Teacake and Janie decide to move to Jacksonville, Florida. Once they get to the town, they get married. Then, we find out that Janie has taken two hundred dollars with her as emergency money, but she doesn’t tell Teacake.
The next morning Teacake leaves to get fish for breakfast. However, Teacake doesn’t return, and Janie is missing her emergency money. When Teacake comes home the next morning, he tells Janie a story about how he spent her two hundred dollars on an extravagant dinner party with the whole town. After the story is over, Teacake swears that he will make more money than Janie brought because he is a very talented gambler.
Janie accepts his apology, and for the next week Teacake practices his dice rolling and card dealing. Then, once the paychecks go out at the railroad yards, Teacake heads out to gamble with the men. Janie waits up all night again, and Teacake comes straggling in around midnight. Janie goes outside to get him, and she realizes he had been stabbed. Teacake tells another elaborate story. This time Teacake tells Janie how he escaped the fight less harmed than the other guy, but in the process he still won some money. He tells Janie to check his coat pocket and she pulls out three hundred and twenty two dollars.
Lastly, Teacake tells Janie that they are going to take a trip to the Everglades to have fun and make some money.
“He drifted off into sleep and Janie looked down on him and felt a self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from its hiding place.” Why has Janie's soul been forced into “hiding?” How Janie able to come out of her shell and “shine” when she is with Teacake? Why does Hurston choose to use "self-crushing" to describe the love Janie felt for Teacake?
Janie's soul was forced into "hiding" because through her whole life, she has never really been able to full express her own individualism and her own self. For example, when she was with Logan, she never really loved him, so she couldn't express that. When she was with Jody, he hindered her from being herself by forcing her to do manual labor and tie her hair up. Jody acted like he owned her.
ReplyDeleteHowever, Janie is able to come out of her shell and "shine" when she is with Tea Cake because he lets Janie be herself. An example of that is when he lets her do what she wants with her hair, even when he knows it'll attract other men. Tea Cake also treats her as an equal, so it makes her more comfortable to be herself
Hurston uses "self-crushing" love to describe Janie's love for Tea Cake because it was a new kind of love that Janie experienced and it just the way Tea Cake acted towards her and respected melted her heart. Hurston might have also used that word because Janie knows that marrying Tea Cake would definitely tarnish her image to the world. Luckily, Janie was able to stand up to the society's perception of her.
Janie's soul was forced into hiding by her first two husbands who did not appreciate her. They kept her true nature under wraps and forced her to fit into their description of a wife. While she was with Joe Starks, she felt this oppression for twenty years, keeping all of her emotions bottled up. Janie is able to shine when she is with Tea Cake because she can be herself. Tea Cake loves her because of who she is, and not because of what she can do for him, like in her previous relationships. He lets her do what she wants, letting her fulfill her desire to explore the world and sate her adventurous cravings that she had to suppress. Janie's love is self-crushing because she feels that with Tea Cake she can be more of herself, which is what she has wanted for over twenty years of her life during her marriages. Janie's love is self-crushing because she feels like she needs him; that she wants to be with him.
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