. He tells Janie that he is one of the best gamblers in the world. Tea Cake spends the whole week practicing rolling dice and shuffling cards; and then, on Saturday he buys a knife and some cards and goes off to gamble. Janie does not worry about Tea Cake until midnight but once it is later than midnight she begins to get very afraid. Finally around daybreak, Tea Cake arrives home; but, he is badly cut and injured. He tells Janie that he had won her two hundred dollars back and was about to come home earlier, but the other gamblers wanted a chance to win their money back. He continued playing for a few more hours and won all their money. As he was leaving, one of the gamblers named Double Ugly stabbed him with his razor; Tea Cake pulled out his knife and beat the man until Double Ugly was scared and Tea Cake came home. Janie listens to the story while applying iodine to Tea Cake's wounds and crying. Tea Cake tells her not to cry; he won lots of money! Janie counts it: three hundred and twenty-two dollars. He tells Janie to take back her two hundred dollars and also tells her that he will provide for her from now on. She must rely on him, and his money only, in good times and bad. Janie is fine with that. Tea Cake says that when he recovers from the cuts he wants to head to the muck down in the Everglades because "folks don't do nothin' down dere but make money and fun and foolishness. Analysis: In this chapter, the love between Janie and Tea Cake finally becomes "real" because they finally find the courage to give up their facades and fears and reveal their true selves to each other. At the beginning of the chapter, Janie hides money in her dress just in case the relationship with Tea Cake does not work out. Her withholding of the money, as per Phoebe's advice, suggests that Janie is not yet prepared to be totally vulnerable and honest with Tea Cake. Tea Cake, too, holds back part of himself: he does not reveal his true friends to Janie, feeling that she would dislike him once she knew the real him. By the end of the chapter, however, Tea Cake and Janie finally are able to reveal their true selves. Janie tells Tea Cake about her money and Tea Cake tells Janie about his rough friends and background. Several motifs replay in this chapter. The color blue once again emerges as a color of love. Tea Cake wears a blue suit to the marriage; Tea Cake, in an earlier chapter, tells Janie that he loves seeing her in blue. Another motif and symbol is the guitar. Tea Cake played an invisible guitar in his first meeting with Janie; in this chapter he buys a real guitar and performs music. An interesting comparison emerges here between Jody and Tea Cake. Jody uses his loud and demeaning voice to communicate with people; Tea Cake uses a more subtle and beautiful tool: music through his guitar. Another important theme reemerges in this chapter and will continue to appear in the last chapters of the book. This theme is the importance of a person to embrace her background, her roots, and her culture; failure comes from trying to be something you aren't. Hurston particularly makes this point with black people, encouraging them to embrace their blackness and not try to be white. Take, as an example, Annie Tyler. Her character is described as entirely pathetic. Part of her description as pathetic is made clear with adjectives describing her desire to look and behave like a white woman. For example Annie "dyed her hair", "straightened it", wore "blotchy powder", wore tight high-heeled shoes. Although Hurston does not come straight out and say, "People who don't embrace their cultural roots live miserable and pathetic lives," it is very clear that this is what she believes. All the characters who are miserable in the novel have "white" values: they are driven by money and power and make themselves look unnatural. Although this is mainly a novel about Janie finding her true self, an essential part of this journey of self-discovery is her discovery of her blackness. In fact, it is important to recognize that Hurston is very sympathetic to the Tea Cake character because he assists Janie in finding her black self. Tea Cake possesses all the noble black values: he is not driven by money and power. Although he is a very good gambler, he never gambles simply to get rich. He gambles to win back Janie's money, to prove to her that he will always provide for her. Contrast this to Jody's quest: to become the most powerful figure in Eatonville. Chapter 14 Summary: Janie and Tea Cake move to the Everglades, very near Lake Okechobee. They arrive in early September to insure that they can find a house, since when the bean-picking season begins, the boarding houses will be too full to find even floor space to sleep on. Once the season begins, Tea Cake spends his day picking beans while Janie tends the house. Although Tea Cake spends a lot of free time entertaining Janie with his guitar, there still is not much to do. So, Tea Cake teaches Janie how to hunt and fish. Thanks to Tea Cake's encouragement, Janie