Migration Narrative
The next important question to ask when examining Hurston’s works of migration literature is why she chooses the South as a destination for her migrant characters. Hurston traveled extensively throughout Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and even to Haiti, Jamaica, and the Bahamas, with the intention of capturing and sharing the traditions of rural folk culture, which as I note in the next chapter of this thesis, helps her to form part of the migrant stranger identity that permeates her version of the migration narrative. Hurston successfully redraws the boundaries of the migration narrative with her characters’ physical and spiritual journeys throughout Southern spaces, thus re-emphasizing the significance of Stepto’s concept of symbolic journeys
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through geographic spaces and challenging Rodgers’s argument that Their Eyes is “decidedly not about migration” (92). By examining works beyond Their Eyes Were Watching God, one can see Hurston working beyond the boundaries of the migration narrative, especially as she experiments with her characters’ symbolic journeys throughout the South. John Pearson’s path in Hurston’s Jonah’s Gourd Vine is similar to the one Janie follows in Their Eyes. Pearson first migrates to Notsaluga, Alabama to flee from his rigid stepfather; after run-ins with the law, he heads further south to Eatonville, Florida, over to Sanford, then to Plant City. If we read these texts alongside the criticism of Helen Yitah, Hazel Carby, and others, we can see that Hurston’s characters make deliberate choices to remain in the South, not just because it is a site of folklore customs that helps to establish and maintain a sense of familiarity with the place, but also for reasons motivated by economics and social mobility. Because the South lost large numbers of workers at such a rapid rate in the early twentieth century, there would have been more opportunity for employment for her characters (and real migrants, as well) than before the Great Migration hit its peak.
In her article, “Rethinking the African American Great Migration Narrative: Reading Zora Neale Hurston’s Jonah’s Gourd Vine,” Helen Yitah examines the methods Hurston uses to challenge the conventions of the migration narrative and “the ‘urban adjustment’ model that looks outward to socio-cultural factors to explain the plight of black migrants” (10).
When extended to Their Eyes, Yitah’s argument substantiates the contention that Hurston successfully situates her migration novels within the South—which diverges from the prototypical migration narrative structures laid out by Stepto, Griffin, and Rodgers, who argue that the only way to reach full ascension and immersion is through a direct journey north—and in doing so, she brings attention to the plight of black migrants who remain in the South. Yitah expresses that she believes “looking at Jonah’s Gourd Vine from the perspective of the migrant’s inward search for self-knowledge leads to a more nuanced view of the Great Migration in African American fiction” (11). Because Hurston’s characters do not always fall victim to their environments (Tea Cake being one obvious exception) or other oppressive forces, they are granted a certain agency not found in other migration narratives: the agency to choose to remain in the South. Through the journeys of her characters, Hurston “focuses on black migrant movement patterns within the South, using John Pearson’s frequent changes of location and employment to show that migration …show more content…
within rural areas in the South was as significant as the more familiar migration to cities up North” (Yitah 14). For characters such as John Pearson in Jonah’s Gourd Vine, Tea Cake Woods and Joe Starks in Their Eyes, and as we will see later in Chapter 3’s discussion of Hurston’s short story “John Redding Goes to Sea,” this means financial, social, and inner growth opportunities. Each of these characters move, sometimes multiple times, (e.g. Starks and Woods) to take advantage of opportunities to capitalize on forming new identities within communities new to them. This is evident when Starks opens his store and builds his authoritative power over the community. By providing an economic (and cultural) hub for the citizens of Eatonville, he is able to afford a comfortable life (financially speaking) for himself and Janie and also garners the “respect” of the community, enough to become a prominent leader within it. Similarly, Tea Cake constantly shifts from one location to the next, with each movement, it appears, almost solely for financial reasons. He moves to Eatonville, meets, seduces, and wins Janie’s affections—even with the town clamoring that he is only after her for her money—and he eventually departs again (repeatedly) to spend Janie’s money. He always returns, as well, presumably for more. Finally, when Janie tells him she only wants to be with him, not left behind by him or subservient to him, the two agree to move again—this time to escape the gossip of Eatonville, but most certainly for financial reasons: work on the Muck. And with that, Janie must again navigate a new community.
