Response to "Between Laughter and Tears"
In Richard Wright's response to Their Eyes Were Watching God, he criticizes Hurston's characterizations of black people, and her lack of an explicit political message. He aligns himself with the message of "To the Pale Poets" and accuses Hurston of "having no desire move in the direction of serious fiction." In doing so, he seems to have totally missed what's so important about the novel.
Strong and independent female black characters were pretty much unheard of up until this novel was written. While Janie was not always depicted in the most progressive way by Hurston, and she spent most of the book being defined by men, her character also showed strength and, by the end of the book, was totally independent of men. The fact that Eatonville has no white people in it also allows for Hurston to explore what a woman's life experience could resemble, instead of allowing her to be grouped with men of the same race who don't have the same experience. The theme, the message, the thought (all things he said the novel lacked) come from a woman's journey as a woman in America.
Wright's own literary works have revealed that he does not concern himself with women's issues. In Native Son, female characters were one-dimensional, defined by their relationships with men, and dependent on those men. They have no agency and their most important contributions to the development of the novel as a whole come from men doing things to them, not their own action. The lack of intersectionality in his politics lead him to miss the important themes of the novel, and caused his patronizing claim that it was not "serious fiction". In his assertion that Janie's journey through the novel should address race in someway, Wright ignores the fact that Janie is more than just a black person, but also a woman.
I like this idea a lot! Since so much of the book occurs in Eatonville and the Muck (two majority-black places) and barely any meaningful interactions with white people, the book becomes less about her race and more about her gender. It still matters, of course, but I think Hurston was trying to explore the trajectory of a woman who is black, Southern, not far removed from slavery, and oppressed in many other ways-- but a woman above all else. This is what makes her "pale" in Wright's eyes: the focus on "the woman problem" and not "the race problem," so to speak. I also like your point about one-dimensional women. You might check out Leslie's blog on the gender reversal in terms of the side characters' "purpose."
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with this post! Compared to the first two books, "Their Eyes Were Watching God" is from a completely different realm and I think it's safe to say that it was drastically different from most 20th century African-American novels. What is interesting is that Hurston doesn't seem to differentiate between black and white women's issues (as Janie wishes in the courtroom to be judged by the white women instead of men.) To me, it looks as if Hurston and Wright's novel both don't acknowledge the intersectionality between race and gender issues.
ReplyDeleteNice post! I agree that Wright totally misses that Hurston pretty radically rejects women's roles. I wrote my essay about how Hurston even acknowledges within the novel that Janie's story has the effect of a protest by showing how Pheoby is moved to change her own life after hearing the story.
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