How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #21
[Janie]: "Jody classed me off. Ah didn’t. Naw, Pheoby, Tea Cake ain’t draggin’ me off nowhere Ah don’t want tuh go. Ah always did want tuh git round uh whole heap, but Jody wouldn’t ‘low me tuh. When Ah wasn’t in de store he wanted me tuh jes sit wid folded hands and sit dere. And Ah’d sit dere wid de walls creepin’ up on me and squeezin’ all de life outa me. Pheoby, dese educated women got uh heap of things to sit down and consider. Somebody done tole ‘em what to set down for. Nobody ain’t told poor me, so sittin’ still worries me. Ah wants tuh utilize mahself all over." (12.16)
Janie was always viewed as a trophy by Joe, one to be polished and placed on a pedestal and never to be touched by others’ grubby hands. His treatment of her left Janie isolated and bored. While Janie doesn’t directly criticize people of the upper classes, she hated being idle herself and wants to be of some use, implying that high class idleness is essentially a waste. Since none of those educated ladies probably know what they’re sitting around for either, the upper-class women must not be utilizing themselves in any productive way.
Quote #22
"She was borned in slavery time when folks, dat is black folks, didn’t sit down anytime dey felt lak it. So sittin’ on porches lak de white madam look lak uh might fine thing tuh her. Dat’s whut she wanted for me – don’t keer whut it cost. Git up on uh high chair and sit dere. She didn’t have time tuh think whut tuh do after you got up on de stool uh do nothin’. De object wuz tuh git dere. So Ah got up on de high stool lak she told me, but Pheoby, Ah done nearly languished tuh death up dere…"
"Maybe so, Janie. Still and all Ah’d love tuh experience it for just one year. It look lak heben tuh me from where Ah’m at." (12.32-33)
Janie, now that she’s experienced wealth, knows it doesn’t make her happy. Like Nanny, Pheoby has had a working life and also thinks that a wealthy, idle lifestyle seems pretty nice. Would Janie really be happier poor, or is this a "grass is always greener" kind of situation? Even when she’s working in the Everglades with Tea Cake, she does always have plenty cash in the bank just in case…
Quote #23
"Dem wuzn’t no high mucky mucks. Dem wuz railroad hands and dey womenfolks. You ain’t usetuh folks lak dat and Ah wuz skeered you might git all mad and quit me for takin’ you ‘mongst ‘em. But Ah wanted yuh wid me jus’ de same. Befo’ us got married Ah made up mah mind not tuh let you see no commonness in me. When Ah git mad habits on, Ah’d go off and keep it out yo’ sight. ‘Tain’t mah notion tuh drag you down wid me.
"Looka heah, Tea Cake, if you ever go off from me and have a good time lak dat and then come back heah tellin’ me how nice Ah is, Ah specks tuh kill yuh dead. You heah me?"
"So you aims tuh partake wid everything, hunh?"
"Yeah, Tea Cake, don’t keer what it is." (13.54-57)
In Tea Cake’s mind, he was acting in a way that would keep Janie from being uncomfortable and associating with people inferior to her. To Janie, Tea Cake was keeping her from having a good time. From Janie’s perspective, being one of the upper class elite means having no pleasure in life – not going to parties and not spending time with her husband. What Janie wants most is to share her life with her husband, social status just isn’t that important to her.
Quote #24
[Tea Cake]: "Oh down in de Everglades round Clewiston and Belle Glade where dey raise all dat cane and string-beans and tomatuhs. Folks don’t do nothin’ down dere but make money and fun and foolishness. We must go dere." (13.82)
Tea Cake is attracted to the Everglades because it represents work, money, and "fun and foolishness." It is a place for the lowest social classes among the black people but neither Tea Cake nor Janie care, as long as they can make a decent living and enjoy themselves.
Quote #25
To Janie’s strange eyes, everything in the Everglades was big and new. Big Lake Okeechobee, big beans, big cane, big weeds, big everything. Weeds that did well to grow waist high up the state were eight and often ten feet tall down there. Ground so rich that everything went wild. Volunteer cane just taking the place. Dirt roads so rich and black that a half mile of it would have fertilized a Kansas wheat field. Wild cane on either side of the road hiding the rest of the world. People wild too. (14.1)
What an aristocrat might label as uncivilized wilderness, Janie describes as "big," "wild," and "so rich." She has a decidedly positive attitude towards a place that could be perceived much more negatively by someone high-born. Again, this shows that adventure and pleasure is more important to her than having a luxurious life.