The communities of the South, a region that many, if not most of Hurston’s characters never leave, provide more than just financial opportunities, they also provide a sense of belonging that cannot be obtained in the North. Even if these communities can be found in the North, most of the time they are deeply rooted in the customs and rituals brought with them by migrants who have traveled from the South. Moreover, as Hurston often utilizes the migrant stranger as the protagonist of her narratives, these characters often find themselves stuck on the fringes, and often only as an observer, of the communities to which they seek to belong. Janie feels neglected and taken advantage of by her first husband; she is regularly left to watch the interactions of Joe’s front porch, without being an active participant; and Tea Cake routinely leaves her for days on end while he uses her money to socialize. Janie, like most “stranger” archetypes, when refused a place within the community they want to join, will then begin a journey to fulfill her own desires and wishes. The migrant’s “inward search,” as Yitah refers to it, is what I draw upon to declare that Hurston, in these works, draws attention to a group of people that most migration narratives overlook: the black migrant in the South. Hurston’s characters--Janie Crawford, Joe Starks, Tea Cake Woods, and in Jonah’s Gourd Vine, John Pearson—all endeavor on symbolic journeys that are in direct opposition to the concept that migration patterns need occur only in a northerly direction.
For example, in Their Eyes, Janie’s constant search for love and companionship motivates her to move on four different occasions, yet Eatonville serves as the desired place for her to settle (multiple times), despite the hard life she has lived there under Joe’s jealous thumb. Janie, still searching for identity and independence and still wanting to be valued and respected by her partner, sets aside once more the sensual notions of blooming trees and kissing bees in order to better establish herself within a home that makes her comfortable and meets her expectations of marriage. Helen Yitah notes that “(t)hrough these travels Hurston explores the physical journey as a search for self” (14). Janie, who has ambitions that reach far beyond the confines of Logan’s farm, uses the physical journey as a way to achieve the life of self-fulfillment and appreciation from others that she truly desires. Because of her own ambitions, she is completely overwhelmed by the determination that Starks demonstrates in moving from one place to the next to take advantage of the financial freedom and social promotion that the growing community of Eatonville provides. Although she is not physically attracted to him, it is his ambition and authoritativeness which persuades her to follow him to Eatonville. In Eatonville, Starks uses his savings to purchase more land from Captain Josiah Eaton, from nearby Maitland, Florida, and within weeks of moving into town, he establishes a store, post office, builds a house, visits nearby towns to drum up new citizens for the town, and is nominated for and elected mayor—almost instantaneously demonstrating his authority over the townspeople and his ability to bend people to his will. Janie is aware of the emergence of Joe’s authority in the town. The narrator describes:
There was something about Joe Starks that cowed the town. It was not because of physical fear. He was not fist fighter. His bulk was not even imposing as men go. Neither was it because he was more literate than the rest. Something else made men give way before him. He had a bow-down command in his face, and every step he took made the thing more tangible. (49)
Although the town flourishes under Joe’s leadership, its inhabitants cannot help but to notice the dichotomy of Joe’s character: the ways in which he can both charm and psychologically intimidate his wife and the citizens of Eatonville. As the men of the community gossip, tell tales, or otherwise share news on the porch of Joe’s store, they are completely aware that he seeks complete control and authority over them, which is not much different from the authority held over them in some form or another for most of their lives. Sim Jones notes that Joe “loves obedience out of everybody under de sound of his voice” and Sam Watson concurs: “he’s de wind and we’se de grass. We bend whichever way he blows…but at dat us needs him. De town wouldn’t be nothin’ if it wasn’t for him” (49). Here, Hurston uses the conventions of the migration narrative to address the authority that Starks holds over Janie and the community members of Eatonville. Hurston extends the migration narrative conventions associated with symbolic journeys through ascension and immersion to this reading of Their Eyes, through Janie, whose symbolic journey for love and companionship is representative of Stepto’s notion of ascension as described in first section of this chapter, and through Starks, who is representative of the genus loci that Janie (and the community) must encounter when entering into, and fully bonding to, her chosen destination. Sim Jones and Sam Watson clearly see Joe Starks as the looming force in control of the local community; he is, after all, the owner of the very spot where the community gathers to interact.
