Wife-beating seems to be a hot topic in Their Eyes Were Watching God. It seems to be completely acceptable, if not expected, by the male characters. It seems that you are considered a weak man if you don't beat your wife. Logan Killicks threatens to beat Janie, Joe Starks smacks her around in chapter 6, and Tea Cake has a "brainstorm" and starts beating her in chapter 17. The men hanging out on the porch of the store in town have a couple of conversations about whether or not so-and-so beats his wife and why he should be beating his wife. At the beginning of chapter 17, Tea Cake and Sop-de-Bottom have an entire discussion about how fortunate Tea Cake is that Janie bruises when he hits her and never opposes him beating her.
The female characters either don't like it and physically/verbally fight it or just kind of accept it. When Janie complains to her grandmother about her first marriage in chapter 3, Nanny automatically assumes that Logan has "already" started beating Janie. Janie generally just accepts abuse from all of her husbands, whether physical, verbal, or emotional. The women who fight back are generally spoken about in a negative tone.
I also took note of the abuse present in the book. Janie seems to tolerate it when she should be leaving her husbands. I think the message being sent is that it is so common during this time, and there wasn't really anything the women could do. It's almost as if they were willing to get beat before they were willing to uproot their lives and move on. I don't necessarily like reading about this type of abuse, but I guess it is the reality. I think the author does a nice job capturing this reality and the feelings behind it.
ReplyDeleteI was frustrated that the women just tolerate abuse as well. I agree that women in that time had fewer opportunities and valued the security of marriage more than their own safety sometimes. I kind of took the instances of abuse as an indirect commentary on the injustice of it as well as a presentation of the reality of it.
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