“Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston and “Woman Hollering Creek” by Sandra Cisneros have common themes of spousal abuse and gender power struggles. The female characters roles within their household are very different. Cleofilas is forced to stay home alone with no car while her husband works. Delia on the other hand makes the living for her household while her husband Sykes lives off of her wages and does as he pleases, including cheating on her. The female characters in both stories find freedom from their abuse and struggles with their husbands, but they find freedom in very different ways. Another woman aids Cleofilas in her escape, and she has somewhere to go, back to her family. Delia has to put up with her abuse for 15 years of marriage, far …show more content…
Finally Delia becomes free from Sykes when his plan for Delia to be bit by a snake backfires, and he is the one who is bitten and dies.
In “Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston, the protagonist Delia is “double-colonized,” living in a society where African Americans are oppressed by whites, while her husband Sykes is also oppressing her. Delia is living in Florida in the early 20th century, when Jim Crow laws kept the black community segregated and oppressed. Delia washed clothes for the wealthier white community to make her living. She even had to work on Sunday night just to get all the washing done every week. Sykes tells Delia “Ah done tole you time and again to keep them white folks’ clothes outa dis house” (Hurston 137). He then goes on to call Delia a hypocrite for praying at church then coming home and doing laundry for white people, before stomping on the whitest pile of clothing. Hurston illustrates the hatred that manifests from racial oppression. Delia tells Sykes “Ah been married to you fur fifteen years, and Ah been takin’ in washin’ fur fifteen years. Sweat, sweat, sweat! Work and sweat, cry and sweat, pray and sweat!” (137). This epitomizes Delia’s existence; she works constantly,
Representation of Women in "Men Should Weep" by Ena Lamont Stewart and "Perfect Days" by Liz Lochead
How sad can that be for these women to feel that they have no other option out of their marriage? In conclusion, both short stories were great at allowing the reader to see the way that women were repressed in their society in the 1900s. We don't hate the men; we just wish women did not have to be so subservient. Freedom is achieved in very unconventional ways in both of these stories, but the kind of freedom these narrators achieve is not available to most women of this time era. Works Cited Kennedy, X. J., and Dana Gioia.
In Zora Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God” and “Sweat,” Hurston uses the characters Janie Crawford and Delia Jones to symbolize African-American women as the mules of the world and their only alternative were through their words, in order to illustrate the conditions women suffered and the actions they had to take to maintain or establish their self-esteem.
A connection can be drawn among the stories listed above regarding women who live as prisoners. Beatrice, of Rappaccini's Daughter, is confined to a garden because of her father's love of science, and she becomes the pawn to several men's egos. The woman of The Yellow Wallpaper is trapped by her own family's idea of how she should conduct herself, because her mood and habit of writing are not "normal" to them. Sethe, of Beloved, carries the burden of her past and also the past of all slaves. She is unwelcome in her community and a prisoner in her own home, where she is forced to confront these memories of slavery. All three of these women are viewed by society as crazy, evil, or both. The "prisons" in which these women live are constructed by their family, their history, or even themselves.