After Joe’s death, Janie’s symbolic journey for self-fulfillment begins once more. After meeting, falling in love with, and settling into a relationship with a man several years her younger, Janie once again takes to wandering, this time, even further South. Down on the “muck” she and Tea Cake can make a living together, working in the sugar cane fields, enjoying all the fruits of their labor and what the land has to offer, and Janie, as she drifts off to sleep after the conversation, “looked down on him and felt a self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from its hiding place” (128)—and the two head south. Unfortunately for the couple, this is where Tea Cake tragically meets his death amid the aftermath of the Lake Okeechobee hurricane. When he is bitten by a rabid dog, Janie is forced to shoot him when he breaks out into a violent rage. Despite standing trial, and subsequently being found innocent of murder by a jury of white men, the friends the couple have made there—but who have turned their back on her before and during the trial—beg her to stay. Janie has other plans. Not long after being acquitted, Janie sets off for Eatonville, the home she has left not long before. After Tea Cake’s death, Janie returns to Eatonville, in order to reestablish the roots she had once set there.
Janie’s movements, like John Pearson’s, reinforce Yitah’s assertion that “Hurston’s narratives portray a diversity of migration patterns both similar to and different from those found in black fiction since the early decades of the twentieth century: moving from South to North; journeying within the South; moving from one rural area to another, or another urban center; and taking migrant journeys that end up where they begin” (12). Although Janie’s journey does not officially begin in Eatonville, Florida, it is the place where she has spent most of her life—a place where she has established some semblance of roots, developed relationships, and established an identity; moreover, it is the place where she meets Tea Cake, so it is only natural that she would have sentimental ties to the town and look to return there when her life is turned upside down. Furthermore, John Pearson’s movements have been mostly due to his brushes with the law or as a search for employment; but these movements, like Janie’s, have occurred exclusively within the South, and proved to be a general search for self. Hurston, through the symbolic journeys of her characters, grants them agency to choose alternative destinations for themselves, especially those outside the normal school of thought that suggests ascension and communitas can only be achieved in the North.
Rodgers contends that Hurston’s work “imaginatively reinvents a fantasized alternative to the Great Migration by creating a communal setting of shared, egalitarian, agricultural labor” (93). This idea is most obviously identified in Janie’s relationship with Tea Cake. They are able to succeed, both financially and emotionally, on the “muck” because the fertile land allows for them to do so. When the land, and nature, turns against them, however, their love must come to an end. In her analysis of Jonah’s Gourd Vine, Yitah notes the importance of agriculture and occupation in “successful” migrations. She says there “is ample evidence that John Pearson’s achievements in different destinations in the South were due mainly to his innate potential to pursue various vocations” (19). Even so, this type of achievement, according to Rodgers, is only an illusion. Janie and Tea Cake prosper only because the Everglades represent a “mythic space” that operates in opposition to the “postmigration life represented by the male-centered, hierarchical values of Janie’s first two husbands” (Rodgers 93). So, instead of migrating to a new place in search for one’s identity and a better life, Janie, according to Rodgers, creates her own space within the South to escape the figurative, oppressive Southern nature of her first two husbands. These first two husbands—Logan Killicks, a hard-driving and work-oriented man, and Joe Starks, the capitalistic and socially dominant authoritarian—each represent the “unsatisfactory southern versions of the driving force behind northern urban capitalism” and when the two fail to satisfy Janie’s need to fulfill her ideals of self, Hurston negates the “transformative potential of migration, especially for women” (Rodgers 93). Although Rodgers’s study of migration focuses almost solely on migration to northern urban areas, and narratives that convey such accounts, he does recognize Their Eyes Were Watching God as a “variant” on the migration novel. I counter argue that by using the outline he uses to establish the conventions of the migrant narrative to place Hurston’s novel firmly within the tradition of the migration novel. When Rodgers defines the genre as consisting of an “escape from bondage” and a “journey to a promised land,” (3)—that is, a land in which a living can be earned and living involves integrity—he virtually describes the framework of Their Eyes Were Watching God, despite its characters’ numerous moves to and within the South. In fact, Hurston’s texts more than fit within the comprehensive description of the migrant novel laid out by Stepto, Rodgers, and Griffin, because of Janie’s quest for ascent and immersion, and the symbolic journey she makes to achieve that goal. Janie Crawford, in search of identity, companionship, and agency, takes advantage of numerous opportunities to escape the bondage of her marriages and the authoritarian men that control her existence. She leaves Logan Killicks to move on to Joe Starks, and after his death, once more evades her painful memories of him and the community of Eatonville to move to Jacksonville and the muck with Tea Cake.