Quote #26
Day by day now, the hordes of workers poured in. Some came limping in with their shoes and sore feet from walking. It’s hard trying to follow your shoe instead of your shoe following you. They came in wagons from way up in Georgia and they came in truck loads from east, west, north and south. Permanent transients with no attachments and tired looking men with their families and dogs in flivvers. All night, all day, hurrying in to pick beans. Skillets, beds, patched up spare inner tubes all hanging and dangling from the ancient cars on the outside and hopeful humanity, herded and hovered on the inside, chugging on to the muck. People ugly from ignorance and broken from being poor.
All night now the jooks clanged and clamored. Pianos living three lifetimes in one. Blues made and used right on the spot. Dancing, fighting, singing, crying, laughing, winning and losing love every hour. Work all day for money, fight all night for love. The rich black earth clinging to bodies and biting the skin like ants. (14.15-16)
Hurston gives a rich description of the migrant workers pouring into work during the harvest season. These are the lowest of the lower classes, so poor that some walk all the way to the Everglades to do their jobs. Such a wretched group of people would be expected to be miserable, but instead, they are vibrant with life – playing in the jook houses and pianos for fun at night, their music and dancing ringing in the night as they live it up. Hurston clearly seems to be saying that the rich have stale lives, but the poor really know how to live. Is Hurston romanticizing the life of the lower classes or is it accurate?
Quote #27
Sometimes Janie would think of the old days in the big white house and the store and laugh to herself. What if Eatonville could see her now in her blue denim overalls and heavy shoes? The crowd of people around her and a dice game on her floor! She was sorry for her friends back there and scornful of the others. The men held big arguments here like they used to do on the store porch. Only here, she could listen and laugh and even talk some herself if she wanted to. She got so she could tell big stories herself from listening to the rest. (14.31)
While experiencing the "low" life of the migrant workers, Janie comes to love it and to pity her friends back in Eatonville for having to deal with pretentious townspeople. Here, nobody acts as if fun is a sin and nobody interferes with anyone else’s happiness, telling them what they can and cannot do. Janie revels in it, especially in the telling of stories.
Quote #28
But Mrs. Turner’s shape and features were entirely approved by Mrs. Turner. Her nose was slightly pointed and she was proud. Her thin lips were an ever delight to her eyes. Even her buttocks in bas-relief were a source of pride. To her way of thinking all these things set her aside from Negroes. That was why she sought out Janie to friend with. Janie’s coffee-and-cream complexion and her luxurious hair made Mrs. Turner forgive her for wearing overalls like the other women who worked in the fields. She didn’t forgive her for marrying a man as dark as Tea Cake, but she felt that she could remedy that…her disfavorite subject was Negroes. (16.5)
Mrs. Turner understandably links whiteness of skin to higher ranks in society than the black people occupy. But she mistakes the whites’ higher social status for moral superiority. To her, white means good while black signals bad. Therefore, based on her logic she approves of everyone who has white blood in them because it means they are inherently superior and belong to a higher class than normal black people.
Quote #29
[Mrs. Turner to Janie]: "Yo’ husband musta had plenty money when y’all got married."(16.8)
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.
Quote #30
[Mrs. Turner]: "You’se different from me. Ah can’t stand black n*****s. Ah don’t blame de white folks from hatin’ ‘em ‘cause Ah can’t stand ‘em mahself. ‘Nother thing, Ah hates tuh see folks lak me and you mixed up wid ‘em. Us oughta class off."
[…]
[Mrs. Turner]: "Look at me! Ah ain’t got no flat nose and liver lips. Ah’m uh featured woman. Ah got white folks’ features in mah face. Still and all Ah got tuh be lumped in wid all de rest. It ain’t fair. Even if dey don’t take us in wid de whites, dey oughta make us uh class tuh ourselves." (16.14-20)
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?
