Women Writers: The Choices Woman Make

                                                                                                                                        Women Writers, ESC Spring                                                                                                                The Norton Anthology of                                                                                                                Literature by Women, 3rd Edition                                                                                                        June 2013

The Choices Woman Make

Women, who come to voice who they are with the final realization that they can no longer accept how they are treated by men look at any way possible out of the situation.  There are woman who make plans to leave, those who fantasize about the spouse dying and a different life, some allow the situation to work out without personal interference and others snap, taking the final situation into their own hands.  In looking at the following two stories, we will see how a woman’s choices made in their marriage affects the outcome of their lives.

Zora Neale Hurston penned a story, Sweat, about a washwoman, Delia Jones, who is married to a man, Sykes, who is both abusive and a cheater.   Delia collects the dirty clothes from white people on Saturday night when she delivers the clean clothes from the prior week’s laundry pick up.   Hurston, in setting the scene for the story, writes of a conscious act committed by Sykes while Delia’s back is turned to the doorway and she is in the kitchen concentrating on sorting the newly collected dirty laundry.  “Just then something long, round, limp and black fell upon her shoulders and slithered to the floor beside her.  A great terror took a hold of her. It softened her knees and dried her mouth so that it is a full minute before she could cry out or move” (349).  The implications are of a snake but she does not have just a slight healthy fear that most people have, but one of extreme terror to the point she cannot move.  Sykes is well aware of her terror and thinks using the black whip to be extremely funny.   Hurston shows by this reaction that Delia’s deepest terror is her fear of snakes.

For fifteen years Delia has taken in wash to make ends meet, to pay for their home, and to put food on the table. Sykes is unhappy about what she does, yet likes the money.   Again, as before, her husband says to stop, but this time he goes around kicking the clothes she has sorted on the kitchen floor, attempting to grind in more dirt. Sykes tries to threaten her with saying, “Ah aint gointer have it in mah house. Don’t gimme no lip neither, else Ah’ll throw ‘em out and put mah fist up side yo’ head to boot” (350). Hurston goes on to show how this meek woman, Delia, has finally had enough resulting in her standing up to Sykes.  “She seized the iron skillet from the stove and struck a defensive pose, which act surprised him greatly, coming from her” (350).  Delia not only shocks him with her actions but she goes on to tell him that he will bring no other woman into her house which her sweat has paid for and “Ah’m gointer stay right heah till Ah’m toted out foot foremost” (351).   When someone is abusive, there is always a great fear of more beatings, and more fights, so standing up to someone who beats you and cheats on you takes courage. The final act by the other person can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for you, yet the same act could be considered as inconsequential to someone else. Everyone has a different breaking point. By saying to Sykes, it will take my passing and being carried out of here feet first to get me to give up this home is letting Sykes know exactly where Delia stands. “A little awed by the new Delia, he sidled out of the door and slammed the back gate after him” (351).  As a man, Sykes is truly clueless about not understanding how really fed up she finally is nor does he know how to handle this new Delia.  After months of fighting between each other, Sykes brings home a so called gift for her, a soapbox that he puts next to the steps leading into the house.  Inside the box is a huge six-foot poisonous diamond back rattlesnake.  Sykes shows off the rattlesnake to his friends saying that he knows how to handle it without getting bit.  However, this maybe his way to terrify her and once more show Delia who is really the boss and it is not her.  I strongly feel in writing this that Hurston is setting the stage for Sykes to be able to say; oh somehow, it got out and Delia didn’t know how to handle it and I wasn’t home to save her.  It was a horrible way for her to have died.  This would then be his final act of terror inflicted upon Delia.