It is crucial to examine these transitions as more than just an emotional or intrinsic search for one’s self—it is imperative that we examine Janie’s figurative shifts on a more literal and geographic level. Not only is she shifting from one relationship to another, but she also actually changes her location each time she does so, and each time she does so, she moves further south (of course with the one exception of her decision to move back to Eatonville after Tea Cake’s death). With each move, she hopes her newfound “promised land” will deliver the ideal relationship for which she longs. All the while, the South serves as her vehicle for movement, and each movement strengthens her bond with the area and the people with whom she interacts. Instead of the South becoming a place to forget or a conflict to overcome, like it is for many migrants in northern migration narratives, the South becomes a communal ground for Hurston’s characters, who find comfort in the folkloric customs of the community. By positioning her characters in such a manner, Hurston provides a voice for the folklore culture of the rural South that it did not previously have.
In her essay “The Politics of Fiction, Anthropology, and the Folk: Zora Neale Hurston,” Hazel Carby asserts that the group Hurston “wanted to represent she defined as rural folk, and she measured them and their cultural forms against an urban, mass culture.” (75). Carby’s primary argument is that Hurston “discursively displaces” the migrant’s move from the North to the South, focusing on the migrant’s attempts to maintain some semblance of their folk heritage. Moreover, Hurston “recognized that the people whose culture she rewrote were not the majority of the population, and that the cultural forms she was most interested in reproducing were not being maintained…Hurston identified herself both as an intellectual and as a representative figure from the folk culture she reproduced and made authentic in her work.” (75). For Hurston, choosing places, such as Eatonville, Florida, to return to both as an anthropologist and as a fiction writer, was a “return to the familiar” which gives voice to a “subaltern group” (Carby 79) that had otherwise been overlooked by the migration narrative canon. Hurston responds to the general conventions of the migration narrative’s assumption that the North is the only place for agency by providing agency and voice to the characters who migrate to and within the South. When trying to establish herself as an authoritative voice, Janie must counterbalance her newfound independence with maintaining a positive public perception of herself. The novel, and its protagonist, break the boundaries of social convention by creating an antagonistic relationship between Janie as woman and the folk as community through intellect and speech. Janie must choose whether or not she uses her voice, like Joe, to establish dominance over a community which has formed and will continue to form judgments on her because they, in fact, are ignorant to her plight. In order to do this, Janie’s story needs an intermediary, such as Pheoby. Janie’s choice in the way that she reveals her story, “distinguishes not only her story, but also her position from that of the folk as community,” which is an “evocation of authentic black culture and her refusal to tell her tale gives her power over the community of folk” (Carby 84). All of this, according to Carby, can be accomplished on the porch (of the store, the shanty houses on the Muck, and at Pheoby’s house). In this instance, even though Hurston has displaced Janie’s migration narrative to a Southern rural community, the protagonist battles for control of agency over her own actions and story—but, one can argue that Janie’s tacit acceptance that the community can/will think whatever they choose of her is in of itself a sign that she has gained that agency. She is aware that she cannot change their perceptions of her, so she chooses to rebel against the folk community’s obsession with storytelling. In refusing to adhere to the norms of the community she once again chooses as a destination, she resumes her role of Simmel’s stranger in Eatonville.
Given the history of the Hurston’s hometown of Eatonville, Florida, the first all-black incorporated town in the United States, there is little to question as to why she would want to bring attention to such a place.
The next chapter of this thesis will address that at length. But before moving on, it is important to note that I have provided numerous examples as to how Hurston displaces the migrant stranger character into Southern folk communities, such as Eatonville. Not only do several of Hurston’s works, most specifically Their Eyes Were Watching God and Jonah’s Gourd Vine, mold into the conventions of the migration narrative, in most cases, they push the boundaries of the genre. Hurston creates, in these two works especially, migration narratives with characters who travel on symbolic journeys all over the southern United States: Janie in search of love and companionship; Starks, Woods, and Pearson for financial and personal freedoms and opportunities—and through her exploration of ascension and immersion in Southern African-American communities, Hurston distinguishes herself from other migration authors, such as Dunbar, Johnson, and Toomer, whose narratives mostly center on northern migration. After examining her works through the critical lenses of Lawrence Rodgers, Helen Yitah, and Hazel Carby, I believe that Hurston clearly chooses the South as a destination for her migrants because the folklore customs of the all-black communities Hurston depicts provide a
sense of familiarity and opportunities social promotion not available in the North. By pushing the boundaries of the migration narrative conventions, Hurston gives agency to, and highlights the significance of, the folk community often ignored by generic migration narratives.
