Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God and Toni Morrison's Sula: A Comparison
Author(s): Diane Matza
Source: MELUS, Vol. 12, No. 3, Ethnic Women Writers IV (Autumn, 1985), pp. 43-54
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature
of the United States (MELUS)
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/467120 .
Accessed: 18/04/2013 08:53
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
.
Oxford University Press and The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States
(MELUS) are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to MELUS.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 160.94.45.156 on Thu, 18 Apr 2013 08:53:43 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were
Watching God and Toni Morrison's Sula:
A Comparison
Diane Matza
In the Spring of 1981, John Irving wrote a review full of praise for Toni
Morrison's latest novel, Tar Baby. The piece is perceptive, but it is also
remarkable for its implicit assumption that Morrison is working out of a
tradition that has little to do with other Afro-American literature. Irving
does seem interested in connecting Morrison to some tradition, but the
tradition he chooses is that of the 19th century novel:
The more ambitious a novelist is, the more willing he is to elevate his
characters to the level of myth - to give their births, their relationships,
their deaths, even their names, the resonance of legend..
.
The 19th
century novel is rich with such risk, such mischief.
Toni Morrison seems to be returning such risk and mischief to the contemporary American novel.1
The comparison is certainly a useful one, and perhaps I would not have
been struck by it were it not for Irving's other remarks:
'Tar Baby' is, of course, a black novel, a novel deeply perceptive of the
black's desire to create a mythology of his own to replace the stereotypes
and myths the white man has constructed for him. .. . Yet Toni Morrison's
greatest accomplishment is that she has raised her novel above the social
realism that too many black novels and women's novels are trapped in. She
has succeeded in writing about race and women symbolically.2
Irving seems to suggest that among Black writers Morrison is doing
something new; yet we have only to look to the Harlem Renaissance to
find another Black woman writer, Zora Neale Hurston, also writing a
novel above social realism and "writing about race and women symbolically." Both writers share an interest in women, what they are, what
they can be, and what they need; and in the role of the community as a
moral evaluator. It is the conflict between the individual's desire to
explore herself and the community's need to stifle this to achieve order
and stability that I emphasize in this paper.
MELUS, Volume 12, No. 3, Fall 1985.
43
This content downloaded from 160.94.45.156 on Thu, 18 Apr 2013 08:53:43 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
44
DIANE MATZA
In two short novels, Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison have
sensitively examined a full range of women's emotions and needs.
Portrayed in Sula and in TheirEyes WereWatchingGodare women who
fear for their children and grandchildren, women who need strong
friendships with other women, women who explore relationships with
men, and women who are determined to seize whatever personal freedom and satisfaction they can.
The apprehensive Nanny, in TheirEyes WereWatchingGod, and Helene, in Sula, are motivated as much by fear as by love in their efforts to
protect, and actually stifle, the young women in their care. Nanny is an
interesting and courageous woman who, despite an early and unconventional decision not to take a husband and a dream "to preach a great
sermon about colored women sittin' on high" that ended sadly because
"they wasn't no pulpit for [her]," tries to make certain that her granddaughter Janie will have only dreams.3 When Janie indulges her curiosity and young passion by kissing Johnnie Tayler, Nanny believes Janie is
headed for the anguish of an illegitimate pregnancy if such indulgence is
allowed to go any further. To save Janie, Nanny marries her off to the
much older and unappealing Logan Killicks, effectively restricting Janie's expectations and making her face a bleak and unpromising future.
Similarly, Helene, obsessed by her own mother's life as a prostitute, is
overjoyed that her daughter Nel isn't beautiful and drives her daughter's imagination underground."4 Unlike Janie, whose spirit never dies,
Nel succumbs to her parents' and her community's influence and comes
to have a "tiny life" (p. 141).
