Sweat Analysis In the short story Sweat by Zora Hurston, portrays a woman caught in a bad relationship. This took place in the 1920’s in a Florida community. This community was mainly African American. The protagonist is a young female clothes washer named Delia. Her husband the antagonist in the story named Sykes. Sykes is seen as a no good dead beat. This story portrays the theme of how much power men had over women and the double standard. The way the community was set up was very close. Where it seemed like everyone watch outed for the better good of thy neighbor. And everyone in the community knows that Sykes cheats on Delia and dehumanizes her at times. Yet, there is this thing about minding someone business. That what happens in the home stays between the people who live there. Sykes would go …show more content…
out his way to flaunt his mistress in front of Delia. I felt that Delia didn’t have the power to get a divorce but it was also frowned upon in this time to get one. The community supported Delia but there is nothing they could do if it stayed inside the home. So Sykes gets to sleep around and Delia just has to sit there and watch. Sykes is going out his way to force Delia out of the house.
By messing with her work and her emotions. He would go and dirty up her clean clothes she just washed. Sykes wants Delia out so his mistress Bertha and he could live there. But if Delia where to go out and do the same thing it would be considered wrong and she be more of and outcast to the community than Sykes. Along with being called a slut and whore in public. During this period if Sykes could make Delia get a divorce she be the bad person. In the 1920s you one chance at getting married. The only way to re-marry if your spouse died. (And you had nothing to do with it.) That’s a moral issue that anything else, because if you wanted to re-marry and moved to a different town doubt anyone would be able to look it up easily. And no matter how bad Sykes got his word meant more than Delia’s. Most women would have control over the house as a gender role role in the south Delia didn’t get that. She got a snake thrown into the house by Sykes. His attempt to scare her out the house. His plan back fires and the snakes bites him. Delia stands there as she watch’s Sykes
die. In this story and in time you can see that socially women were inferior to men. That even today most people don’t like or won’t intervene in a bad situation inside someone else’s home. That this was a close community that knew what Sykes was doing, but decided to turn a blind eye. I guess ignorance is bliss, even if you force yourself not to see it. Along with the setting because in the south were they are not in as fast of a progressive motion like the north women rights weren’t on the upward lift. After reading this story it the themes of Gender power and double standards are prominently seen here.
The black women’s interaction with her oppressive environment during Revolutionary period or the antebellum America was the only way of her survival. Playing her role, and being part of her community that is not always pleasant takes a lot of courage, and optimism for better tomorrow. The autonomy of a slave women still existed even if most of her natural rights were taken. As opposed to her counterparts
The Gilded Six-Bits tells the story of a black family dealing with social restrictions and expectations during the 1930s. The story begins with a picturesque snapshot of a newlywed couple in Eatonsville, the first black integrated community in the United States. Zora Hurston in The Gilded Six Bits demonstrates gender stereotypes through a newlywed couple’s dialogue in the early 1900s. The quintessential women in American society was still the bosomy beautiful homemaker with a penchant for cooking and cleaning. The husband was usually placed on a pedestal as the breadwinner and had the more power in the household and in their marriage. The typical woman during the 1930s was expected to cook, clean, and take care of the household chores.
In “Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston, the protagonist Delia is “double-colonized,” living in a society where African Americans are oppressed by whites, while her husband Sykes is also oppressing her. Delia is living in Florida in the early 20th century, when Jim Crow laws kept the black community segregated and oppressed. Delia washed clothes for the wealthier white community to make her living. She even had to work on Sunday night just to get all the washing done every week. Sykes tells Delia “Ah done tole you time and again to keep them white folks’ clothes outa dis house” (Hurston 137). He then goes on to call Delia a hypocrite for praying at church then coming home and doing laundry for white people, before stomping on the whitest pile of clothing. Hurston illustrates the hatred that manifests from racial oppression. Delia tells Sykes “Ah been married to you fur fifteen years, and Ah been takin’ in washin’ fur fifteen years. Sweat, sweat, sweat! Work and sweat, cry and sweat, pray and sweat!” (137). This epitomizes Delia’s existence; she works constantly,
In Zora Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God” and “Sweat,” Hurston uses the characters Janie Crawford and Delia Jones to symbolize African-American women as the mules of the world and their only alternative were through their words, in order to illustrate the conditions women suffered and the actions they had to take to maintain or establish their self-esteem.