through geographic spaces and challenging Rodgers’s argument that Their Eyes is “decidedly not about migration” (92). By examining works beyond Their Eyes Were Watching God, one can see Hurston working beyond the boundaries of the migration narrative, especially as she experiments with her characters’ symbolic journeys throughout the South. John Pearson’s path in Hurston’s Jonah’s Gourd Vine is similar to the one Janie follows in Their Eyes. Pearson first migrates to Notsaluga, Alabama to flee from his rigid stepfather; after run-ins with the law, he heads further south to Eatonville, Florida, over to Sanford, then to Plant City. If we read these texts alongside the criticism of Helen Yitah, Hazel Carby, and others, we can see that Hurston’s characters make deliberate choices to remain in the South, not just because it is a site of folklore customs that helps to establish and maintain a sense of familiarity with the place, but also for reasons motivated by economics and social mobility. Because the South lost large numbers of workers at such a rapid rate in the early twentieth century, there would have been more opportunity for employment for her characters (and real migrants, as well) than before the Great Migration hit its peak.
In her article, “Rethinking the African American Great Migration Narrative: Reading Zora Neale Hurston’s Jonah’s Gourd Vine,” Helen Yitah examines the methods Hurston uses to challenge the conventions of the migration narrative and “the ‘urban adjustment’ model that looks outward to socio-cultural factors to explain the plight of black migrants” (10).
When extended to Their Eyes, Yitah’s argument substantiates the contention that Hurston successfully situates her migration novels within the South—which diverges from the prototypical migration narrative structures laid out by Stepto, Griffin, and Rodgers, who argue that the only way to reach full ascension and immersion is through a direct journey north—and in doing so, she brings attention to the plight of black migrants who remain in the South. Yitah expresses that she believes “looking at Jonah’s Gourd Vine from the perspective of the migrant’s inward search for self-knowledge leads to a more nuanced view of the Great Migration in African American fiction” (11). Because Hurston’s characters do not always fall victim to their environments (Tea Cake being one obvious exception) or other oppressive forces, they are granted a certain agency not found in other migration narratives: the agency to choose to remain in the South. Through the journeys of her characters, Hurston “focuses on black migrant movement patterns within the South, using John Pearson’s frequent changes of location and employment to show that migration …show more content…
within rural areas in the South was as significant as the more familiar migration to cities up North” (Yitah 14). For characters such as John Pearson in Jonah’s Gourd Vine, Tea Cake Woods and Joe Starks in Their Eyes, and as we will see later in Chapter 3’s discussion of Hurston’s short story “John Redding Goes to Sea,” this means financial, social, and inner growth opportunities. Each of these characters move, sometimes multiple times, (e.g. Starks and Woods) to take advantage of opportunities to capitalize on forming new identities within communities new to them. This is evident when Starks opens his store and builds his authoritative power over the community. By providing an economic (and cultural) hub for the citizens of Eatonville, he is able to afford a comfortable life (financially speaking) for himself and Janie and also garners the “respect” of the community, enough to become a prominent leader within it. Similarly, Tea Cake constantly shifts from one location to the next, with each movement, it appears, almost solely for financial reasons. He moves to Eatonville, meets, seduces, and wins Janie’s affections—even with the town clamoring that he is only after her for her money—and he eventually departs again (repeatedly) to spend Janie’s money. He always returns, as well, presumably for more. Finally, when Janie tells him she only wants to be with him, not left behind by him or subservient to him, the two agree to move again—this time to escape the gossip of Eatonville, but most certainly for financial reasons: work on the Muck. And with that, Janie must again navigate a new community.