becomes an exceptional hunter; she even becomes a better hunter than her teacher, Tea Cake. At night the pianos "clang and clamor". People would sing the blues and "dance, fight, sing, cry, laugh, win and lose love." Tea Cake's house becomes the center of social life. People come to hear him play the guitar and laugh with him. Tea Cake starts popping in on Janie during the day. One day, Janie asks why. He tells her that he misses her too much to be away all day long. He asks her to come out to the field with him and she does. At night the men would have discussions and arguments, just as they used to on the porch in Eatonville. Only here, Janie can "listen and laugh and even talk some herself if she wants to. She [gets] so she can tell big stories herself from listening to the rest." Some of the men gamble: namely, Ed Dockery, Bootyny and Sop-de-Bottom. One night, after a nerve-racking game, Ed Dockery wins a pile of money. He tells the others that he is sending the money straight to Sears and Roebuck to buy clothes. He says, "And when I turn over Christmas day, it would take a doctor to tell me how near Ah is dressed tuh death." Analysis: When Janie comes to the Everglades, she comes into a real understanding of the beauty of black culture. Throughout the chapters in the Everglades (14-19), watch carefully how Hurston paints the beauty of black society. In this chapter, we witness how incredibly impoverished men and women can manage to find true joy and love in the black itchy Muck of the Everglades. Hurston, in this chapter, reconciles too extreme contrasts. First, she describes vividly the depth of destitution amongst the blacks converging on the 'Glades: "Day by day now, hordes of workers poured in. Some came limping with their shoes and sore feet from walking... They came in wagons from up in Georgia and they come in truckloads from east, west, north and south. Permanent transients with no attachments and tired looking men with their families and dogs in flivvers. Skillets, beds, patched up spare inner tubes all hanging and dangling from the ancient cars on the outside and hopeful humanity, herded and hovered on the inside, chugging on to the muck. People ugly from ignorance and broken from being poor." Then, Hurston describes vividly their joie de vivre: she describes pianos playing all night long; she describes people singing and dancing and gambling. These contrasting images placed together, articulates in picaresque (like a painting) form, the great accomplishment of black culture: transcendence above poverty and destitution to joy and laughter through a reliance on music, conversation, play and love. Apart from these broad themes, Hurston also drops several literary elements into this chapter. First, there is much foreshadowing here. Hurston describes how "people are wild" in the Everglades. She describes Okechobee as "Big" several times and then says, "they rattled nine miles in a borrowed car to the quarters and squatted so close that only the dyke separated them from the great, sprawling Okechobee." These sentences foreshadow the tragic end of the novel. There are also many codas, resolutions to some of the disappointments Janie had in her previous marriages. When Tea Cake suggests that Janie come work in the field, it is not because he wants to turn her into a mule, like Logan did, but because he truly wants to spend time with her. When Janie begins telling stories to the other men, we remember how her voice had been squelched during her relationship with Joe Starks, but is now listened to and enjoyed. Also, it is important to recognize that Tea Cake is the leader of his community just as Joe was the leader of his; recognize the parallelism in this chapter with the comparison between Joe's big white porch and Tea Cake's doorway. However, Tea Cake's leadership is not oppressive he leads the other workers' laughter and encourages them to play in the fields. Instead of using a "big voice" he entertains with his guitar and his good humor. Chapter 15 Summary: Janie learns about jealousy. A little chunky girl named Nunkie often taps Tea Cake on the shoulder and then runs into the fields hoping that he chases her. Sometimes he does. Janie is worried that Nunkie is weakening Tea Cake's loyalty to her. One day, Janie leaves Tea Cake's side to chat with another woman. When she looks back, Tea Cake and Nunkie have disappeared. Janie runs into a row of sugar cane and finds them on the floor struggling. Janie tries to grab Nunkie but she runs off. She asks Tea Cake what he's doing, and Tea Cake describes that Nunkie took his working tickets and he had to struggle with her to get them back. Janie slinks home. Tea Cake follows her home, and Janie slaps him. They fight for a while, shouting and struggling, but then Tea Cake makes love to Janie to reconfirm their love. When they wake up, Janie asks if Tea Cake still loves Nunkie. Tea Cake says he never did love Nunkie. He tells Janie that no one can compare to her. Janie is "something tuh make uh man forgit tuh git old and