Entry Three: Hurston

"Sweat"
Zora Neale Hurston, 1926

(I apologize; I posted this on time last week, but either my internet connection glitched, or fate decided to give me a rough time. Here's a slightly edited post that should've been here last week.)

"Anything like flowers has long ago been drowned in the salty stream that had been pressed from her heart. Her tears, her sweat, her blood. She had brought love to the union and he had brought a longing after the flesh ... Delia went clear to the rail without answering him. A triumphant indifference to all that he was or did."

This short story centers around Delia, a twentieth-century housewife who's married to a habitual physical and emotional abuser. She's a simple washwoman, but this story documents her defiance, independence, and ultimate epiphany in regards to her life with her husband; as well as her future life without him. Delia is a strong woman in an era where women weren’t expected to be; it is, as a whole, a story that was far ahead of it’s time.

To begin, it’s best to talk about Delia. As an African American woman in the 1920’s, she is at a disadvantage before any other socioeconomic factors come into play. She does the laundry of white families from another town, and has done an amazing job of taking care of her and her husband by doing so. This unusual power structure causes distress in her marriage; the woman is earning the money for the family, not the man. And in a time of Jim Crow laws as well as social inequality, this setup was bound to cause trouble from the beginning.

In regards to this quote, it’s a moment when Delia has an epiphany about her relationship, which has been struggling for quite some time. It’s where she finally realizes she’s sacrificed so much and it wasn’t reciprocated by her husband; she was taken advantage of, and ultimately abused by a man who probably only wanted her for the fact she had a job. It’s kind of heartbreaking to realize that it took someone so long to come to his realization; after years of abuse and mistreatment, it took one argument to finally push her over the emotional edge.

The fascinating part of this short story is near the end, where Delia is watching Sykes writhe and struggle in the garden. He was bitten by the same snake that he’d kept by the door to the house he shared with Delia; it was there as a warning, a threat to hopefully keep Delia out of the house, or at least on guard. Sykes did so knowing full well that snakes were one of Delia’s biggest fears, but in the end it came to literally bite him. The most impactful aspect of this even was that Delia let the snake loose herself; she moved the lamps in the house so Sykes couldn’t see the snake coming.

In just about every way, she killed Sykes without actually touching him.

For Delia, this is a huge event; it’s the climax in regards to her character arc, and it shows the true strength she has, that she probably had all along. But it took a push for her to finally act on that strength.