The communities of the South, a region that many, if not most of Hurston’s characters never leave, provide more than just financial opportunities, they also provide a sense of belonging that cannot be obtained in the North. Even if these communities can be found in the North, most of the time they are deeply rooted in the customs and rituals brought with them by migrants who have traveled from the South. Moreover, as Hurston often utilizes the migrant stranger as the protagonist of her narratives, these characters often find themselves stuck on the fringes, and often only as an observer, of the communities to which they seek to belong. Janie feels neglected and taken advantage of by her first husband; she is regularly left to watch the interactions of Joe’s front porch, without being an active participant; and Tea Cake routinely leaves her for days on end while he uses her money to socialize. Janie, like most “stranger” archetypes, when refused a place within the community they want to join, will then begin a journey to fulfill her own desires and wishes. The migrant’s “inward search,” as Yitah refers to it, is what I draw upon to declare that Hurston, in these works, draws attention to a group of people that most migration narratives overlook: the black migrant in the South. Hurston’s characters--Janie Crawford, Joe Starks, Tea Cake Woods, and in Jonah’s Gourd Vine, John Pearson—all endeavor on symbolic journeys that are in direct opposition to the concept that migration patterns need occur only in a northerly direction.
For example, in Their Eyes, Janie’s constant search for love and companionship motivates her to move on four different occasions, yet Eatonville serves as the desired place for her to settle (multiple times), despite the hard life she has lived there under Joe’s jealous thumb. Janie, still searching for identity and independence and still wanting to be valued and respected by her partner, sets aside once more the sensual notions of blooming trees and kissing bees in order to better establish herself within a home that makes her comfortable and meets her expectations of marriage. Helen Yitah notes that “(t)hrough these travels Hurston explores the physical journey as a search for self” (14). Janie, who has ambitions that reach far beyond the confines of Logan’s farm, uses the physical journey as a way to achieve the life of self-fulfillment and appreciation from others that she truly desires. Because of her own ambitions, she is completely overwhelmed by the determination that Starks demonstrates in moving from one place to the next to take advantage of the financial freedom and social promotion that the growing community of Eatonville provides. Although she is not physically attracted to him, it is his ambition and authoritativeness which persuades her to follow him to Eatonville. In Eatonville, Starks uses his savings to purchase more land from Captain Josiah Eaton, from nearby Maitland, Florida, and within weeks of moving into town, he establishes a store, post office, builds a house, visits nearby towns to drum up new citizens for the town, and is nominated for and elected mayor—almost instantaneously demonstrating his authority over the townspeople and his ability to bend people to his will. Janie is aware of the emergence of Joe’s authority in the town. The narrator describes:
There was something about Joe Starks that cowed the town. It was not because of physical fear. He was not fist fighter. His bulk was not even imposing as men go. Neither was it because he was more literate than the rest. Something else made men give way before him. He had a bow-down command in his face, and every step he took made the thing more tangible. (49)
Although the town flourishes under Joe’s leadership, its inhabitants cannot help but to notice the dichotomy of Joe’s character: the ways in which he can both charm and psychologically intimidate his wife and the citizens of Eatonville. As the men of the community gossip, tell tales, or otherwise share news on the porch of Joe’s store, they are completely aware that he seeks complete control and authority over them, which is not much different from the authority held over them in some form or another for most of their lives. Sim Jones notes that Joe “loves obedience out of everybody under de sound of his voice” and Sam Watson concurs: “he’s de wind and we’se de grass. We bend whichever way he blows…but at dat us needs him. De town wouldn’t be nothin’ if it wasn’t for him” (49). Here, Hurston uses the conventions of the migration narrative to address the authority that Starks holds over Janie and the community members of Eatonville. Hurston extends the migration narrative conventions associated with symbolic journeys through ascension and immersion to this reading of Their Eyes, through Janie, whose symbolic journey for love and companionship is representative of Stepto’s notion of ascension as described in first section of this chapter, and through Starks, who is representative of the genus loci that Janie (and the community) must encounter when entering into, and fully bonding to, her chosen destination. Sim Jones and Sam Watson clearly see Joe Starks as the looming force in control of the local community; he is, after all, the owner of the very spot where the community gathers to interact.
After Joe’s death, Janie’s symbolic journey for self-fulfillment begins once more. After meeting, falling in love with, and settling into a relationship with a man several years her younger, Janie once again takes to wandering, this time, even further South. Down on the “muck” she and Tea Cake can make a living together, working in the sugar cane fields, enjoying all the fruits of their labor and what the land has to offer, and Janie, as she drifts off to sleep after the conversation, “looked down on him and felt a self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from its hiding place” (128)—and the two head south. Unfortunately for the couple, this is where Tea Cake tragically meets his death amid the aftermath of the Lake Okeechobee hurricane. When he is bitten by a rabid dog, Janie is forced to shoot him when he breaks out into a violent rage. Despite standing trial, and subsequently being found innocent of murder by a jury of white men, the friends the couple have made there—but who have turned their back on her before and during the trial—beg her to stay. Janie has other plans. Not long after being acquitted, Janie sets off for Eatonville, the home she has left not long before. After Tea Cake’s death, Janie returns to Eatonville, in order to reestablish the roots she had once set there.