forgit tuh die." Analysis: It is interesting to try and analyze why Hurston would devote an entire chapter to this incident between Nunkie and Tea Cake. This chapter is not like the other chapters that dwell on black culture and the contrasts of black culture against white culture. Rather, this is a chapter about being a woman, being a wife. Jealousy, is a universal feeling. Janie's fear and anger regarding Tea Cake's possible affair are feelings that every woman past and present can relate to. This chapter is about the universality of the fears of womanhood. "The next morning, Janie asked like a woman, 'You still love ole Nunkie.'" Then later, "She wanted to hear his denial. She wanted to crow over the fallen Nunkie." Here, Hurston emphasizes Janie's position as a woman, not exclusively a black woman. Chapter 16 Summary: The season of bean picking ends and Janie begins to see some things in her community that she had been too busy too notice before. She notices Bahaman drummers and she and Tea Cake spend evenings together enjoying their music. Janie also gets to know Mrs. Turner. Mrs. Turner is a mulatto, her skin is "milky", her nose is "slightly pointed," her lips are thin, her buttocks are small. Mrs. Turner does not understand why Janie associates with black people; she does not understand why she would marry a man as dark as Tea Cake. Mrs. Turner feels that women like herself and Janie that are part white should try to "lighten the race" by only associating and marrying people that have light skin color. Janie laughs at Mrs. Turner's ideas; Janie tells her that Tea Cake is a wonderful man, "He kin take most any lil thing and make summertime out of it when times is dull." Mrs. Turner continues to show her disdain of black people; she does not understand why blacks laugh so much and so loudly. She tells Janie that she thinks the black race is dragging down people like herself: people with mixed racial backgrounds. If the blacks weren't there, white people would embrace the mulattos and include them in their culture. She tells Janie that she never shops at black shops; she thinks that blacks have no business know-how. Then, Mrs. Turner tells Janie that she would be better off married to another mulatto, particularly her brother. Finally, after some time, Mrs. Turner leaves. Janie goes into the kitchen and finds Tea Cake sitting with his head in his hands. Tea Cake overheard the entire conversation. He tells Janie that if Mrs. Turner hates black people so much, she should stay away from him and Janie. He tells Janie that he is going to tell Mrs. Turner's husband to keep Mrs. Turner away from their house. Then one day, Tea Cake runs into Mr. Turner and his son on the street. Tea Cake wanted to instruct Turner to keep Mrs. Turner away from his home, but Mr. Turner was such a weak, vanishing man that Tea Cake realizes Turner would not be able to prevent Mrs. Turner from doing anything. So, Tea Cake tells Janie to snub Mrs. Turner every time she sees her. Unfortunately, Mrs. Turner believed that Janie had the right to snub her because she had Caucasian characteristics. "Anyone who looked more white folkish than herself was better than she was in her criteria, therefore it was right that they should be cruel to her at times, just as she was cruel to those more negroid than herself in direct ratio to their negroness." Because Mrs. Turner had so much to hate, she was constantly frowning. It didn't bother Tea Cake and Janie that much; it just gave them to talk about during the dull summer months on the muck. Sometimes they would make day little trips to the beach to pass the time; but soon enough the summer months were over and droves of people returned to the muck to do the picking. Analysis: Some critics rebuke Hurston for not infusing her literature with protests against racism and hatred. We recognize that this criticism is not at all appropriate when we read chapters like chapter 16. Instead of writing "angry" literature to support black culture, Hurston's Their Eyes is a celebration of black culture, music, oral tradition and way of life. In this chapter, Janie must defend black culture, interestingly, to another black woman. Mrs. Turner is a weak, ugly woman who takes pride only in her white characteristics and finds extreme distaste in her black characteristics. Turner ridicules blacks for laughing too much, for 'whooping and hollering", for wearing bright colors, for being poor, for being black. But Janie defends her black culture through her life-style choice. She marries Tea Cake and comes to the muck to work and live and learn in nothing but overalls and her good spirit. Hurston, like Janie, defends black culture by embracing it. She writes Their Eyes in black folk style: beautiful images and symbols, hyperbole, lyrical language. Unlike her contemporaries who wrote about black rights in "white prose", Hurston supports the language and life of her people by writing in its language. One important contrast to note in this chapter is the "white" perception of God