Porches In Their Eyes Were Watching God

The porch built into the foremost structure of many homes in the Southern United States represented a free space to share current local and/or international news, recent happenings in the community, entertain local audiences both young and old with stories, and debate on a number of topics. This in mind, it is no coincidence that Their Eyes Were Watching God, the 1937 novel and best known work by Zora Neale Hurston, begins by describing the setting on a porch: “The sun was gone, but he had left his footprints in the sky. It was the time for sitting on porches beside the road. It was the time to hear things and talk. These sitters had been tongueless, earless, eyeless conveniences all day long. Mules brutes had occupied their skins. But now,
the sun and the bossman were gone, so the skins felt powerful and human. They became lords of sounds and lesser things.
They passed nations through their mouths. They sat in judgment” (Hurston 1). Further, the porch was sometimes exemplary of the patriarchal, gendered expectations that were exacerbated by Southern traditions. At certain times, more women were found on porches than men, and vice versa. Called the stoop in Northern and Midwestern cities, it is pivotal to understand the porch as a sacred and unpoliced space where members of the community could express themselves and escape the stringent, racially prejudiced-based regulations that dominated their lives. In this way, those that congregated on the porch established themselves in an invisible middle ground between the outside world and the comforts of home and the familiarity of practices that defined Blackness on their own terms. On the porch, women, men, girls, and boys alike were allowed to relinquish the docile, but necessary behaviors that perpetuated their assumed subservience to white Southerners. Contrarily, porches somewhat served as an underpinning to criticize others, such as when the adult women of Eatonville condemn Janie, mainly for her slovenly attire and eventually for her financial
and romantic circumstances:
“What she doin’ coming back here in dem overhalls? Can’t she find no dress to put on?—Where’s dat blue satin dress she left here in?—Where all dat money her husband took and died and left her?—What dat ole forty year ole ’oman doin’ wid her hair swingin’ down her back lak some young gal?—Where she left dat young lad of a boy she went off here wid?—Thought she was going to marry?—Where he left her?—What he done wid all her money?—Betcha he off wid some gal so young she ain’t even got no hairs—why she don’t stay in her class?—” (Hurston 2)
This scene is indicative of how central insults can be in porch culture, allowing women and men alike to regurgitate the cultural norms impressed on the racial and regional culture that surrounds them.
Along with raising points about how Janie is dressed and has decided to style her hair, conjunctures are presented about the reason for these things. Because none of the women would speak directly toward Janie this way, the contrived sense of strength in numbers on the porch creates an environment that encourages this discourse. Despite the negative criticism hurled in Janie’s direction from the women and the lascivious glances of the men, Janie shifts the entire paradigm as she approaches: “They scrambled a noisy “good evenin’” and left their mouths setting open and their ears full of hope. Her speech was pleasant enough, but she kept walking straight on to her gate. The porch couldn’t talk for looking” (Hurston 2). The porch can also be an environment that ostracizes the very individuals that sit on it, should they interrupt the series of linguistic patterns that have piqued the interest and captured the attention of the majority. This can elicit unpleasant, subtly offensive exchanges within the
environment:
“‘She ain’t even worth talkin’ after,’ Lulu Moss drawled through her nose. ‘She sits high, but she looks low. Dat’s what Ah say ’bout dese ole women runnin’ after young boys.’
Pheoby Watson hitched her rocking chair forward before she spoke. ‘Well, nobody don’t know if it’s anything to tell or not. Me, Ah’m her best friend, and Ah don’t know.’
‘Maybe us don’t know into things lak you do, but we all know how she went ’way from here and us sho seen her come back. ’Tain’t no use in your tryin’ to cloak no ole woman lak Janie Starks, Pheoby, friend or no friend.’ ‘At dat she ain’t so ole as some of y’all dat’s talking.’ ‘She’s way past forty to my knowledge, Pheoby.’ ‘No more’n forty at de outside.’ ‘She’s ’way too old for a boy like Tea Cake.’ ‘Tea Cake ain’t been no boy for some time. He’s round thirty his ownself.’ ‘Don’t keer what it was, she could stop and say a few words with us. She act like we done done something to her,” Pearl Stone complained. “She de one been doin’ wrong.’
‘You mean, you mad ’cause she didn’t stop and tell us all her business. Anyhow, what you ever know her to do so bad as y’all make out? The worst thing Ah ever knowed her to do was taking a few years offa her age and dat ain’t never harmed nobody. Y’all makes me tired. De way you talkin’ you’d think de folks in dis town didn’t do nothin’ in de bed ’cept praise de Lawd. You have to ’scuse me, ’cause Ah’m bound to go take her some supper.’ Pheoby stood up sharply” (Hurston 3).
Pheoby is immediately vilified by the other women as she attempts to defend Janie’s honor from the clutches of their duplicitous neighbors and presents a sharply opposing opinion. Though the