Janie’s movements, like John Pearson’s, reinforce Yitah’s assertion that “Hurston’s narratives portray a diversity of migration patterns both similar to and different from those found in black fiction since the early decades of the twentieth century: moving from South to North; journeying within the South; moving from one rural area to another, or another urban center; and taking migrant journeys that end up where they begin” (12). Although Janie’s journey does not officially begin in Eatonville, Florida, it is the place where she has spent most of her life—a place where she has established some semblance of roots, developed relationships, and established an identity; moreover, it is the place where she meets Tea Cake, so it is only natural that she would have sentimental ties to the town and look to return there when her life is turned upside down. Furthermore, John Pearson’s movements have been mostly due to his brushes with the law or as a search for employment; but these movements, like Janie’s, have occurred exclusively within the South, and proved to be a general search for self. Hurston, through the symbolic journeys of her characters, grants them agency to choose alternative destinations for themselves, especially those outside the normal school of thought that suggests ascension and communitas can only be achieved in the North.
Rodgers contends that Hurston’s work “imaginatively reinvents a fantasized alternative to the Great Migration by creating a communal setting of shared, egalitarian, agricultural labor” (93). This idea is most obviously identified in Janie’s relationship with Tea Cake. They are able to succeed, both financially and emotionally, on the “muck” because the fertile land allows for them to do so. When the land, and nature, turns against them, however, their love must come to an end. In her analysis of Jonah’s Gourd Vine, Yitah notes the importance of agriculture and occupation in “successful” migrations. She says there “is ample evidence that John Pearson’s achievements in different destinations in the South were due mainly to his innate potential to pursue various vocations” (19). Even so, this type of achievement, according to Rodgers, is only an illusion. Janie and Tea Cake prosper only because the Everglades represent a “mythic space” that operates in opposition to the “postmigration life represented by the male-centered, hierarchical values of Janie’s first two husbands” (Rodgers 93). So, instead of migrating to a new place in search for one’s identity and a better life, Janie, according to Rodgers, creates her own space within the South to escape the figurative, oppressive Southern nature of her first two husbands. These first two husbands—Logan Killicks, a hard-driving and work-oriented man, and Joe Starks, the capitalistic and socially dominant authoritarian—each represent the “unsatisfactory southern versions of the driving force behind northern urban capitalism” and when the two fail to satisfy Janie’s need to fulfill her ideals of self, Hurston negates the “transformative potential of migration, especially for women” (Rodgers 93). Although Rodgers’s study of migration focuses almost solely on migration to northern urban areas, and narratives that convey such accounts, he does recognize Their Eyes Were Watching God as a “variant” on the migration novel. I counter argue that by using the outline he uses to establish the conventions of the migrant narrative to place Hurston’s novel firmly within the tradition of the migration novel. When Rodgers defines the genre as consisting of an “escape from bondage” and a “journey to a promised land,” (3)—that is, a land in which a living can be earned and living involves integrity—he virtually describes the framework of Their Eyes Were Watching God, despite its characters’ numerous moves to and within the South. In fact, Hurston’s texts more than fit within the comprehensive description of the migrant novel laid out by Stepto, Rodgers, and Griffin, because of Janie’s quest for ascent and immersion, and the symbolic journey she makes to achieve that goal. Janie Crawford, in search of identity, companionship, and agency, takes advantage of numerous opportunities to escape the bondage of her marriages and the authoritarian men that control her existence. She leaves Logan Killicks to move on to Joe Starks, and after his death, once more evades her painful memories of him and the community of Eatonville to move to Jacksonville and the muck with Tea Cake.