Forcefully maintaining that their own experiences are the best foundation for proper child-rearing, and knowing the world can be a dangerous
place for women, especially Black women, Helene and Nanny try to
keep their charges as far from the world as possible. It is interesting that
both novels open with descriptions of Helene's and Nanny's pasts and
of how their experience of the world determines their behavior toward
their young female charges. As we come to understand their fears and
pain we are implicitly made aware of a legion of Blackwomen who have
marched through American history with little control over their own
lives as slaves, maids, mistresses, whores, nannies for white children,
mothers struggling to raise their own offspring, light-skinned beauties
hoping to pass or be outcast by the community, and so on. It is very easy
to see why Helene and Nanny will want to use the little power and
control they do have to stave off dangers possible for the younger
women they love. It matters not that Janie's and Nel's lives will be
restricted; at least - and at best, Helene and Nanny think - they will be
safe.
This content downloaded from 160.94.45.156 on Thu, 18 Apr 2013 08:53:43 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
HURSTONAND MORRISON
45
Although it is early in the novels that Nanny dies and Helene fades
from the scene, their voices and beliefs echo throughout the novels in
the censure and mores of the communities and in the inner tensions felt
by Sula, Janie and Nel. It is because Nanny cannot fully enclose Janie's
spirit, and Helene cannot completely isolate Nel that there must be some
tension between the glittery world of possibility outside and the restrictions the girls face in their homes, and between what the girls want and
the limitations the world itself imposes.
As very young girls both Nel and Sula realize that being "neither
white nor male ... all freedom and triumph were forbidden to them"
(p. 44). Janie realizes this too in her despairing claim, "the nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see" (p. 29). The yearning for
independence and the desire to live as one would like die in Nel, but
they live with intensity in Janie and in Sula whose own family restricts
her little. Janie's pursuit of a life of her own is clearly the most successful, for though she does not meet Teacake, the man who loves her as an
equal, until she is forty, and he dies soon after, she returns home radiant
for having explored herself in relation to the world and a man she loved.
TheirEyesWereWatchingGodfollows Janie's journey from restriction to
fulfillment. The journey commands our attention because from the beginning of the novel, Janie impresses us as a person who feels there is
something for her to meet in the world. She cannot articulate what
awaits her, but the essence of her yearnings and unformed passion are
wonderfully conveyed through an extensive use of nature imagery. For
example, when "spring had stirred her" at age sixteen, she is a flower
with "glossy leaves and bursting buds" (pp. 23, 25). These vibrant
images contrast dramatically with Janie's thought that "the vision of
Logan Killicks was desecrating the pear tree" (p. 28). And her vision
proves to be prophetic, for none of the sweetness and soft envelopment
she wants from marriage come to her with Logan, who wants a workmate more than he wants a partner in an emotional and sensual life.
Janie comes to understand that she can't share any of her vitality with
Logan because she would get nothing in return. Then she meets Joe.
Janie's talent for discerning someone's ability to respond to her needs
has grown by this time, and at first "Janie pulled back a long time
because he [Joe]did not represent sunup and pollen and blooming trees,
but he spoke for the far horizon. He spoke for change and chance" (p.
50). Although Joe is not Janie's ideal mate, she lets herself dream that
"From now on until death she was going to have flower dust and
springtime sprinkled over everything. A bee for her bloom" (p. 54).
Hurston continues to use these images of nature and fertility as she
delineates Janie's relationships with men, and the issues of sex, love,
This content downloaded from 160.94.45.156 on Thu, 18 Apr 2013 08:53:43 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
DIANE MATZA
46
self-fulfillment, and freedom that are most important for Janie.
Unhappily, Janie's dream must die again because Joe is another man
who never thinks about Janie's desires. He wants her to fulfill his own
needs and isn't willing to give her any room of her own to grow in. A
jealous man, he tells her all she must do is mind him. In exchange, he
heaps honor upon her, but since this means she can't participate in the
best things in their lives - the telling of tales and the comic banter of the
men on the store porch - honor becomes another restriction: "bed is no
longer a daisy field" and "she wasn't petal-open anymore with him" (p.
111). The fading of the flower as a symbol of the marriage is also the
death of Janie's second dream.
