The theme of a woman’s strives to discover her true self in a male-centered world has become especially popular in feminist literature, during the course of 19th and early 20th centuries. Moreover, as we will show later in this paper, during the course of this historical period, many writers that have never been thought of as ardent promoters of feminist agenda (such as Zora Neale Hurston and Gustave Flaubert), would also incorporate this theme into their novels, even though that they tended to explore it from rather apolitical perspectives. In its turn, this can be explained by the fact that, during the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the influence of Christianity, which traditionally served as an ideological justification for socio-political policies in Western countries being based on the principle of male domination, has been drastically undermined.
In its turn, this explains the fact why Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God” and Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary” does not only point out at practical effects of women being set on the path of existential liberation from patriarchic oppressiveness, by they also provide us with the clue as to what represent obstacles, on such women’s path. Moreover, despite both novels’ clearly defined feminist overtones, they nevertheless depict women’s quest to attain happiness as such that cannot be discussed outside of their ability to pursue a romantic relationship with men, which in its turn, does not allow us to refer to both novels as being “progressive”, in strictly feminist context of this word. In this paper, we will aim at exploring this thesis to a further extent, while revealing the theme of conventional morality vs. women’s chances to attain happiness, clearly present in both works, as being affected by particularities of both authors’ gender affiliation and also by their stance on issues of socio-political importance. In its turn, this will allow us to identify major similarities and differences between Hurston and Flaubert’s views on what represents the very essence of the conflict between the concepts of love and independence.
The close analysis of “Their Eyes Were Watching God” and “Madame Bovary”, reveal Hurston and Flaubert’s attitude towards the notion of “women’s liberation” as being conceptually different. Whereas, Hurston portrays Janie as an idealistic woman, who pays close attention to social and political developments in America, during the course of “rolling twenties”, Flaubert presents Emma as an individual, whose psychological anxieties originate out of her hypertrophied sense of personal ego, which is why Emma’s obsession with “existential sophism” appears as being essentially artificial. Despite the fact that both characters seek the fulfillment of their romantic dreams of being with men they could truly love, Jamie associates such love with emotional closeness and with what she perceives as “social productiveness”, while Emma tends to think of love merely as the synonym of blind passion. It is not by an accident that, while observing a bee landing on pear tree flower, Jamie experiences an epiphany on the actual meaning of marriage and romantic relationship, in general: “She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arches to meet the loving embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was a marriage! She had been summoned to behold a revelation” (Hurston 25).
In Janie’s eyes, such a relationship’s most distinctive quality is harmony. In its turn, this explains why, when compared to Emma, Janie has proven herself as being much more capable of enduring hardships – her idealistic outlook on surrounding reality endowed her with existential stoicism. The attentive reader will notice the fact that it was named when Tea Cake offered Janie to play checkers when she looked upon him as someone who might qualify for being the subject of her romantic affection: “He set it up and began to show her and she found herself glowing inside. Somebody wanted her to play. Somebody thought it natural for her to play” (Hurston 220). On the other hand, Flaubert’s Emma associates emotional closeness with boredom – partially, due to Charles’ lack of intellectual wits and partially, due to the excessive amounts of testosterone running through her veins: “Emma was growing difficult, capricious. She ordered dishes for herself, then she did not touch them; one day drank only pure milk, the next cup of tea by the dozen. Often she persisted in not going out, then, stifling, threw open the windows and put on light dresses. Charles was boring her to tears” (Flaubert 110). The purely physiological essence of Emma’s existential inadequacy, which she thought was deriving out of her inability to find a “worthy” man, is being illustrated by the fact that periodically, she tended to become overly religious, while never ceasing to remain a woman endowed with rather ravenous sexual appetites.
In his famous book “Sex and Character”, Otto Weininger draws a direct link between the strength of a woman’s sexuality and the degree of her religiosity, while pointing out the fact that prostitutes have traditionally been known for the strength of their religious beliefs, whatever the illogical it might sound: “Female mysticism, when it is anything more than mere superstition, is either thinly veiled sexuality or it is a mere passive and unconscious acceptance of man’s religious views…The lover is readily transformed into a Savior; very readily the Savior becomes the lover… It is not only prostitutes who belong to the prostitute type; very many so-called respectable girls and married women belong to it… Prostitution cannot be considered as a state into which men have seduced women. Where there is no inclination for a certain course, the course will not be adopted” (Weininger Ch. 16).
Therefore, the fact that by the end of Flaubert’s book, Emma had offered her body for money, in order to at least partially cover the accumulated debts, cannot be thought of as the mere indication of Emma’s desperateness – by doing it, Emma had revealed that all her problems stemmed from deep inconsistency between her natural inclinations and her social status as mother and wife: “You are indeed a man; you have everything to make one love you. But we’ll begin again, won’t we? We will love one another… You must lend me three thousand francs” (Flaubert 506). Thus, our definition of the most important difference between the characters of Janie and Emma will sound as follows: whereas, Janie never ceased to be a woman in both: the physiological and psychological context of these words, Emma was only a woman in terms of physiology while possessing an essentially masculine mentality, which in its turn, explains her aversion to the notion of motherhood and her tendency to indulge in sexual escapades with just about anyone she would come across. Such our definition provides us with further insight into the particularities of both characters’ search for their true selves.
It is important to understand that the social restrictions, Janie had to deal with, throughout her life, corresponded to her racial affiliation. Being a Black woman, Janie never ceased suffering from institutionalized racism, which marked America’s socio-political realities in the twenties and thirties. In her dialogues with Janie, Nanny had always kept on trying to instill her granddaughter with the cautious attitude towards these realities: “You know, honey, us colored folks is branches without roots and that makes things come round in queer ways. You in particular” (Hurston 21).
This, however, did not cause Janie to embrace bitterness, as an integral part of her existence. Even though very often, throughout her life, Janie had to deal with frustration; she never lost her sense of optimism, simply because she was capable of not focusing on life’s negativity, as her full-time occupation. Also, she never felt under the spell of fundamentalist Christianity, as was the case with many Black women of her time, who dealt with the same set of unfortunate circumstances. Janie’s intellectual integrity allowed her to reject the “good book” due to its ideological oppressiveness: “All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise, they would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering, men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion” (Hurston 233). Jamie was willing to stoically endure life’s hardships, but she never wanted to turn it into a fetish. Being a spiritually liberated individual, Jamie always strived to evaluate people for unique qualities of their personality rather than for their talent in accumulating material riches.
This significantly differs Janie from Flaubert’s Emma, who could not think of people, outside of their social status. This is the reason why the very thought of socializing with local farmers was utterly repulsive to Emma: “My wife doesn’t care about it (making friends with locals)’ said Charles; ‘although she has been advised to take exercise, she prefers always sitting in her room reading” (Flaubert 137). This is the reason why Emma becomes attracted to Rodolphe Boulanger, only after she had found out that he is rather a well-off individual: “Yet it seems to me,’ said Emma, ‘that you are not to be pitied.’ ‘Ah! you think so?’ said Rodolphe. ‘For, after all,’ she went on, ‘you are free’ – she hesitated, ‘rich” (Flaubert 229). Thus, we can safely suggest that Emma did not fully understand the true nature of her quest for “romance” because it is only the men whom she considered as “sophisticate” that we’re able to win her attention. However, Emma never thought of the concept of sophistication as a “thing in itself”, while always believing that only rich people could really be free, and therefore sophisticate. Such Emma’s attitude is diametrically opposed to the one of Janie, who associated men’s degree of sophistication with their ability to act in a spontaneous manner.
It was namely Tea Cake’s behavioral unpretentiousness and his genuine love for her that had won Janie’s heart: “Janie awoke next morning by feeling Tea Cake almost kissing her breath away. Holding her and caressing her as if he feared she might escape his grasp and fly away. Then he must dress hurriedly and get to his job on time. He wouldn’t let her get him any breakfast at all. He wanted her to get her rest. He made her stay where she was” (Hurston 199). Unlike Jody, Tea Cake never forced Janie to do anything against her will and she paid him with the same token of respect while adopting rather a careless attitude towards his addiction to gambling. Despite the fact that Tea Cake was never able to provide Janie with what her Nanny used to refer to as “security of family living”, he continued to appreciate her personality, until the very time when he was bitten by a rabid dog, with the thought of controlling her never even coming to his mind. In other words, even though her stay with Tea Cake was comparatively short, for Janie it felt like if it had lasted a lifetime, due to the sheer intensity of both characters’ relationship.
As it appears from reading Flaubert’s novel, Emma also never stopped searching for intensity in her romantic relationships. However, she was never able to find it, because, unlike Jamie, she could not understand a simple fact that only mutual respect, on the part of both romancing parties, can result in the issuance of such intensity. The particularities of Emma’s sexuality had prompted her to seek sensual satisfaction in being dominated or in exercising domination over her partners, while naively confusing sexual passion with love. After having had sexual intercourse with Rodolphe for the first time, Emma became overwhelmed with joy, but not due to a particular intensity of her sexual experience, but because she had come to the conclusion that, from now on, she would be able to exercise a “sexual control” over her lover: “She repeated, ‘I have a lover! a lover!’ delighting at the idea as if a second puberty had come to her…She was entering upon marvels where all would be a passion, ecstasy, delirium” (Flaubert 266).
Apparently, Emma was simply incapable of perceiving reality, other than through the lenses of social stratification, which is why; she subconsciously strived to utilize her physical attractiveness as the mean of exercising control over men she would become romantically involved with. As a result, Emma’s romantic liaisons never lasted for too long, simply because she wanted to achieve existential liberation by the mean of subjecting others to her dominance, and as practice shows, such strategy can hardly be thought of as absolutely appropriate, within the context of man and woman building a relationship. After having realized that her approach towards winning men’s attention has failed, Emma decided to do something entirely opposite – she has offered both: Leon and Rodolphe, to become sovereign masters of her soul and body, in exchange for money. It is needless to say, of course, that such Emma’s offer could not be taken seriously, especially given the fact that she continued to remain married to Charles.
Despite Emma’s apparent sophistication (she used to read a lot), she could never grasp the simple truth that continuity is the last signifier of the “master-servant” type of relationship. Therefore, it would be wrong to refer to Emma as the victim of “male sexism” – it is her own hypertrophied sense of sexuality and her lust for controlling other people’s lives that had brought about Emma’s ultimate demise. This explains why, just about everything Emma had done, within the context of pursuing a relationship with Rodolphe and Leon, was metaphysically wrong, and therefore, could not possibly benefit her. Moreover, this also explains why, despite the fact that throughout her life, Emma had to deal with significantly lesser social restraints (she was White in a racially homogeneous White society), she had failed at achieving existential liberation.
Therefore, even though that the characters of Emma and Janie were being affected by virtually the same challenges of living in a sexist society, they have consciously chosen to address them in a strikingly dissimilar manner – whereas, Emma had set herself on the path of self-destruction while experiencing a masochist pleasure in being victimized, Janie refused to fall victim to circumstances, while actively seeking to attain happiness. It is namely the fact that Janie had realized that she could not possibly win by adjusting her life to sexist and racist rules of social conduct, associated with realities of living in America’s South, which allowed her to attain inner peace and get a firm hold of her own destiny: “She knew the world was a stallion rolling in the blue pasture of ether. She knew that God tore down the old world every evening and built a new one by sun-up. It was wonderful to see it take form with the sun and emerge from the gray dust of its making. The familiar people and things had failed her so she hung over the gate and looked up the road towards way off. She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman” (Hurston 215).
Just like Joan of Arc, Janie had proven herself as being more of a man than most of those men that came across her path, simply because she never dropped her stoic attitude towards life. On the other hand, despite the fact that Emma’s existential inadequacy appears as being of a clear physiological nature (too much testosterone), she nevertheless had failed at inspiring respect in men’s hearts, even though that she was more than capable of doing it. In its turn, this can be explained by the fact that Emma is being shown to us as the representative of the degrading White race, while Janie embodies the best qualities of the liberated Black race – vitality, stoicism, and apparent insensitivity to hardships. It is not by pure coincidence that Emma ends her life by taking arsenic poison. In a time when Flaubert was writing “Madame Bovary”, it was especially fashionable among decadent European “sophisticates” to swallow small amounts of poison, so that their skin would look particularly pale. Apparently, Emma belonged to a so-called “third-generation” of Whites, who have been deprived of their former vitality and mental cheerfulness, while retaining strong intellectual powers. However, by utilizing these powers, they would cause themselves more harm than good. This is the reason that neither of Flaubert’s characters (with the probable exception of Charles) seems to be capable of enjoying life’s simple pleasures – they all are being presented to readers as miserable people, wholly preoccupied with building careers and accumulating money.
While making fun of countryside farmers as “uneducated brutes”, Emma could not possibly consider the possibility of these farmers being much happier than herself, simply because they spend most of their days out in the fresh air. On the other hand, Janie never skips the chance of enjoying nature, with suicidal thoughts being unknown to her mind. Even by the time Janie watches the fast-approaching hurricane, she experiences a strong aesthetic pleasure from being exposed to the sheer power of nature, while eventually gaining insight into the very essence of the divine: “The wind came back with triple fury, and put out the light for the last time. They sat in company with the others in other shanties, their eyes straining against crude walls and their souls asking if He meant to measure their puny might against His. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God” (Hurston 201).
There are many metaphorically prophetic undertones about this scene – despite seemingly impossible circumstances, Janie was still able to discover her true love and the sensation that she did accomplish a lot in her life was filling Janie with the sense of pride, deep from within. This is why Janie could not care less about people’s gossiping after she came back to Eatonville. Apparently, while watching the approaching hurricane, Janie has taken it as the sign of impending revolutionary changes that were about to challenge what used to prevent her from enjoying her life to its fullest – America’s racist and sexist retrogradeness. Just as Sarah Conor, at the end of the “Terminator” movie, Janie observes the moving weather with apparent calm, while being aware of her actual own worth, as an individual, and the worth of a time she had spent with Tea Cake.
In order to summarize the points made earlier in this paper, we need to state the following: 1) Even though both: Janie and Emma suffer from seemingly the same set of unfortunate circumstances, Janie manages to accomplish something that Emma never could – to find happiness in a relationship with a man, while never losing her existential independence 2). The particularities of Emma and Janie’s life stories correspond to the fact that, whereas Emma is being presented as the representative of the decadent White race, Janie is being portrayed as the representative of revolutionizing Black race 3). Whereas the reading of Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary” might result in readers succumbing to depression (especially if they are White), the reading of Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God” will provide readers with the insight on what accounts for true happiness, within a context of man and woman becoming romantically involved.
References
Flaubert, Gustave “Madame Bovary”. [1857] 2005. Planet PDF. Web.
Hurston, Zora Neale “Their Eyes Were Watching God”. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991.
Weininger, Otto “Sex and Character”. [1906] 2001. The Absolute Net. Web.