versus the black perception. Mrs. Turner embraces the white perception of a cruel and uncaring God. She thinks, "All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped." Later in the novel, we will be shown a clearer explanation of the traditional black folk perception of God. So far we have not seen God characterized specifically. Death is separated from God for Janie, and thus the cruelty that Mrs. Turner identifies with God would probably not be identified with Janie's God (since He is separated from Death). As the chapters progress, watch carefully how God is personified and try to connect it with the cultural story that Hurston is writing. Chapter 17 Summary: Many people return to live on the muck; some of the people are familiar from last year and some people were brand new. Mrs. Turner brings her brother to town to introduce him to Janie. Tea Cake whips Janie to show Mrs. Turner's brother that Tea Cake had full control over Janie. "Being able to whip her reassured him in posession. No brutal beating at all. He just slapped her around a bit to show he was boss. Everybody talked about it next day in the fields. It aroused a sort of envy in both men and women." Other men are envious of Tea Cake's ability to hit Janie and leave marks on her skin. Because she is a mulatto, her skin is fairer than other blacks and thus her bruises are much more obvious. Tea Cake brags to the other men in the fields that he took Janie away from a "big fine house." He tells them that Janie is wherever he wants to be. Tea Cake tells Sop-de-Bottom that Mrs. Turner hates blacks. Sop-de-Bottom tells Tea Cake that he thinks they should throw rocks on her restaurant. Tea Cake agrees that they must find a way to drive her out of the city. Saturday afternoon rolls around and everyone gets paid and drunk. Everyone goes to Mrs. Turner's restaurant telling her that she has the best beef stew in town. When the waitress came to bring Coodemay's dinner to him, Coodemay refuses to take it off the table. Instead, he tells the waitress to stand there with the food on the tray and allow him to eat off it. He says that this is fair since the restaurant has run out of chairs and it would be very difficult to eat without having the waitress hold his plate. Then, Coodemay tries to take Sop-de-Bottom's chair. They begin fighting. Tea Cake "valiantly" steps into the fight on Mrs. Turner's behalf saying that "she is too nice a woman" to have people in her restaurant destroying the place. Then Tea Cake begins throwing plates at his friends; his friends, too, start to thrash the restaurant in their brawl. Once the restaurant is thoroughly destroyed, the men cheerfully stop fighting, apologize to each other and go off to another bar. Mrs. Turner's restaurant is destroyed and her hand is badly injured. She yells at her cowardly husband for not standing up to the men. Mr. Turner sits calmly in his chair, smoking a pipe. Mrs. Turner begins hitting him, exclaiming that had her son and brother been in the restaurant during the fight, they would have stopped the ruckus. What she does not know is that her brother and son had in fact been at the restaurant. When they saw there was trouble, they ran away to Palm Beach. Mrs. Turner decides to leave the 'Glades and go to Miami "where people are civilized." Monday morning, Sterrett and Coodemay come to the restaurant to apologize to Mrs. Turner. They give her five dollars each. Analysis: This chapter is very much about Tea Cake and the "black" perspective. In the previous chapter, Hurston exalted the black spirit, culture and way of life. In this chapter she explores subtly some of the more questionable actions of her people. The chapter begins with a lot of understatement. Hurston explains in brief emotionless fashion the brutality with which Tea Cake beats Janie. He beats her in order to show another man his power. Sadly and ironically, there is no mention of any discussion between Tea Cake and Turner's brother. Tea Cake, in some twisted rationalization, beats Janie in order to convince other men that he controls her. Hurston's understatement of this terrible logic is designed to make us feel angry and upset about Janie's predicament as a woman in black society. Although she has been liberated through Tea Cake by her guided induction into real black society and her cultural roots, she is still oppressed as a woman in black society. Although she is not a mule (as she was when she was Logan's wife) or a glittery showpiece (as she was with Joe Starks) she is still oppressed and beaten. In a twisted and complex way, the other men admire how dark and painful her bruises look against her fair skin. Possibly this admiration of her fair flesh in pain is symbolic of their anger towards the white race in general: Tea Cake retaliates against Mrs. Turner's racism by injuring a woman as white as she is, his own wife Janie. Strangely, too, Janie's own voice is not heard at all in this chapter. Perhaps, through the omission of Janie's voice, Hurston is commenting about the black woma...