It is crucial to examine these transitions as more than just an emotional or intrinsic search for one’s self—it is imperative that we examine Janie’s figurative shifts on a more literal and geographic level. Not only is she shifting from one relationship to another, but she also actually changes her location each time she does so, and each time she does so, she moves further south (of course with the one exception of her decision to move back to Eatonville after Tea Cake’s death). With each move, she hopes her newfound “promised land” will deliver the ideal relationship for which she longs. All the while, the South serves as her vehicle for movement, and each movement strengthens her bond with the area and the people with whom she interacts. Instead of the South becoming a place to forget or a conflict to overcome, like it is for many migrants in northern migration narratives, the South becomes a communal ground for Hurston’s characters, who find comfort in the folkloric customs of the community. By positioning her characters in such a manner, Hurston provides a voice for the folklore culture of the rural South that it did not previously have.
In her essay “The Politics of Fiction, Anthropology, and the Folk: Zora Neale Hurston,” Hazel Carby asserts that the group Hurston “wanted to represent she defined as rural folk, and she measured them and their cultural forms against an urban, mass culture.” (75). Carby’s primary argument is that Hurston “discursively displaces” the migrant’s move from the North to the South, focusing on the migrant’s attempts to maintain some semblance of their folk heritage. Moreover, Hurston “recognized that the people whose culture she rewrote were not the majority of the population, and that the cultural forms she was most interested in reproducing were not being maintained…Hurston identified herself both as an intellectual and as a representative figure from the folk culture she reproduced and made authentic in her work.” (75). For Hurston, choosing places, such as Eatonville, Florida, to return to both as an anthropologist and as a fiction writer, was a “return to the familiar” which gives voice to a “subaltern group” (Carby 79) that had otherwise been overlooked by the migration narrative canon. Hurston responds to the general conventions of the migration narrative’s assumption that the North is the only place for agency by providing agency and voice to the characters who migrate to and within the South. When trying to establish herself as an authoritative voice, Janie must counterbalance her newfound independence with maintaining a positive public perception of herself. The novel, and its protagonist, break the boundaries of social convention by creating an antagonistic relationship between Janie as woman and the folk as community through intellect and speech. Janie must choose whether or not she uses her voice, like Joe, to establish dominance over a community which has formed and will continue to form judgments on her because they, in fact, are ignorant to her plight. In order to do this, Janie’s story needs an intermediary, such as Pheoby. Janie’s choice in the way that she reveals her story, “distinguishes not only her story, but also her position from that of the folk as community,” which is an “evocation of authentic black culture and her refusal to tell her tale gives her power over the community of folk” (Carby 84). All of this, according to Carby, can be accomplished on the porch (of the store, the shanty houses on the Muck, and at Pheoby’s house). In this instance, even though Hurston has displaced Janie’s migration narrative to a Southern rural community, the protagonist battles for control of agency over her own actions and story—but, one can argue that Janie’s tacit acceptance that the community can/will think whatever they choose of her is in of itself a sign that she has gained that agency. She is aware that she cannot change their perceptions of her, so she chooses to rebel against the folk community’s obsession with storytelling. In refusing to adhere to the norms of the community she once again chooses as a destination, she resumes her role of Simmel’s stranger in Eatonville.
Given the history of the Hurston’s hometown of Eatonville, Florida, the first all-black incorporated town in the United States, there is little to question as to why she would want to bring attention to such a place.
The next chapter of this thesis will address that at length. But before moving on, it is important to note that I have provided numerous examples as to how Hurston displaces the migrant stranger character into Southern folk communities, such as Eatonville. Not only do several of Hurston’s works, most specifically Their Eyes Were Watching God and Jonah’s Gourd Vine, mold into the conventions of the migration narrative, in most cases, they push the boundaries of the genre. Hurston creates, in these two works especially, migration narratives with characters who travel on symbolic journeys all over the southern United States: Janie in search of love and companionship; Starks, Woods, and Pearson for financial and personal freedoms and opportunities—and through her exploration of ascension and immersion in Southern African-American communities, Hurston distinguishes herself from other migration authors, such as Dunbar, Johnson, and Toomer, whose narratives mostly center on northern migration. After examining her works through the critical lenses of Lawrence Rodgers, Helen Yitah, and Hazel Carby, I believe that Hurston clearly chooses the South as a destination for her migrants because the folklore customs of the all-black communities Hurston depicts provide a
sense of familiarity and opportunities social promotion not available in the North. By pushing the boundaries of the migration narrative conventions, Hurston gives agency to, and highlights the significance of, the folk community often ignored by generic migration narratives.