After Joe dies, Janie's sadness and anger about her life are beautifully
revealed in her thoughts about her grandmother, "who took the horizon
and pinched it into a little thing to tie around the neck of her granddaughter" (p. 138). Yet Janie's grip on her own desire is so strong that
she resists this weight and finally flings it off altogether. Patience and
the knowledge that she is no longer bound by the images of what others
want her to be spur her determination to live in her own way, and
gradually "her soul crawled out from its hiding place" (p. 192). With
Teacake, a man who wants to talk and walk and play and be with Janie,
she is out in the sun again where nature can blossom around her. She
has learned that her needs can be met, that she can be herself with a
man, and that she can have a role in creating her world. Teacake dies
and Janie is alone at the end, but since she has known real happiness,
she is optimistic. She is also able to affirm her independence and renounce the world of appearances. For example, in the novel's final
pages she tells her good friend Pheoby that she is "too busy feeling grief
to dress like grief," and she is assured that Pheoby will understand
because she is the one person in town who wants to hear Janie's story
rather than imagine it (p. 281).
Zora Neale Hurston has been successful in creating a vivid picture of
Janie's individuality because she lets us come to know Janie in several
ways. Hurston gives us a wonderful description of Janie's physical
appearance as a young girl and later as a mature woman. She gives us
the responses of men and women to Janie: their desire, their appreciation, their jealousy. She gives us Janie speaking to Nanny, Logan, Joe,
and Teacake. She gives us Janie telling her life's story to Pheoby. But
Hurston goes beyond merely letting the reader see Janie in a variety of
situations and with a variety of people. She shows us what this woman
is like on the inside. So when we hear Janie speak to those who care for
her, we measure the change in her tone with each of them and learn how
her character is complex. Full of anger, sarcasm, dreaminess, and gener-
This content downloaded from 160.94.45.156 on Thu, 18 Apr 2013 08:53:43 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
HURSTON AND MORRISON
47
osity, she can be hostile, teasing, loving, funny, tender, and warm.
Most of all, she has the capacity to grow and retain her courage and
humanity despite the near defeats she suffers. When we hear the long
story she tells to Pheoby, we understand the enormous effort Janie has
sustained to remain faithful to herself and to her dreams.
It is through the use of nature imagery and metaphor that Hurston
achieves her most complete picture of Janie as an individual of flesh and
spirit, intellect and emotion. For example, the two images that most
impress us with a powerful sense of Janie's yearning for freedom and
love are the sea, which is mentioned in the novel's opening paragraph,
and the blooming pear tree, which, as we have seen, is mentioned often
as Janie thinks about what she wants her life to be. Significantly, these
are images of life and beauty and mystery. They speak of possibility.
When Janie is hurt and depressed, and her dreams of beauty and mystery seem dead, the metaphor that describes her contains a dull and
ordinary image: she is "a rut in the road" (p. 116). This use of figurative
language allows us to see Janie's soul open and close and open again like
the buds on her pear tree. We not only witness this cycle, however; we
are drawn into Janie's struggle to explore and fulfill her own humanity
just as Pheoby is drawn to listen to Janie's story. Hurston makes palpable Janie's longings and failures and successes by weaving the images
through the book and letting us identify Janie with the nature she loves
so well. Janie is undoubtedly an individual whose experiences and
choices are her own. Yet she is also representative of other Black women
(and other women generally) who stand on the edge of the established
order, seeking new definitions and new directions. The strength she
reveals in her ability to demand what she wants of life is certainly an
inspiration, as Pheoby notes when she exclaims, " 'Ah done growed ten
feet higher from jus' listenin' tuh you, Janie. Ah ain't satisfied wid
mahself no mo' ' " (p. 284).
As Pheoby's comment suggests, Janie's story is the compelling one of
a powerfully determined and courageous individual. However, to see
Janie only as an individual is to distort Hurston's attempt to portray a
Black woman's life in full detail. It is true that much of what comprises
Janie's life are the intimate interactions and solitary personal struggles I
have described. Yet it is also true that Janie lives in a world larger than
her own home and backyard; and it is her desire to participate and grow
in this larger world that shows her that the individuals closest to her and
the community around her are driven by their own needs to interfere in
her life. We have seen how Nanny, Logan, and Joe try to keep Janie
within their own spheres. Now let us turn to the role the community
plays in trying to restrain her.
