Analysis Of Kathryn Lee Seidel's Sweat

Kathryn Lee Seidel takes a gender studies critical approach to Hurston`s short story “Sweat” that undermines Sykes`s perspective of his malicious actions towards Delia. Seidel`s attitude towards Sykes and Delia may seem feminist because “Feminist critics believe that culture has been so completely dominated by men that literature is full of unexamined “male produced assumption. They see their criticism correcting this imbalance by analyzing and combating partiarchial attitudes”(895). Seidel imitates this feminist literary critic persona when she writes “Indeed, Sykes is the slaveholder here; he does not work, he is sustained by the harsh physical labor of a black woman, he relies on the work of another person to obtain his own pleasure (in