Their Eyes Were Watching God Mrs. Turner Quotes

Mrs. Turner castigates Mr. Turner in a rather domineering, masculine tone. She accuses him of effeminacy. By her rants, readers can discover what exactly in this novel is considered effeminate in a man—silence and passivity.

Mrs. Turner is prejudiced against black people on a scale of darkness; the darker a person is, the more despicable he is to her. Mrs. Turner also seems to define race by skin color; since she is fair skinned, she hopes that she can "class off" and become part of another racial group. Janie, on the other hand, thinks very little of skin color. She points out that black people have a very mixed heritage, so it isn’t about your skin color. Is seems that Janie defines race more by shared culture than shared skin color.

Mrs. Turner’s hatred for the black race runs so deep that she refuses to marry a black man and she even goes so far as to say that black people should be eliminated. Though she does not state it so bluntly, such is her implication when she suggests that she and Janie should "lighten up de race" by marrying only white men. Doesn’t this make you think of Nazi Germany?

Mrs. Turner believes fate works like karma – rewarding those who have worked hard and worshipped harder. She believes her faith alone will render her a fully white woman and admit her into a white Paradise.

Mrs. Turner assumes that Janie holds similar disdain for black people and admiration for whites, so she assumes that the only way a black man like Tea Cake could win Janie’s hand in marriage is if he had money. Mrs. Turner probably thinks of marriage as a vehicle for increased social status, either by marrying for money or marrying someone with fair skin.

Mrs. Turner thinks that because she and Janie have white blood in them, they inherently belong to a higher class than black people and thus they should "class off." This new class would be of a lower status than the fully white people and higher than the fully black people. Essentially, Mrs. Turner wants every inch up the social ladder she can get. What does she really expect to get from becoming a member of a higher class?

Her brother’s "dead straight hair" is a mark of his mixed-blood heritage. To Mrs. Turner, it is a mark of pride simply because it differentiates him from the rest of the common black people. Mrs. Turner also seems to imply that her brother’s intelligence is linked to his whiteness, since she places "he’s real smart" alongside "dead straight hair."

Mrs. Turner takes legitimate pride in her highly popular and successful restaurant, but her pride makes her susceptible to flattery and deception. Sop-de-Bottom and the rest of Tea Cake’s friends are merely feeding her vanity so they can blind her as they drag her restaurant down.