This content downloaded from 160.94.45.156 on Thu, 18 Apr 2013 08:53:43 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
DIANE MATZA
48
TheirEyes WereWatchingGodopens when Janie, a beautiful forty year
old woman dressed in overalls, having just buried Teacake, returns to
the town where she had once been virtually imprisoned on the pedestal
her husband Joe had made for her. As she walks by the townspeople
sitting on their porches, she provokes much curiosity. Eager to know
what has happened to the woman who left with money and a man ten
years her junior and who returns dressed like a farm hand, the men and
women prefer to judge harshly and silently rather than to ask for information. Hurston's statement that "the porch couldn't talk for looking"
conveys a sense both of the town's curiosity and determination to greet
Janie with one sure though ignorant attitude, and of Janie's isolation (p.
11). Clearly jealous of Janie's good looks, pride, and defiance, the
townspeople hide their feelings behind criticism of her manners, for
they don't hesitate to note that she fails to converse when she passes
them. They do not understand that their own rigidity has made it
impossible for Janie to speak. In addition, as individuals, they are unwilling to risk separating themselves from the security of this implacable
group's values to "come kiss and be kissed" as Janie wants (p. 18). Janie
knows that people are quick to judge what "they know nothing about,"
and she has the wisdom to know "'tain't no use in me telling you
somethin' unless Ah gives you de understandin' to go 'long wid it" (p.
19).
Pheoby is the only person in the town who offers Janie her ear, and
when she tells Janie that she feels "ten feet higher just from listening to
her," we know she has been well-rewarded for her openness (p. 284).
On the other hand, those women who have looked at Janie and "hoped
she'd fall to their level" (p. 11) are destined to live dry, narrow lives. It
may be "hard to love a woman that made you always feel so wishful,"
(p. 174) but we, like Janie, must scorn the weakness and lack of courage
behind this attitude.
A community's jealousy becomes dangerous when the community
feels strongly its own lack of privilege in the larger world. This happens
when Janie is tried in error for the murder of Teacake. There is a severe
hurricane in the Everglades, and when it is over whites drag Blacks off
the streets to help bury the dead in segregated graves. Blackmen, angry
about this and about having lost in Teacake a treasured one of their
number, want to testify against Janie because they believe "the white
man and the nigger woman are the freest things on earth" (p. 280).
Hurston reveals here how white behavior can condition the responses of
Blacks toward other Blacks in destructive ways.
In her acquired ability to resist community expectations and to understand the motivations behind the censure of her, Janie comes to be a
This content downloaded from 160.94.45.156 on Thu, 18 Apr 2013 08:53:43 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
HURSTON AND MORRISON
49
strong woman for whom harmony with nature and a growing understanding of herself are primary. She is generous with those who acknowledge and accept her individuality, and she is certainly fortunate to
find two such people in Pheoby and Teacake. Furthermore, and most
importantly as we move on to consider the similarities and differences
between Sula and Janie, Janie is eager to become involved with the
people and life around her. She does experience some success in this
area, notably when she finds a happy place for herself in the life of the
Everglades, when the men who at first accuse her of Teacake's death see
her pain and acknowledge their error, and when Janie expresses her
willingness to have the people of the town "come kiss and be kissed." In
Their Eyes Were Watching God the independent spirit triumphs because of
Janie's determined, patient, and understanding nature; and it triumphs
most clearly when the integration into the community of the individual
with a strong identity is possible.
Toni Morrison's Sula is another novel that examines with tenderness
and sympathy a richly textured Black world. Like Hurston, Morrison
probes her characters' lives to show us the pain, joy, laughter, desire,
and defeat in them. Also like Hurston, Morrison explores the meaning
of personal tragedy, loss, yearning, and triumph in a community concerned with tradition and identity. A major difference between the
worlds of the two novels is that Morrison emphasizes the Bottom's
precarious position and the threats to its continuity. Unlike Janie's
neighbors, Sula's are constantly struggling to survive and push away
the always lurking possibility of chaos. It is this difference and Sula's
more isolated - because more selfish - position that explains why the
independent spirit is not as triumphant in Sula as it is in Their Eyes Were
Watching God.