This is reflected in the literature of the African-American as a special bond of love and loyalty to the mother figure. Just as the role of motherhood in African-American culture is magnified and elevated, so is the role of the wife. The literature reflects this by showing the African-American man struggling to make a living for himself and his family with his wife either being emotionally or physically submissive. Understanding the role of women in the African-American community starts by examining the roles of women in African-American literature. Because literature is a reflection of the community from which it comes, the portrayal of women in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) and James Baldwin's Go Tell it on the Mountain (1952) is consistent with the roles mentioned above.
A recurring theme in, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, is Harriet Jacobs's reflections on what slavery meant to her as well as all women in bondage. Continuously, Jacobs expresses her deep hatred of slavery, and all of its implications. She dreads such an institution so much that she sometimes regards death as a better alternative than a life in bondage. For Harriet, slavery was different than many African Americans. She did not spend her life harvesting cotton on a large plantation. She was not flogged and beaten regularly like many slaves. She was not actively kept from illiteracy. Actually, Harriet always was treated relatively well. She performed most of her work inside and was rarely ever punished, at the request of her licentious master. Furthermore, she was taught to read and sew, and to perform other tasks associated with a ?ladies? work. Outwardly, it appeared that Harriet had it pretty good, in light of what many slaves had succumbed to. However, Ironically Harriet believes these fortunes were actually her curse. The fact that she was well kept and light skinned as well as being attractive lead to her victimization as a sexual object. Consequently, Harriet became a prospective concubine for Dr. Norcom. She points out that life under slavery was as bad as any slave could hope for. Harriet talks about her life as slave by saying, ?You never knew what it is to be a slave; to be entirely unprotected by law or custom; to have the laws reduce you to the condition of chattel, entirely subject to the will of another.? (Jacobs p. 55).
In the beginning, Delia is a meek, quiet wife who takes whatever her abusive husband, Sykes, throws at her. Despite Delia begging Sykes to stop tormenting her with her worst fear, snakes, Sykes refuses and instead says “Ah don’t keer how bad Ah skeer you.” By listening to the men gossip on the porch, the audience learns that Delia has been putting up with Sykes’ abuse for a long time, he’s even started cheating on her with another woman. At this point in the story, Delia is innocent because she still hopes to make her marriage work and even hopes that Sykes will one day value the work she’s invested into their life together, as she’s the sole provider. Her being loyal to Sykes despite years of ridicule is a very important detail because it shows Delia’s hope and perseverance. The first time the audience begins to see Delia’s innocence fade is when she tells Sykes she’s moved her church membership to Woodbridge. After Sykes brings a rattlesnake to the village, Delia hates him so much that it’s a chore to even see him. She also tells him that he can lay around with his mistress, Bertha, all he wants, but he has to get his things and leave her home. Delia no longer considers the house their home, now it’s only hers and she wants nothing to do with Sykes. This shows Delia losing her innocence because she begins to see Sykes for what he is; not a tough husband,
This paper examines the drastic differences in literary themes and styles of Richard Wright and Zora Neale Hurston, two African--American writers from the early 1900's. The portrayals of African-American women by each author are contrasted based on specific examples from their two most prominent novels, Native Son by Wright, and Their Eyes Were Watching God by Hurston. With the intent to explain this divergence, the autobiographies of both authors (Black Boy and Dust Tracks on a Road) are also analyzed. Particular examples from the lives of each author are cited to demonstrate the contrasting lifestyles and experiences that created these disparities, drawing parallels between the authors’ lives and creative endeavors. It becomes apparent that Wright's traumatic experiences involving females and Hurston's identity as a strong, independent and successful Black artist contributed significantly to the ways in which they chose to depict African-American women and what goals they adhered to in reaching and touching a specific audience with the messages contained in their writing.
