Pressed From Her Heart
F.R.R. Mallory
February 14, 2006

Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace.
Amelia Earhart, 1927

Zora Neale Hurston's short story "Sweat" leads us firmly into the untender violence stretched thin across the gaunt remains of the relationship between a hard-working woman, Delia, and Sykes, the indecent man who claims reluctant ownership of the position of husband. As she kneels among the piles of washing which pay their bills, he enters as "...something long, round, limp and black fell upon her shoulders and slithered to the floor beside her" (713). In this single sentence Hurston offers a profound glimpse into this man's nature. He's a snake. He uncoils about his wife's shoulders a bullwhip, suggesting of whipping and domestic brutality. He enjoys her abrupt start of fear, "If you such a big fool dat you got to have a fit over a earth worm or a string, Ah don't keer how bad Ah skeer you" (713). This is the exposed underbelly: the raw, uncivil behavior of an emasculated man whose moral decay has descended to a point where he seeks his courage and esteem from acts of betrayal, terrorism and degradation.

Stage set, Hurston then delicately allows the first signs of Delia's resistance. Her "...habitual meekness seemed to slip from her shoulders like a blown scarf" (714). Delia realizes that Sykes intends to take his brutality against her even further down the path of destruction by attempting to ruin her wash business under the guise that her work shames him, because she does laundry for white people. At this point Delia knows that the small home she has worked so hard for is the focus of Sykes' greed: "...you better quit gittin' me riled up, else they'll be totin' you out sooner than you expect" (714). This is an obvious threat. When he retreats to seek the arms of his current lover, he leaves Delia amid the rotting debris that is all that remains of their marriage.

At this point Hurston warns that, "...whatever goes over the Devil's back, is got to come under his belly" telling us that Sykes' behavior will not go unchallenged or that life or God will rebalance Delia's world. By using the word "devil" Hurston creates a Biblical reference allowing the reader to connect the serpent from the Biblical Garden of Eden story which lured "Adam and Eve, to violate the commandment of the Demiurge*, and so commence the work of redemption (Mason 16). To redeem is to free from harm, a message which clearly foreshadows Delia's path. This scene is punctuated with Delia reaching an inner reconciliation: "...she was able to build a spiritual earthworks against her husband. His shells could no longer reach her" (714). In this way we know that any remaining feeling she has left for him is now gone. Hurston has skillfully led us to a point where we can be satisfied that what will happen to Sykes, has been fully deserved.

Hurston then broadens our viewpoint to allow us to experience Delia and Sykes' relationship through the eyes of her community when a group of men sitting out on a porch discuss the ruin of Delia at Sykes' hand, his brutality and betrayals and their conclusion that there "taint no law on earth dat kin make a man be decent if it aint in 'im" (716). Further "...we oughter kill 'im" (717).

As a reader we know where this is going, but it is like every betrayal we have ever experienced is sitting on the line and we need to know that it will come out properly. Hurston plays into the our hope that the world will right itself, that the scales will tip in their silent nod toward support of everyone of us who are both hardworking and yet vulnerable. When Sykes stuffs a dangerous diamond-back snake into the symbolic container of Delia's business, and by extension, herself and her home, leaving the snake where he knows she will see it, we are ready. Here is Sykes' arrival once more as Hurston spirals us back to the blackened beginning of this tale.

The snake, caught only because it had gorged itself and become slow, is the weapon waiting to rise between them. Hurston masterfully uses the snake to represent both Sykes and Delia. From Sykes' perspective the snake is his victim, much like Delia, trapped inside its house, his to torment. He believes the snake is his weapon to turn upon Delia. Yet the snake is also the redeemer: that which waits to rise and free itself from harm. It is vulnerable and its strength, though hidden, seeks only the opportunity to rise up. Hurston paces us through the days as the snake digests its prey, telling us "Delia's work-worn knees crawled over the earth in Gesthsemane and on the rocks of Calvary many, many times during these months" (717). In this passage Hurston offers us powerful Biblical descriptives to more clearly align Delia with the crucifixion of Christ and the sacrifice he made for the greater good. Through this reference Hurston suggests that what will happen to Sykes may actually serve the greater good of Delia's extended community. We are allowed to experience Delia's torment as she confronts Sykes' betrayals and to perceive how the symbol of the captured snake foreshadows his intention to destroy her. By using these precise references Hurston compares Delia's position to that of Jesus and the snake regains its original Biblical stature as the spirit of deity embodied as serpent. As a reader we know this story will climax with the snake but we don't yet know what the snake will choose.

Delia discovers the now hungry snake has freed itself from her husband's imprisoned cruelty to hide in her washing. We are with her when she races from the house in fear, to hide herself in the barn. We are with her when she wakens to see Sykes destroying the snake's empty box. By including this scene we know that Sykes knows the snake is loose and his destruction of the box hints that perhaps he believes Delia has run afoul of the snake. He doesn't call out for her instead he creeps inside the still darkened kitchen. This is Sykes descent into Hell, where he comes under the snake's belly.

In the final scene Delia and the reader wait under the window to the sound of the snake dancing the man. We listen to the rattle of the snake's death, the blows and curses - the silence. "...letting in the red dawn..." (720). While Delia "...crept over to the four-o'clocks and stretched herself on the cool earth to recover" (720). Where dawn washes in with bloodstained color and we rest, as if laid down in death - to recover. We have listened, laid in wait, observed and examined the price - of this peace.

Work Cited

Hurston, Zora Neale, "Sweat." Literature For Composition, Essays, Fiction,
Poetry, and Drama, 7th ed. Ed. Sylvan Barnet, William Burto, William E.
Cain. New York, Pearson/Longman, 2005. 712-720

Mason, Robert T., Ph.D., D.D., "The Divine Serpent in Myth and Legend", 1999. http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/5789/serpent.htm

Reference
* Demiurgos - God of the Old Testament

Zora Neale Hurston
1891-1960

Zora writes with a muscular, visceral style capable of cutting through the niceities of behavior. In this way she displays a degree of inner courage that summons my deepest admiration. How did she become so brave to be able to challenge the cautious conditioning with which women are raised? How to muster that courage, to spill real words on the page - words still resonant with undisguised power decades after her death?

She teaches a form of female humanism that I don't want to reduce to the cache label of feminism.

I struggle with the isms so prevalent and popular in the culture of my day. We have developed a strategy for handling the isms, created new careful language to mask the ism inside the appearance of nonism which is just the reverse coat of the same ism it fronts. It is too difficult to grasp the terrifying courage of a Zora who didn't resort to such subterfuge.

I haven't her courage.

Not yet and perhaps never.

She is exactly what I like to read, to experience because she dissolves the isms without inflicting or punishing me. She doesn't need to become the ism as is the convention of the day by pretending she isn't the ism. She simply isn't the ism.

Thank you Zora!

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