In Sula we find two fully developed women characters who possess a
fiery independence that helps them to defy convention. Eva Pease is
reminiscent of Nanny because she, too, has lived through difficult times
and put aside dreams and the luxury of loving her children in a playful,
easy way. She, too, is fiercely determined to take care of her offspring
and to care for them in her own way. And though Eva reminds us of
other strong and protective mothers, she is so much more than this. She
uses her independence to live as she chooses and to create her own
ethical standards. Thus, she doesn't hestitate to kill her son Plum in
order to "save" him; she bequeaths her sexually free love of men to her
daughter, Hannah, and granddaughter, Sula; and legend has it that she
got her leg cut off by a train so she could collect insurance money that
would pay for her children's food and shelter. But if Eva seems not to
conform to conventional codes of behavior that are so important to
This content downloaded from 160.94.45.156 on Thu, 18 Apr 2013 08:53:43 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
50
DIANE MATZA
Helene and to Nanny, she has not rejected the bonds of family and
community; in fact, she has never lost sight of familial and community
responsibility, and this creates some conflict between her and Sula, who
wishes to be responsible to no one but herself.
When Sula first returns to Medallion after a ten year absence, Eva,
sounding much like Nanny, urges her granddaughter to enter the community, marry, and have a baby. Eva suspects, and rightly so, that
Sula's individuality is very unlike her own, for Sula wants to answer to
no authority but the one she creates. When she tells Eva that she wants
to "make" herself, she is rejecting the part of Eva's life that has demanded attention to the needs of others. Sula and Janie hate their grandmothers, caring not that they acted out of love in their attempts to make their
granddaughters recognize an authority other than themselves.
Sula's claim that she wants to create herself is a more clearly articulated statement of purpose than Janie ever utters. Curiosity and a desire to
explore mark both women, and both are trapped to some degree by the
world's expectations of them. For Sula, this is clearly evident in her
relationship with Nel. In the early years of their friendship there is real
joy and closeness between them, as revealed by Nel's feeling that in
conversation with Sula she is really talking to herself. The sad end of
their friendship comes because Sula sleeps with Nel's husband, Jude.
Having accepted the community's values about adultery and women
like Sula, Nel must cut her friend out of her life. She is an old woman
and Sula is dead before she realizes that during the long and lonely years
it was Sula she missed, not Jude, and that Sula's absence made Nel's
world a "grey ball" (p. 93).
Sula remains, by choice, at odds with the community until the end of
her life, but she is also penned in by this world. To be sure, Sula is
responsible for some of her own unhappiness, unwilling as she is to
conform to any rules of the social order. The community tolerated Eva's
and Hannah's easy but generous sexuality, but since Sula uses sex as an
exploration of self the act is considered too selfish for her to be forgiven
for it. As Barbara Christian notes:
When Sula stares into the abyss that sex so clearly evokes for her, she is not
looking for another entity but for another version of herself, for a total
union is possible only when each perceives the other as possibly being his
or her self. Since woman is not usually perceived by man in that total sense,
Sula abandons any attempt at union and seeks only herself.5
Furthermore, Sula is often aloof to the needs and feelings of others. She
cannot comprehend Nel's jealousy of her affair with Jude, and she
claims fear of Eva is what makes her institutionalize her grandmother.
This content downloaded from 160.94.45.156 on Thu, 18 Apr 2013 08:53:43 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
HURSTONAND MORRISON
51
Yet despite these acts that the community and we as readers judge cruel
and selfish, Sula is a sympathetic character. In a beautiful passage
Morrison explains the real tragedy surrounding her:
Had she paints, or clay, or knew the discipline of the dance, or strings; had
she anything to engage her tremendous curiosity and her gift for metaphor,
she might have exchanged the restlessness and preoccupation with him for
an activity that provided her with all she yearned for. And like any artist
with no art form, she became dangerous. (p. 105)
We are made to understand this terrible lack of opportunity for a Black
woman in the 1930s just as we feel the tragedy in Ajax's impossible
dream of piloting a plane.
Sula has been to college; she has spent ten years in the big city. She
returns home because she feels there is no place for her to go, no
community that will be more tolerant or supportive of her desire to
determine what she shall be. We don't have to know what she studied
or what she did in Nashville to sense acutely that these experiences have
not been fulfilling, have not prepared her to explore and develop her
talents and passions. We know a great deal about the passion in Sula's
childhood: her uncontrolled sobbing after Chicken Little's death, her
spontaneous self-mutilating act before the Irish boys who threatened
her and Nel, her unspoken but profoundly hurt reaction to her mother's
statement that she loves Sula but doesn't like her. And we know that
Sula returns to Medallion with all of that passion still churning within
her but with no clear direction for it.
