The Element of Confinement by African-American Women Authors

It was and still is very common for African-American authors to write texts that reflect upon each other. In The Signifying Monkey, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. carefully and thoroughly explained the way that authors review the text of authors and make it their own. Similarities between texts help the reader to understand how texts are signified upon each other. African-Americans had to write themselves in to the American literary genre. In the process, they developed a style and a genre of their own.

African-American women had a harder time writing themselves into the literary world. Because they were double minorities, it was often believed that they were incapable of producing quality literary works. Writers like Zora Neale Hurston, Ann Petry, and Alice Walker, however, have proven that women are capable of writing exceptional texts. These writers also shared the common task of showing the strengths as well as the weaknesses of African-American women through the characters portrayed in their texts. Zora Neale Hurston used Jamie Crawford in Their Eyes were Watching God, Ann Petry used Lutie Johnson in The Street, and Alice Walker used Miss Celie and Sophia in The Color Purple. Each of these women sought some form of freedom and each woman reached their own level of freeness, although they achieved it in their own ways.

Their Eyes were Watching God is the story of Jamie Crawford and it is set in Eatonville, FL during the early twentieth century. Hurston used the trope of the speakerly text as it is described in The Signifying Monkey. Gates claims that the speakerly text "is the text whose rhetorical strategy is designed to represent an oral literary tradition designed to 'emulate the phonetic, grammatical, and lexical patterns of actual speech and produce the illusion of oral narration.'" In other words, Hurston used Jamie to tell a story within the story. She also used dialect as a pattern in order to create a more realistic story and to give the reader some insight into who the characters were.

The story begins with the whole town of Eatonville discussing Jamie's return after running off with a young man named Tea Cake. They assumed that Tea Cake must have used her for her money and left her once it was all gone. The only person who genuinely cared about Jamie was her friend Phoeby Watson. Phoeby visits Jamie at her home and Jamie begins to reflect upon her childhood.

Jamie begins to tell the story of how she grew up with her grandmother working in the home of white people. Jamie talked about how she knew at a young age that her skin was darker than the other children and she was therefore different. Her grandmother wanted her to marry an older man named Logan Killicks who could provide for her financially. Jamie did not feel that it would be proper for her to marry Logan because she did not love him. Nevertheless, she married him to make her grandmother happy.

While walking one day, Jamie met a man named Joe Starks. Joe was a man who had big dreams and ambitions and Jamie found that appealing. Joe's wish was to become the first mayor of the new black settlement that would be called Eatonville. Jamie was intrigued and decided to leave with Joe so that they would be married. After many years of marriage and wealth, Jamie still had not discovered the love that she so longed for when she chose to marry Joe. There relationship eventually went sour and Joe did not talk to Jamie. While Joe was on his death bed, Jamie approached him for the first time and expressed her disgust with him and the way he had put her on the pedestal as the perfect wife when she just wanted to be a regular person. Joe simply turned away and died.

Although many people in Eatonville had mourned the death of Joe Starks, Janie felt like she had been freed from a burden. Although she was wealthy from the store that her husband had left her, she continued to run the store. One night while the town's people were away at a ball game, a man named Tea Cake came to the store and sat and spoke with Janie. It was the first time that Janie felt like a real person. He played checkers with her. Janie was very cautious about her dealings with Tea Cake because he was obviously much younger than her. Tea Cake knew that Janie was uncomfortable with their age difference, but that did not prevent him from confessing his love for her. They got married and Tea Cake showed Janie a life unlike anything that she had every dreamed of.

Tea Cake and Janie move to a place referred to as "the muck" and spend every day picking green beans and having a good time. Although Janie was a very wealthy woman, Tea Cake never wanted to use any of Janie's money. He felt that it was his place as the man to care for her. Tea Cake made a living through gambling. He made her happy and their relationship was wonderful until one of Janie's friends, who happened to be mulatto, tried to hook Janie up with her brother. This friend felt that Tea Cake was not good enough for Janie because of his dark skin.

A hurricane came and threatened "the muck," but Tea Cake refused to leave. When the waters become life threatening, Tea Cake and Janie flee to try to find shelter from the storm. While traveling, Janie is almost bitten by a mad dog, but Tea Cake put himself in front of Janie to save her. They go to Palm Springs until Tea Cake decided to go back to "the muck." He becomes very ill and begins not trusting Janie. Janie was worried about what was going on with Tea Cake and sought a doctor. The doctor told Janie that Tea Cake had rabies an that it was too late for him to be saved. Tea Cake eventually completely turned against her and tried to kill her. The only way that she could save herself from him was to take his life. She was tried by an all white jury and found not guilty.

At this point, the story was brought back to the focus of Eatonville and Phoeby exclaimed that she was happy that Janie was able to follow her heart despite what people thought she should have done. Although things were not perfect for Janie, she was content with the way her life had gone because she had achieved true love and happiness which people during that time rarely did.

One of the major issues of this story is confinement. Janie was confined in her lifestyle for many years. She was first confined because her grandmother wanted her to marry an older man who she had no emotions for. She thought that she was going to free herself through a life with Joe Starks, but she was then confined to the pedestal he put her on because she was a mayor's wife. She only found true freedom through her life with Tea Cake and that freedom was short lived. Although Tea Cake was dead, Janie was happy just to have had the experience to be with him and live life in a happy and