Tea Cake Flaws

What happens when the man of your dreams turns out to be flawed? Vergible “Tea Cake” Woods, from Their Eyes Were Watching God, may seem appealing to Janie Crawford after her previous failed marriages, but he is far from perfect. Janie’s true love possesses quite a few vices, some of which cause her great distress. Despite his failings, Tea Cake represents a model husband in the eyes of Janie. Although Tea Cake gambles, forces his wife to work in the fields, and drags her into risky situations, Janie loves him nonetheless because he treats her as an equal. By “[portraying] a deeply flawed romantic relationship” (Gallon), Zora Neale Hurston expresses that the definition of love depends on one’s values.

To start with, Tea Cake exhibits spending

and gambling problems, but Janie accepts them because he spends and gambles with his wife’s interests in mind. Not long after their marriage, “Tea Cake takes and spends Janie’s money without her permission” (Gallon), and he is quite a frivolous spender. Upon finding that Janie had two hundred dollars on her person, Tea Cake grows excited “and pretty soon he [makes] up his mind to spend some of it” (Huston 122). Using the money, he throws an extravagant party, neglecting to bring his wife along or even tell her where he is (Hurston 118-224). When he returns, Tea Cake promises Janie he will “ ‘ win it all back and mo’ ”(Hurston 125) by gambling, and even though the thought is nice, Tea Cake is still taking an unnecessary risk. After all, earning the money back with honest work would achieve the same thing. Janie’s husband doesn’t come back until the next morning, after nearly getting killed and worrying his wife sick (Huston 125-128).
In spite of her husband’s mistakes with money, Janie still respects him.

She refuses to let his gambling habit get in the way of her love of him, deciding “it [is] part of him, so it [is] all right” (Hurston 125). Almost every cent he spends is for Janie, from the new car he buys her before their wedding (Hurston 108) to the reckless wagers he makes to fulfill his promise to her (Hurston 125-128). No doubt Janie would prefer Tea Cake to a spendthrift who thinks only of himself. What matters more to Janie is the fact that her husband has indeed come back to her, and has made sure to tell her where he has been. “ ‘Don’t need tuh ast me where Ah been all dis time,’ ” declares Tea Cake, “ ‘cause it’s mah all day job tuh tell yuh’ ” (Hurston 121). Once he learns how much his caper has upset his wife, Tea Cake tries to change his ways, insisting he will never lay a finger on her money again (Hurston 120- 128). “ ‘From now on,’ ” he says, “‘you goingtuh eat whatever mah money can buy yuh and wear de same’ ” (Hurston 128). Realizing that Janie does not like being left out from whatever her husband is doing, no matter how dangerous, Tea Cake resolves to keep his wife involved (Hurston

120-128).
In the Everglades, Tea Cake asks his wife to toil away picking beans, and while this treatment may at first seem cruel, it actually pleases Janie and gives her a sense of freedom.

Unable to stand being separated from his wife for the entire work day, Tea Cake tells his wife, “ ‘You betta come git uh job uh work out dere lak de rest uh de women’ ” (Hurston 133). “At first this sounds similar to what happened to Janie when she was married to Logan Killicks,” (Thomas), who forced his wife to do unpleasant farm chores so he could avoid having to do them (Hurston 26-32). Jody Starks, too, treated her as inferior, assigning his wife the burden of “ ‘[helping] out in de store and… [looking] after things whilst [Jody drummed] up things otherwise’ ” (Hurston 43). While basking in the adulation of his role as mayor, “Joe would hustle [Janie] off inside the store to sell something” (Hurston 54). Therefore, why is Tea Cake’s treatment of her any

different?
The difference between Tea Cake and Janie’s previous husbands is that he views her as an equal. Tea Cake does not ask her to pick beans because he considers it his wife’s job, but because he misses her when he spends the day away from her and hopes they will both be happier if they work side-by-side (Hurston 133). Likewise, Janie does not go to pick beans because she thinks of it as her duty as wife; “she chooses to live a humble life with Tea Cake” (Roberts). Rather than passing the labor to his wife as if she were a mule, as Logan did, Tea Cake “instead works right beside her” (Thomas), and “the romping and playing [Janie and Tea Cake] carry on behind the boss’s back” (Hurston 133) make it an enjoyable experience for her. With Tea Cake, Janie is free to participate in the things men normally do. In fact, her husband declares, “ ‘Janie is wherever Ah wants to be. Dat’s de kind uh wife she is and Ah love her for it’ ” (Hurston 148). Janie’s husband gives her the freedom to become whoever she wants to be, and Janie discovers that her true self wants to be out in the Everglades, picking beans with her husband and neighbors. Looking back on her previous life without any nostalgia, Janie thinks, rather defiantly, “What if Eatonville could see her now in her blue denim overalls and heavy shoes?” (Hurston 134)
And of course, Tea Cake coaxes Janie to stay in the Everglades even though a hurricane is coming, but even as a disaster strikes, she does not hold it against him. Despite all the signs of an approaching cyclone – Native Americans migrating, animals fleeing, and sensible men from the Everglades moving somewhere safer, Tea Cake insists he and his wife stay at home (Hurston 154-156). In fact, he even hosts a gathering and stays up late playing cards, as if to spite the storm coming (Hurston 156-159). But when Janie and Tea Cake discover how rash it was of them to ignore the hurricane warning, Janie does not “ ‘git mad at [him] for dragging [her] there’ ” (Hurston 159), instead admitting that she is just glad they spent as much time together as they did. In the aftermath of the natural disaster, Tea Cake guesses that Janie “never ‘spected tuh come tuh dis when [she] took up wid [him]’ ” (Hurston 167), to which Janie responds, “ ‘You come ‘long and made somethin’ outa me. So Ah’m thankful fuh anything we come through together’ ” (Hurston 167).
The tragic ending of the couple’s relationship “does not, of course, undermine its ability to speak to romantic love” (Gallon). As a direct result of protecting his wife in the hurricane, Tea Cake catches a fatal case of rabies (Hurston 165-184), and in his feverish state he loses control and tries to kill his wife. But in spite of all this, Janie refuses to say anything bad about her husband. Even after Tea Cake attempts to shoot her, Janie “[thanks] him wordlessly for giving her the chance for loving service” (Hurston 184) and defends him in the trial, saying “she could never shoot Tea Cake out of malice” (Hurston 187). Since Tea Cake faced a rabid dog to save Janie’s life, his sacrifice “serves as some atonement for many of his sins” (Edwidge xiv). When she comes back to Eatonville, “having toiled in the bean fields, survived a hurricane, and lost the man she loved” (Edwidge ix-x), Janie “is far from a broken woman” (Gallon), being devastated but not defeated. If only for a couple of years, Janie has experienced true love, and this leaves her satisfied (Hurston 94-193).
Judging by all the risks he chooses to take, Janie’s husband likes to live in the moment, striving to enjoy himself now without caring what the future will bring. This carpe diem attitude that is the cause of many of Tea Cake’s vices does not bother Janie; in fact, she shares this view and enjoys living life to the fullest alongside her husband. Regardless of his habit of gambling, his insistence that Janie works in the fields, and the way he pulls her into danger, Tea Cake does not disappoint Janie. Rather, the characteristics that make Tea Cake human are good enough for her. Hurston is suggesting that true love is not flawless, and there is no universal standard for love. Instead, according to Janie, “ ‘Love is lak de sea… [, which] takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore’ ” (Hurston 191). And it is clear that Tea Cake Woods matches Janie’s personal definition of love.