Having rejected marriage and the very few careers open to her, Sula
does as she pleases, so completely flouting the rules of the community
and so disrespectful of its narrow and orderly boundaries, that Medallion's citizenry look upon her as unnatural, as an evil spirit. For the
reader, Sula is often like Janie, symbolizing the woman on the edge of
possibility; however, Sula is more likely to slip off that edge than to
realize any dream. She is intransigent as Janie is not.
Sula's desire to test the limits of her independence and imagination
exists in all her actions. Yet without the structure Morrison tells us is
necessary, and without support and loving nurturing from those
around her, Sula's desire must lead her further into a self that will
become more isolated, more alienated, and more alone. Again, this is
most apparent in her affair with Jude. Sula demands understanding
from Nel but gives no understanding of her own.
Although Sula's selfishness is sometimes ugly to us, we find her
sympathetic because her non-conformity is motivated by her profound
desire to be her own person. Sula is sympathetic in another way as well.
This content downloaded from 160.94.45.156 on Thu, 18 Apr 2013 08:53:43 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
DIANE MATZA
52
Like Janie, she wants a man who is not threatened by her needs to be
herself. This particular problem is solved more easily for Janie because
she is lucky to find someone who wants an equal and is as willing to
share himself as she is willing to share herself. It is true that in Ajax Sula
finds someone who admires her independence, finds her interesting,
and genuinely wants to talk with her. However, since Ajax is the only
man who takes her beyond her probing of others to know more of
herself, she becomes so possessive that he leaves her. Perhaps it is just
as well, as Sula herself suggests, that Ajax leaves, for as she explains,
"Soon I would have torn the flesh from his face just to see if I was right
about the gold and nobody would have understood that kind of curiosity.
They would have believed that I wanted to hurt him just like the little boy
who fell down the steps and broke his leg and the people think I pushed
him just because I looked at it." (pp. 117-18)
It is in Sula's imagined mining of Ajax's face that we see her potential
destructiveness, her complete lack of understanding of the community's
perspectives and values, and the horrible waste of her talents. Artists
create themselves as they touch the world around them, enriching
themselves and the world outside at the same time. Had Sula the ability
to channel her creative powers to use what she saw in Ajax she might
have written a magnificent love poem or poetry about the beauty of her
race. And had the community understood and nurtured her, her curiosity might have become more than an end in itself, and thus, less
destructive.
Sula's non-conformity is a threat to the community's values and desire for continuity. At a very young age Sula possesses a quality of
boldness and daring that sets her apart from everyone. She shows this
one day as she and Nel, returing home from school, are accosted by
several white boys. Sula puts down her books, pulls out a knife with
which she cuts off the tip of her finger, and turns to the boys saying, "If I
can do that to myself, what you suppose I'll do to you?" (pg. 47) We
respect Sula for her ability to show the boys her fearlessness and to
threaten them, and we also feel that this remarkable act marks a person
of considerable potential. Again and again we are fascinated but also
frightened by Sula's curiosity about the unusual and the thrilling - the
accidental drowning of Chicken Little and the burning death of Hannah,
and Sula's brief affair with the husband of her best friend.
The members of Sula's community do not appreciate this daring and
non-conformity of Sula's; rather, they are repelled by them. In Barbara
Christian's words, "Sula has the distinction of being herself in a community that believes that self-hood can only be selfishness." Further, Chris-
This content downloaded from 160.94.45.156 on Thu, 18 Apr 2013 08:53:43 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
HURSTON AND MORRISON
53
tian's comments, quoted earlier, about Sula's sexuality apply to everything she does; her life is absorption in herself, and "such total
absorption leads to destructiveness, for the world, used to compromise,
will not accept, cannot understand, such concentration, perhaps it must
not, to maintain even a slim semblance of order."6
The difference between Janie's and Sula's struggles with their communities lies in the difference between the two women's characters.
