Category Archives: Hurston

Dialect in Rhys and Hurston

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Zora Neale Hurston is know for her intriguing dialogue choice in Their Eyes Were Watching God. She contrasts beautiful and high caliber “proper” English with a 1920s Black dialect. This striking verbal contrast helped to propel her novel into literary acclaim. By proving that she could access and craft the language of white publishers she was able to draw them into reading a story of and about Black people. This striking contrast helped to illuminate the racist disparities felt between white America and Black.

Rhys uses a similar concept in “Let Them Call It Jazz”. The entire story is written in working class British English. However, her other stories are all written in “proper” English. This distinction feels so slight that your eyes almost glance over it on the first page. It is as if there were just a few typos before you begin to see the pattern of grammar. This dialect helps the reader to take on the identity of the speaker and begin to see how the world seems constantly stacked against her.

Both Rhys and Hurston use their natural dialects compared to “proper” English to help manifest the difficulties of their characters and themselves for the reader. While Rhys uses slight verb changes, and Hurston transliterates a completely different dialect, these points of language work to internalize the reality of time and oppression by creating distance between the characters and those in power, meanwhile drawing the reader into these different experiences in a unique and compelling way.

Mrs. Turner’s Role

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It has been interesting to see how different authors treat racism and their portrayal of colorism. As I read Mrs. Turner’s character description, I could not help but notice the similarities between her and Emma Lou in The Blacker the Berry. Although they have different perspectives, since Emma Lou actually has a darker complexion and experiences the world through this lens, she still has a preference for those with lighter skin tones than her own; Mrs. Turner, similarly finds people of darker complexions less competent and less worthy. The narrator discusses Mrs. Turner’s preferences, stating, “Janie’s coffee-and-cream complexion and her luxurious hair made Mrs. Turner forgive her for wearing overalls like the other women who work the field. She didn’t forgive her for marrying a man as dark as Tea Cake, but she felt she could remedy that” (164), revealing Turner’s thought process regarding those who should ascend and be representative of Blacks. Even though our narrator attempts to be neutral, the tone within the passage reveals the bias against Mrs. Turner’s attitude, criticizing her disposition to allow those with a lighter complexion to represent Black people. Mrs. Turner caps it off by declaring, “We oughta lighten up de race” (164) which seems to be the recurring theme in both the novels discussed.

Since Turner is not a main character, though, we simply get a brief glimpse to how Hurston feels on the subject of colorism, in comparison to The Blacker The Berry. In Their Eyes Were Watching God we are not intended to be sympathetic to Mrs. Turner especially since she will be punished. The poetic justice served to Mrs. Turner shows Hurston’s critique of those who follow colorism and what it does to families/communities. Whereas with Emma Lou, the same portrayal becomes less straight forward as she comes into her own, finally accepting what she cannot change. Even then though, both these characters were punished for the choices they made based on “whiter is better”. The development of Mrs. Turner shows that colorism was present in the depths of black society and brings disgrace to those who follow those norms set by the ruling class.

Interplay of dialect and descriptive prose

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As I read Hurston for this time, as with the short story of hers that we read, the novel’s parallel regional dialect and more formal descriptive prose struck me. It occurred to me that reading these two tones of language alongside each other is like listening to a symphony: first, you might hear the more expressive, upbeat, jolty part of the music, and then it slows to a flowing, more pensive section that somehow seems to explain or contextualize the first. For example, Janie’s utterance to her grandmother that “‘Ah wants things sweet wid mah marriage lak when you sit under a pear tree and think. Ah…'” is very evocative of her sense of mourning in and of itself (24). However, this feeling of mourning and disappointment is enriched by the text that follows shortly after, which I find absolutely transcendent:

“She knew things that nobody had ever told her. For instance, the words of the trees and the wind….She knew the world was a stallion rolling in the blue pasture of ether. She knew that God tore down the old world every evening and built a new one by sun-up. It was wonderful to see it take form with the sun and emerge from the gray dust of its making….She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman” (25).

Janie “knew” all of the above, but she couldn’t say it all to her grandmother; neither would her grandmother want to hear it, nor might Janie be able to communicate this newly acquired wisdom to anyone other than herself. I love the way Hurston lets us into Janie’s conscience here, without necessarily breaking down that divide that still exists for her between her inner self and the characters around her.

Becoming a Woman

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In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston embodies the modernist idea of the “new woman” in the character of Janie Crawford. Even in the first few chapters, we sense that Janie is a woman who is inclined to do what she wants and for her own pleasure. Although her two marriages in the first six chapters are ultimately failures, they act more as stepping-stones for Janie to discover herself: “She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman” (25). Hurston suggests that Janie is learning about herself, learning what she does and does not like, and in that process, she is becoming an independent woman.

Nonetheless, Janie struggles between what she wants and what society expects from a woman. She hates when Joe Starks bosses her around, but she also feels the need to please him and obey him because that is what is expected of a wife:

“Janie made her face laugh after a short pause, but it wasn’t too easy. She had never thought of making a speech, but didn’t know if she cared to make one at all. It must have been the way Joe spoke out without giving her a chance to say anything one way or another that took the bloom off of things. But anyway, she went down the road behind him that night feeling cold.” (43)

Janie’s struggle is reminiscent of Larsen’s Helga in Quicksand: both characters desire something, whether it is sex or independence, but the internalized rules of society prevent either from immediately achieving it. However, Janie’s internal monologue is much more reflective than Helga’s, and we sense that she has the potential to truly become that “new woman.”