Race & Gender as Social Constructions

As we discussed in class, There Eyes Were Watching God positions race as a continuum where things aren’t so cut and dry. Mrs. Turner is black, but doesn’t like black people; Dr. Simmons is white, but he wants to help Tea Cake and Janie; Janie is black, but her fellow black community members in Eatonville see her as “above them.” The color of the characters’ skin doesn’t necessarily indicate their position within society, and instead, their social position has a more profound affect on their racial self-identity. When Tea Cake is looking through dead bodies after the hurricane, he said, “Shucks! Nobody can’t tell nothin’ ‘bout some uh dese bodies, de shape dey’s in. Can’t tell whether dey’s white or black,” (171), and that point is an interesting one: race isn’t so much the color of the skin and “blackness” or “whiteness” is variable.
This same continuum is also seen in gender/sexuality within the novel. What it means to be a woman or what it means to be a man is tested and redefined throughout a novel. When Janie undermines Jody (which, in my opinion is a feminine name, although a nickname), and says, “But Ah’m uh woman every inch of me, and Ah know it. Dat’s uh whole lot more’n you kin say…When you pull down yo’ britches, you look lak de change uh life,” Janie emasculates Jody and that leads to his ultimate demise. The upset in the balance of male/female power within their relationship makes Jody less of a man, both in his mind and within the community. Janie, also, is a very different kind of woman – free, independent and self-satisfying by the end of the novel. And as we discussed in class, she has a lifelong struggle with work – not wanting to be a “mule;” disliking the store; and finally finding herself in the muck and enjoying work – but the one job she doesn’t explore is motherhood – arguably the most important job/purpose of a woman. But by her not being a mother, she challenges what it means to be a woman, and her gender comes from her sexuality, not her role within sexual reproduction.
- ANS