White Atlantans, according to Hunter, viewed African-American women as the purveyors of physical as well as moral decay in the early decades of the twentieth century. White hysteria over the "servant 's disease" led to city officials ' attempts to license washerwomen and control the domestic life of household workers who had access to private white homes. The African-American community, particularly black female activists, resisted these efforts and organized their own public health campaigns to address the problems of tuberculosis in black communities. Thus, the second half of To 'Joy My Freedom effectively demonstrates how the dialectic of domination and resistance occurred on a variety of levels outside the workplace: from dance halls to health clinics. Hunter ends her book with a short chapter on the Great Migration, highlighting the increased repression surrounding the war years, in particular the startling efforts to apply "work or fight" laws to black household workers. Migration out of Atlanta and other southern cities, was, for many, a final act of resistance against the New South power
Because of the thirst of superiority whites had, they wanted to restructure the behaviors of blacks in ways that would make them behave inferior. This was aided by the Jim Crow Laws enacted during the Jim Crow period. “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow” in Uncle Tom’s Children explains how the natural behaviors of blacks were affected by Jim Crow laws. Wright explains how these laws affected him personally. Right from his childhood, blacks have been restricted from having anything to do with whites. Black children were brought up in ways that would make them scared of the whites. This continued even in his adulthood. Only few blacks were fortunate to work in places where whites were, but they were always treated badly. Wright got a job in an optical company, where he worked alongside two whites, Mr. Morrie and Mr. Pease. When Wright asked both of his coworkers Mr. Morrie and Mr. Pease to tell him about the work, they turned against him. One day Mr. Morrie told Mr. Pease that Richard referred to him as "Pease," so they queried him. Because he was trapped between calling one white man a liar and having referred to the other without saying "Mr." Wright promised that he would leave the factory. They warned him, while he was leaving, that he should not tell the boss about it. Blacks were made to live and grow up under conditions that made them regard whites as superior. Whites also used blacks’ natural behaviors against them by sexually abusing them. It is natural for people to have sex, but if they forced or abused sexually this means that their natural behavior is being used against them because sexual abuse is not natural. Sarah, in “Long Black Song,” is an example of a black female that was sexually abused by whites. Sarah was married and had a child but when the white man came to her house he did not hesitate to have sex with her. She resisted him initially
Zora Neale Hurston’s short story Sweat is a visceral reminder of the acute oppression and sexism women have always faced in American society. The protagonist of the story, Delia, is married to a cruel and angry man named Sykes. Through a depiction of their married life, this short story shows that despite patriarchal oppression, women have exercised their agency and resisted in a myriad of ways. The story begins with Delia, a working Black woman in Florida, who is a white woman. It is a warm spring day and she is sorting and soaking the clothing she washes for the white residents of her town.
Both stories show feminism of the woman trying to become free of the male dominance. Unfortunately, the woman are not successful at becoming free. In the end, the two women’s lives are drastically
The predominant feminist theme that stood out for me in the story 'Yellow woman' by Leslie Marmon Silko and 'The story of an hour' by Kate Chopin relates to the protagonists' expectations of fulfilling thier roles as wives. The two women struggle with what they should think, what is appropriate for them to feel in their circumstances and the obvious restrictions on their freedom.
In the story "Woman Hollering Creek" Sandra Cisneros discusses the issues of living life as a married woman through a character named Cleofilas; a character who is married to a man who abuses her physically and mentally .Cisneros reveals the way the culture puts a difference between a male and a female, men above women. Cisneros has been famous about writing stories about the latino culture and how women are treated; she explain what they go through as a child, teen and when they are married; always dominated by men because of how the culture has been adapted. "Woman Hollering Creek" is one of the best examples. A character who grows up without a mother and who has no one to guid and give her advise about life.
Analyzing the narrative of Harriet Jacobs in the context of the writings of W.E.B. Du bois serves to demonstrate how slavery prompted the weary and self-denigrating attitudes of Negro Americans during the subsequent Reconstruction period. However, it is important to note that Harriet Jacobs does not embody the concept of double-consciousness because slavery effectively stripped away her sexuality and femininity, therefore reducing her to one identity--that of a
In the novel, the author proposes that the African American female slave’s need to overcome three obstacles was what unavoidably separated her from the rest of society; she was black, female, and a slave, in a white male dominating society. The novel “locates black women at the intersection of racial and sexual ideologies and politics (12).” White begins by illustrating the Europeans’ two major stereotypes o...
William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” are two short stories that incorporate multiple similarities and differences. Both stories’ main characters are females who are isolated from the world by male figures and are eventually driven to insanity. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the unidentified narrator moves to a secluded area with her husband and sister-in-law in hopes to overcome her illness. In “A Rose for Emily,” Emily’s father keeps Emily sheltered from the world and when he dies, she is left with nothing. Both stories have many similarities and differences pertaining to the setting, characterization, symbolism, and their isolation from the world by dominant male figures, which leads them to insanity.
Zora Neale Hurston’s writing embodies the modernism themes of alienation and the reaffirmation of racial and social identity. She has a subjective style of writing in which comes from the inside of the character’s mind and heart, rather than from an external point of view. Hurston addresses the themes of race relations, discrimination, and racial and social identity. At a time when it is not considered beneficial to be “colored,” Hurston steps out of the norm and embraces her racial identity.
Although the Handmaid’s Tale & veil of roses are both novels of fiction, but they can both participate of real life action, each story of a women life differ significantly. Comparison of two different novel’s with similar themes such as escape, love, and freedom.