Response to duCille

Anne duCille argues that reading Their Eyes Were Watching God  as a novel that celebrate heterosexual love or  sisterhood and acquiring female independence is to underread and oversimplify the novel. She instead believes that the novel is about powerlessness, power, submission, self-fulfillment, silence, and voice. I agree with her reading of the text. Not only does the novel entail perspective on sisterhood and relationships between men and women, but it also draws attention to how the two function in a male dominated society. Anne duCille is making a point that the context in which Janie tries to find self-fulfillment and love is just an important part, if not more, of understanding the message or intent of the novel.

I, however, disagree with the rejection of Susan Willis’ reading of Janie and Pheoby  friendship and the value that it has. Susan Willis believes that the novel has a point where they highlight the value of female friendship in dealing with a patriarchal society. She mentions the passage where Pheoby feels that the conversation with Janie has inspired her to have agency and not be silent about what she desires, in her relationship in particular, saying, “Ah means tuh have Sam take me fishing wid him after this.” duCille rejection of this idea speaks to the way that feminism excludes women who believe in the equality of women, but still hold men to some importance. duCille argues against Willis’ because she believes that if Willis’ reading was true, Pheoby would have asked that Janie be fishing with her. In my reading of this passage, I believe that Susan has a valid reading, because it is possible to have female friendship and still want to have a relationship with a man despite the patriarchal society that we live in. The passage where Janie says that , “..mah tongue is in mah friend’s mouf,” indicate the closeness of their relationship. Janie and Pheoby’s friendship is not obsolete because Pheoby is not the one that Janie thinks of at the end of the novel or because Pheoby doesn’t ask Janie to go fishing with her. Subversive sisterhood, considering Pheoby’s inspiration to have agency from the conversation that she has with Janie and considering the language between them to understand the intimate nature of their friendship, is just as much a theme in the novel despite the fact that it still allows Pheoby and Janie to include men, and that’s ok.  

duCille highlights the idea of forgetting and remembering that is mentioned at the beginning of the novel and uses that to make the point that the novel undermines the problem of patriarchy by having Janie continuously seek love from men despite the way that they oppress her as participants and believers in a patriarchal ideology, and I will have to disagree. The novel acknowledges the problem and rejects it through Janie. Janie is not content with the power that the men in her life attempts to exert over her, and she tells them so. She does not tolerate it, because she leaves the men that do not understand her attempt to help them to see the problem with their expectations of her, which stem from a male-dominating ideology. She does continue to want to be with a man and it’s ok for her to continue to want to find a man who is in opposition with this ideology as she is.

duCille makes some great points about making sure to consider context to understanding the entire intent of the novel, but falls short when it comes to understanding what the bare bones of the novel — the things that are happening in the novel that are readily noticeable to a non-feminist reader — along with the meat — the patriarchal context in which everything is happening — means.