Quote #31
Anyone who looked more white folkish than herself [Mrs. Turner] was better than she was in her criteria, therefore it was right that they should be cruel to her at times, just as she was cruel to those more negroid than herself in direct ratio to their negroness. Like the pecking-order in a chicken yard. Insensate cruelty to those you can whip, and groveling submission to those you can’t. Once having set up her idols and built altars to them it was inevitable that she would worship there. It was inevitable that she should accept any inconsistency and cruelty from her deity as all good worshippers do from theirs. All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood. (16.43)
Mrs. Turner links race to class. The whiter one is, the classier he or she is. Mrs. Turner takes it to such an extreme level that she considers white people so socially superior that they are gods. She worships them for their inherent superiority to her and wishes with all her might that she could be initiated as a fully white woman, so she could be accepted into their divine social class.
Quote #32
[Tea Cake]: "Mah Janie is uh high time woman and useter things. Ah didn’t git her outa de middle uh de road. Ah got her outa uh big fine house. Right now she got money enough in de bank tuh buy up dese ziggaboos and give ‘em away."
"Hush yo’ mouf! And she down heah on de muck lak anybody else!" (17.5-6)
Tea Cake is proud of Janie’s former status as a mayor’s wife and he similarly admires her wealth. It’s almost like he sees his status increasing by pointing out that his wife left her wealth and comfortable life for him and to work in the muck beside him. That’s how awesome he his.
Quote #33
It woke up old Okechobee and the monster began to rollin his bed. Began to roll and complain like a peevish world on a grumble. The folks in the quarters and the people in the big houses further around the shore heard the big lake and wondered. The people felt uncomfortable but safe because there were the seawalls to chain the senseless monster in his bed. The folks let the people do the thinking. If the castles thought themselves secure, the cabins needn’t worry. Their decision was already made as always. Chink up your cracks, shiver in your wet beds and wait on the mercy on Lord. The bossman might have the thing stopped before morning anyway. (18.27)
Although the lake is obviously swelling with water and ready to flood, the black migrant workers stay down in the swamps, clinging to the confidence of the white people, that they will be safe no matter what nature throws their way. The black "folk let the [white] people do the thinking." Notice how the colloquial and lower-classed are called "folk" and call the white richer men as "people" – a more serious term than the quaint "folk." Even based on terminology, the lower class people are granted less humanity than their higher class neighbors.
Quote #34
[Tea Cake]: "Ah got money on me, Janie. Dey can’t bother me." (19.14)
Tea Cake makes the false assumption that having money in his pocket will earn other men’s respect and keep them from "bother[in]" him. He’s wrong.
Quote #35
Tea Cake hung back defensively. "Whut Ah got tuh do wid dat [burying bodies]? Ah’m uh workin’ man wid money in mah pocket. Jus’ got blowed outa de ‘Glades by de storm."
The short [white] man made a quick move with his rifle. "Git on down de road dere, suh! Don’t look out somebody’ll be buryin’ you! G’wan in front uh me, suh!" (19.20-21)
Tea Cake’s assumption that money will keep him safe proves to be wrong; to the white men, his black skin overrides any money or class he might have. To them, he is essentially a slave.
Quote #36
[Janie]: "Can’t nothin’ be done fuh his case, doctah? Us got plenty money in de bank in Orlandah, doctah. See can’t yuh do somethin’ special tuh save him. Anything it cost, doctah, Ah don’t keer, but please, doctah."
"Do what I can. Ah’ll phone into Palm Beach right away for the serum which he should have had three weeks ago. I’ll do all I can to save him, Janie. But it looks too late." (19.102-103)
Janie is desperately trying to use all her resources to save Tea Cake. She hopes that her wealth will gain her access to special medication, but she is deluded. No amount of money will save Tea Cake now, the doctor implies. Wealth and class do not always get a person what she wants.
Quote #37
Then the band played, and Tea Cake rode like Pharaoh to his tomb. No expensive veils and robes for Janie this time. She went on in her overalls. She was too busy feeling grief to dress like grief. (19.183)
Janie dressed in expensive black veils and such for Joe’s funeral, but she doesn’t do the same for the man whom she truly loved. Tea Cake’s funeral isn’t an opportunity to flaunt her wealth or status; the only reason Janie used so much money for Tea Cake is because that’s her personal way of lovingly saying goodbye. Wearing overalls to Tea Cake’s funeral shows that the money spent on the ceremony was not her way of showing off to the community. If her intention was to show off, she would have remembered to put on some pretty, expensive clothes.