Hurston begins the essay in her birth town: Eatonville, Florida; an exclusively Negro town where whites were a rarity, only occasionally passing by as a tourist. Hurston, sitting on her porch imagines it to be a theatre as she narrates her perspective of the passing white people. She finds a thin line separating the spectator from the viewer. Exchanging stances at will and whim. Her front porch becomes a metaphor for a theater seat and the passers
In 1861, Harriet Jacobs published her book “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.” The story is based in Southern United States of America during the time before Jacob escaped from slavery in 1835 (Reilly 649). Jacobs uses the name Linda Brent as a pseudonym (Reilly 649) and describes her experience as a female slave through a first person narration. The purpose of the selections featured in Kevin Reilly's, “Worlds of History,” is to show the victimization and emotional suffering female slaves feel against their white masters vs. the physical pain a male slave endures.
Our society expects women to generally serve men, to please men with their beauty, to be that innocent mind that depends men tremendously depend on, to be the helpmate any men would wish to have, and to be the girly woman we men dream of having. That said, when looking at “Sweat” through the feminist and historical lens, Hurston explains the idea of a sexist society full of men exploiting and breaking down women until they dispose them.
Zora Neale Hurston’s “Sweat” is a distressing tale of human struggle as it relates to women. The story commences with a hardworking black washwoman named Delia contently and peacefully folds laundry in her quiet home. Her placidity doesn’t last long when her abusive husband, Sykes, emerges just in time to put her back in her ill-treated place. Delia has been taken by this abuse for some fifteen years. She has lived with relentless beatings, adultery, even six-foot long venomous snakes put in places she requires to get to. Her husband’s vindictive acts of torment and the way he has selfishly utilized her can only be defined as malignant. In the end of this leaves the hardworking woman no choice but to make the most arduous decision of her life. That is, to either stand up for herself and let her husband expire or to continue to serve as a victim. "Sweat,” reflects the plight of women during the 1920s through 30s, as the African American culture was undergoing a shift in domestic dynamics. In times of slavery, women generally led African American families and assumed the role as the adherent of the family, taking up domestic responsibilities. On the other hand, the males, slaves at the time, were emasculated by their obligations and treatment by white masters. Emancipation and Reconstruction brought change to these dynamics as African American men commenced working at paying jobs and women were abandoned at home. African American women were assimilated only on the most superficial of calibers into a subcategory of human existence defined by gender-predicated discrimination. (Chambliss) In accordance to this story, Delia was the bread victor fortifying herself and Sykes. Zora Neale Hurston’s 1926 “Sweat” demonstrates the vigor as wel...
Zora Neale Hurston’s short story Sweat is a visceral reminder of the acute oppression and sexism women have always faced in American society. The protagonist of the story, Delia, is married to a cruel and angry man named Sykes. Through a depiction of their married life, this short story shows that despite patriarchal oppression, women have exercised their agency and resisted in a myriad of ways. The story begins with Delia, a working Black woman in Florida, who is a white woman. It is a warm spring day and she is sorting and soaking the clothing she washes for the white residents of her town.
In Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, the author subjects the reader to a dystopian slave narrative based on a true story of a woman’s struggle for self-identity, self-preservation and freedom. This non-fictional personal account chronicles the journey of Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897) life of servitude and degradation in the state of North Carolina to the shackle-free promise land of liberty in the North. The reoccurring theme throughout that I strive to exploit is how the women’s sphere, known as the Cult of True Womanhood (Domesticity), is a corrupt concept that is full of white bias and privilege that has been compromised by the harsh oppression of slavery’s racial barrier. Women and the female race are falling for man’s
Alice Walker and Zora Neale Hurston are similar to having the same concept about black women to have a voice. Both are political, controversial, and talented experiencing negative and positive reviews in their own communities. These two influential African-American female authors describe the southern hospitality roots. Hurston was an influential writer in the Harlem Renaissance, who died from mysterious death in the sixties. Walker who is an activist and author in the early seventies confronts sexually progression in the south through the Great Depression period (Howard 200). Their theories point out feminism of encountering survival through fiction stories. As a result, Walker embraced the values of Hurston’s work that allowed a larger