Domestic Violence and Cultural Relativism
Cultural relativism is an anthropological idea which asserts that in order to truly understand another culture, you must try to accept that your culture is no more "right" than the other culture is, that your rules are just as arbitrary, and neither is superior to the other. Zora Neale Hurston engages with this idea, although the book isn't an anthropological study, when she shows us bits of Eatonville and Muck culture - she invites us onto their porch and into their lives. She also invites us into their personal relationships, which raises the complicated question - how are we supposed to view the domestic violence in the book? Are we supposed to be anthropologists, or are we supposed to side with Janie?
The narration seems inconsistent when it comes to its depiction of the violence, whether it's supposed to be acceptable or it's bad. It's clear that in Janie's relationship with Jody, the violence is depicted as bad. We get a description of her coming to hate Jody after he beats her, her image of him shattering in her mind. Since we are most sympathetic to Janie, we come to hate Jody through her. We hate how he forces her to stay in the store, wear her hair up, and keeps her from speaking, all arguably forms of emotional abuse. Therefore, when we hear others in Eatonville talking about the domestic violence in their families as normal, it seems like we're supposed to hate that too. It comes in quick succession with the violent scene between Jody and Janie, so it's hard not to believe that we are supposed to think the town's endorsement of domestic violence is bad.
However, Tea Cake's domestic violence is glossed over by the narration. The scene is treated much more as a piece of anthropological "data" - we get everybody's perspective on the violence except Janie's, and every perspective validates it. This depiction of violence is inconsistent with the idea that domestic violence is bad, even though this is the sentiment we get from Janie's scene with Jody. So, it seems plausible to read the scene with irony, because we have been sympathizing with Janie over issues of men being abusive or oppressive... until we get to the end of the book. Tea Cake checks out as a character, the narrative has him die because he tried to save Janie. This aspect of the narrative makes understanding the domestic violence extremely complicated.
I think part of this complication is Zora Neale Hurston asking us to accept the ideals and values of the time/culture. It's possible she is asking us to treat both scenes with cultural relativism - though domestic violence is a thing we cannot accept in our culture, if we are trying to be good anthropologists, should we try to accept it as a fact of life in another culture? Maybe doing so will bring us closer to understanding and accepting the culture Janie lives in, and thus, help us further understand Janie. But the book still seems critical. The book shows Janie's development as she deals with societal pressures put on her by patriarchal structures, and I read that narrative with critique - we aren't supposed to like that she has had to go through this, and that seems to conflict with the cultural relativism aspect. Are we supposed to accept the culture or challenge it? Perhaps Janie does both at the same time - she accepts her past, and she challenges gender roles. Maybe "burying the dead" is both literal and figurative - maybe burying it means accepting the past, but moving forward.
I am having a really hard time with this aspect of the book, and I don't know if it's because of my shortcomings as an anthropologist (my inability to look at 1930s small-southern-black-town culture objectively), or if it's because the novel aims to criticize domestic violence but doesn't sufficiently do it. I know in my heart there's no way I can accept domestic violence, but I'm not sure I'm being asked to. I don't know which of these feelings Hurston meant for me to have, and what they're supposed to mean. What do you guys think? How do you understand the function of the domestic violence in the narrative, or within the anthropological concept of cultural relativism? How do our different "lenses" change the way we view Tea Cake (through Hurston's/narrator's lens, through an anthropologist's lens, and our 2018 lens)?
Honestly, I think our (I say our because I agree with you) discomfort with Tea Cake's domestic abuse not really part of the anthropology. It just seems so different than the rest of the novel, so out of place. We almost always have Janie's perspective, especially if she's involved, but not here...? And like you said it's inconsistent with the other descriptions of domestic violence?
ReplyDeleteBut I do think that the way we view Tea Cake depends on the lens, and it'd be very different if we were alive in the 1930s. And no matter how objective we try to be, or how much Hurston writes with the idea of cultural relativism, we are always stuck in our perspective. I wrote a kinda similar to blogpost where I kind of talk more about this idea too though. But thanks for this awesome post and going in-depth with the conversation about domestic violence.
Yeah, I agree. However much I wanted the whole domestic violence thing to be a critique of the society of the time, the way Hurston portrayed it really didn’t seem to be heading in that direction to me. And I agree that it doesn’t seem to be too anthropological. In this moment, her own ideas of what is in the bounds of acceptable are definitely coloring the scene. The way I’ve reconciled this weird stray from Hurston’s usual prose is that this is after all a work of fiction, and even though it has anthropological tendencies, Hurston isn’t technically tied to any conventions or standards.
DeletePerhaps one possibility we haven't entertained is that Zora is never trying to tilt our opinions either way. The reason we hate Jody is because Janie hates Jody, not because he beats her. Zora might just present Jody beating her as a fact; that we aren't supposed to interpret it either way. So it's logical she does the same thing with Tea Cake. Obviously we don't feel comfortable in either scene, but I think it's clear that Janie much prefers Tea Cake than Jody. I don't think there's endorsement either way.
ReplyDeleteThe only way I've been able to reconcile the domestic violence scene between Janie and Tea Cake is by considering the inverse one where Janie goes after Tea Cake out of jealousy. Their relationship is intensely passionate, and with passion sometimes comes violence. Of course, we're still really uncomfortable with the scene where Tea Cake beats Janie, for the reasons you mentioned as well as those in Zona and Solomia's comments, but I think there's an extra layer here, one that is kind of like, outlaw-chic, lovingly sadomasochistic, there's even something kind of romantic about it-- in a way that is really discomfiting for us in our context, but that I think makes some sense within the novel and in the relationship depicted. As Tue said, Jody hits Janie out of hate, but Tea Cake ostensibly hits her out of love.
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