Janie is a warm and loving character, but she is a threatening figure to
Nanny, to Joe, to the men and women of Eatonville. Nanny fears for
Janie's safety; Joe fears she may not love him enough; the people of
Eatonville instinctively fear that they may have something to learn from
Janie and that this may make them less satisfied with themselves and
force them to be more courageous in the structuring of their own lives.
We, as readers, recognize that Hurston sees Janie as a most affirmative
character. This is not so in the case of Sula, whose individuality can be
dark, brooding, and dangerous. If we recognize the glory in her ambition to create herself, we must also see the evil in her lack of attention to
anyone else's needs.
I have discussed here a significant similarity between Sula and Their
Eyes Were WatchingGod, and so it is useful to conclude with a final
statement about why the comparison deserves attention. First, for people to know who they are and what is possible for them - two concerns
of Morrison and Hurston - they must understand the past and its
connection to the present. They must know their culture's contributions; they must be aware of what has helped them survive. Connected
to this is Alice Walker's assertion, "we are a people. A people do not
throw their geniuses away. If they do, it is our duty as witnesses for the
future to collect them again for the sake of our children. If necessary,
bone by bone."7 One way to preserve a genius is to record her links to
other writers. Also, we enrich the tradition of American literature if we
enlarge our search for a meaningful past by examining the role of minority literature in it.
For example, minority writers have generally written for an audience
much larger than their own group, and since this audience has often
been hostile or defensive or lacking in understanding, minority writers
have often asked themselves, what should our literature be? Whom
should we write about? For whom should we write? Can we show what
we are like in all of our complexity? If we portray ourselves in anything
but a positive light do we encourage censure from members of our own
group or ridicule and prejudice from the dominant group? Much has
been written about how Black writers have wrestled with these questions, and while it is not my intention to discuss this here, I do want to
This content downloaded from 160.94.45.156 on Thu, 18 Apr 2013 08:53:43 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
54
DIANE MATZA
emphasize the importance of the question "What should Black literature
be," because I believe that Hurston and Morrison are implicitly answering this question in Their Eyes Were Watching God and in Sula. I think that
Hurston and Morrison would agree that Black writers must be true to
their vision, presenting their fictional worlds in as much complexity as
they demand. Hurston and Morrision chose to do this by focusing on
one character's struggle against her world's expectations of her. To paint
these worlds most fully both writers dissect stereotypes, imitate the
speech of the towns' inhabitants, faithfully render folktales and myths,
delineate conflicts within the Black communities and between family
members. Janie and Sula are undoubtedly individuals whose choices
and actions are their own. Yet they are also representative of other Black
women who have stood on the fringes of the established order, seeking
new ways of being.
I believe that Hurston and Morrison have emphasized the individual's
conflict with the larger group in order to explore the real tragedy in the
minority group's need for a united community speaking often with a
single voice. This is a need Blacks did not create themselves. To get
services, jobs and some necessary acceptance, and to fight injustice, a
united front is usually imperative. The united front, however, is often
sustained only by a preoccupation with questions such as, how do we
best present ourselves? and what is best for the group? And so, the
individual voice must often be suppressed. It is with great tenderness
and sympathy that Hurston and Morrison delineate the tensions between the individual and the group. In doing this both writers teach us
much about what it is to be Black and a woman in a world that makes it
difficult to fully explore either of those identities.
Utica College
Notes
1. John Irving, "Morrison's Black Fable," NewvYorkTimesBookReview(March 29,
1981), p. 31.
2. Irving, p. 1.
3. Zora Neale Hurston, TheirEyes WereWatchingGod(New York:Negro University
Press, 1969), p. 31. All succeeding page references to the novel will appear in the
text.
4. Toni Morrison, Sula (New York:Bantam, 1975), p. 16. All succeeding page references to the novel will appear in the text.
5. BarbaraChristian, BlackWomenNovelists:TheDevelopmentof a Tradition,1892-1976
(Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1980), p. 167.
6. Christian, p. 167.
7. Alice Walker, "Introduction"in RobertHemenway, ZoraNealeHurston:A Literary
Biography, p. xviii.
This content downloaded from 160.94.45.156 on Thu, 18 Apr 2013 08:53:43 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions