Thursday, May 22, 2014
Mrs. Turner and Her Ideas of Race
Throughout most of Their Eyes Were Watching God, there has not been all that much explicit discussion of race. When we meet Mrs. Turner, however, she very eagerly and even aggressively discusses race and promotes many racist ideas. Why do you think Mrs. Turner has these ideas? How did they come about in her life? And why do you think Mrs. Turner is a character in this novel? What function does she serve?
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I think that Mrs, Turner has these ideas because it is the "normal" way of thinking for white people. While growing up with white people, Mrs. Turner behaves like them and even thinks the same way they do. I think that Mrs. Turner feels ashamed to be black and left out from all the white people and wants to be like them as much as possible. By saying racist things she believes she is more white than other black people. I think that Mrs. Turner is a character in the book to show an example of intolerance and to express just how strong racism was back then to the point where even black people hate blacks.
ReplyDeleteI seemed like Mrs. Turner was influenced by the people that she grew up around, as Matt said. She was only exposed to the things that the white people around her were saying. I dont think she is purposely being racist and saying which color of skin is the "normal". I agree with Matt when he said that Mrs. Turner wished she could fit in an be called beautiful when she was growing up. She was trying to pass the same wisdom on the the next generation.
DeleteBut Lawson, it is a bit hard to define what is and isn't "purposefully racist". One of the reasons racism survived so long was because the idea was passed on to children at a very early age. But, when they grew up, they were still being "purposefully racist". Although she was heavily influenced as a child and has deep reasons for what she says, it is hard to justify her actions because of it.
DeleteMrs. Turner has very distinct ideas about race and status and their connection. This reminds me of Janie's grandmother. She had very similar ideas because of her own experiences. She knew that black women had to work very hard to be respected because of the discrimination between races and genders. It might be possible that Mrs. Turner had similar experiences, like having to work for white people or being discriminated against, and in response tried to raise her own social status by clutching to anything that would make her seem "whiter", like her lips and nose. I think that Mrs. Turner's role in the novel is to emphasize the fact that a lot of characters in the story assume things about Janie and try to use her because of her beauty. Jody tried to use her as a trophy and to make himself look better. Mrs. Turner assumed that she didn't really like Tea Cake because of his dark complexion, and she tried to get Janie to join her family because of their shared "superiority". Mrs. Turner's racism emphasizes the fact that there are very specific ideas about beauty, and that beauty can be and is often connected to social status.
ReplyDeleteI think that these characteristics came out of Mrs. Turner because she felt she would better relate to the white people around her if she acts the way she does. She can't be a part of two worlds, so she wants to be as close to Caucasian as possible.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that her role in the story is to serve as a "counter-character" to Janie. She has similar features as Janie, but very different ideology. And, it is this contrast that reveals more about Janie's character than before.
I believe Mrs. Turner acts this way (racist, rude, and completely ridiculous), because she is very insecure. She believes that the only way someone can be "beautiful", is if they have Caucasian characteristics, which is not true at all. She talks to Janie about how "white" her son is, and how Tea Cake is too black for her because she relentlessly tries to bring Janie down, and seem more white herself. In the early 1900s, racism was a fairly common thing, especially around the South, and because Mrs. Turner believed she was born into the wrong skin, she tries to act racist to her own race because she has seen racism demonstrated towards black people by whites, and wants to seem more like them, as Amir has sort of said above. I believe that Mrs. Turner was placed into this book for many reasons. One reason is to make the readers feel more sympathetic towards Tea Cake in the middle of Janie and his marriage, when things between them really start to get fishy. By bringing in a character like Mrs. Turner, people will start to think about how Tea Cake is just being beat up about being "too black". Secondly, I agree with Amir and believe that Mrs. Turner was placed in this novel to represent the type of person that Janie could've been, but chose not to. Mrs. Turner represents a person who knows she has white characteristics and gets so swept up in those, that she becomes obsessed with acting "white" as well, which Janie easily could've done because she has white characteristics as well.
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ReplyDeleteIn Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston does not devote much of the story to relations between blacks and whites, but she does show that racism and class differences have disintegrated the black community. Society’s belief in the aesthetic and cultural superiority of whites is not lost on the characters of the novel. Mrs. Turner insists that she is better than dark-skinned blacks. Mrs. Turner thinks she and Janie should separate themselves from darker blacks and create a separate class for light skinned mulattos. “We oughta lighten up de race” and “Us oughta class off” Janie rejects Mrs. Turner’s views, saying “We’se uh mingled people and all of us got black kinsfolks as well as yaller kindfolks.” Mrs. Turner’s ideas not only reflect the prevailing values of the culture at the time but also are attributable to her economic status. Mrs. Turner is fairly well off from the restaurant that she and her husband run. Her financial success makes her look down on blacks who are less well off. Having moved up economically, Mrs. Turner wants to sever her connection to the rest of the black community in an effort to see herself as simply middle class. Mrs. Turner’s presence in the novel allows the author to criticize the views of Mrs. Turner and other blacks who had moved up socially and economically and disengaged themselves from the rest of the black community. This criticism is delivered when Janie and Tea Cake’s reject Mrs. Turner’s claim of superiority and her focus on being middle class. In addition, the ease of Janie’s transition from her position as the wife of the richest man in Eatonville to the wife of a field worker in the Everglades suggests that Hurston rejects snobbery and classicism. The author also ridicules the views of Mrs. Turner through the narrator who states, “ Behind her crude words was a belief that somehow she and others through worship could attain paradise-a heaven of straight-haired, thin lipped, high-nose boned white seraphs. The physical impossibilities in no way injured faith." Mrs. Turner’s presence in the novel serves the function of showing that racism and focusing on class differences in the black community are ridiculous and wrong. Mrs. Turner hates herself because she can't escape from being black while Janie, who embraces her black heritage and seeks union in and with the black community, is happy and fulfilled.
ReplyDeleteMrs. Turner is a middle-aged woman. She is lightly skinned, just like Janie. When we meet Mrs. Turner in TEWWG, she very eagerly and even aggressively discusses race and promotes many racist ideas. Mrs. Turner and Janie are the only two people talked about in the book who have light skin. Mrs. Turner hates dark-skinned people; she's hates everything about them--how they look, what they wear, and the fact that they come into her husband's diner ticks her off. Mrs. Turner has a coffee-cream complexion. Perhaps she grew up denying that fact that she was black. She desperately wanted to be white, and there was a part inside of her adult-self that told her she was white, and that the dark-skinned folks were black; to her, there was no connection between her and them at all. She was probably raised by a mother-figure telling her that she was no different then the whites; this boosted her self-esteem and convinced her that she was equal to the whites. Mrs. Turner is an important character in this novel. As Janie grows up, she struggles with finding love. She has a dream, a reasonable dream on the horizon of finding that special someone. She believes that God is there to save her. Mrs. Turner, however, shows no dream. She shows a belief that she is white and stops at nothing to prove it to others. So while Janie has a real goal in life, Mrs. Turner just has denial. I believe that she was put into the novel so that the readers could pick up on her irrational and immature points. This, as a result, would define Janie's positive characteristics (such as... the fact that she has a real goal, she is friendly to dark-skinned people, etc.)
ReplyDeleteI believe that Mrs. Turner got most of her ideas of white people being superior to African americans from the people she grew up with. The fact that she grew up around white people and got influenced by their racist(whether they are intentional or unintentional) mindset made her truly believe that white people are 'better' and should have higher social status. However the fact that although she has caucasian features, her being partly black separated her from the white people-- she could not fit in. She feels as if she was degraded. Therefore she felt ashamed of her black heritage and desperately wants to create a community of light-skinned biracial residents. She serves as a contrast with Janie in the novel, having the exact opposite view of their race and body features representing that. While Janie embraces her whole identity, which includes being a beautiful black woman, Mrs. Turner tries her best to deny her black heritage.
ReplyDeleteMrs. Turner seems to have grown up to hate negros and I the reasons is because she was brought up around whites all her life. She has had the white features about her pointed out, so along with growing up with this white mentality, she thinks that she a little more acceptable in the eyes of whites because of little things such as her lip shape. Mrs. Turners role in the book is to show the view of society that isn't spoken about in all of the other people Janie was with. Mrs. Turner shows and make more obvious that the reason why she was considered more beautiful was because of features such as her hair and skin. Mrs. Turner is one of the most honest people in the book, even if her opinions are very debatable. I think that Mrs. Turner represents the white point of view of the story during this time period and that is why Zora Neale Hurston put her in the book.
ReplyDeleteMrs. Turner is an interesting character in this novel. She has these harsh ideals of what it means to be black and strays away from identifying herself as a black woman. With her white features such as her lighter skin complexion to her lips she feels as if she should be above dark-skinned black people. However, everyday in the muck, she is hit by the reality that she will not be treated better than black people because no matter how "whitish" her features are, she cannot escape the treacherous belief that she is black. Being raised in a community where there were white people, it greatly influenced her to be more like them because back then and now, the white population is the dominant population and with that comes white power. Mrs. Turner realized that being identified as a black woman meant that she did not have that power and blames the black race for taking away her power. With lighter skin and these white features, Mrs. Turner believes that she is beautiful and powerful but does not get treated as such on the muck and in society. She seems to want people to look past the fact that she is more than a black woman however, she also contradicts this with her shallow belief that being lighter skinned will give her the power she wants to be who she wants. Like Amir said earlier, Mrs. Turner was put into the novel to show the difference between how she is against her race versus how Janie proudly believes herself to be a black woman. Also, I think Mrs. Turner represented how blatant racism is and she really puts into perspective the ideals of people then and now.
ReplyDeleteMrs. Turners ideas come from the long standing idea that white people are the ideal. They have the ideal physique, jobs, lives, etc. For as long as people have been oppressed by whites, they have been made to think that they are inferior and that whites are superior--and they have really taken this ideal and ran with it. We, as oppressed people, often take in our oppressors ideas of us being inferior and internalize them; Mrs. Turner does exactly this. She knows that in order to succeed and to not be treated poorly, you have to eat, breathe, and sleep assimilation. She, and many other oppressed minorities, even until this day, pick out the flaws in others like themselves to put themselves on a pedestal.
ReplyDeleteMrs. Turner is a character in this novel because at this time in Hurston's life, she may have had a lot of interaction with people like Mrs. Turner, or may even have been struggling with some of Mrs. Turner's ideas herself. I think that she is used as another way to explore race and what it means to be different, really what it means to be human and to have desires. Her character is used as another way to explore identity and human desire.
Published on behalf of Rachel:
ReplyDeleteI think Mrs. Turner has these racist ideas because she is not comfortable in her own skin. She constantly talks about “common black people” to fool herself into thinking that she’s above them. Mrs. Turner may be depressed, and just making herself feel better by making fun of how black folks laugh all the time. She knows that true happiness is something she’ll never have, possibly because of the five children she lost. Maybe not being able to raise a proper family (which in that era was a woman’s only true duty) made her feel like a failure. Mrs. Turner focused on hating others to counteract the hate she had for herself.
I think Mrs. Turner is in this novel to symbolize Janie’s goal of finding true love and a husband. “Her God would smite her, would hurl her from pinnacles and lose her in deserts, but she would not forsake his altars.” Mrs. Turner dreams of being white even though it’s impossible, and Janie dreams about true love even though time has proved that true love is very hard to come by. Mrs. Turner clings to Janie because she sees a tiny bit of whiteness in her, the way that Janie clings to suitors who show the tiniest bit of husband potential. Being with Janie makes Mrs. Turner feel whiter and closer to her goal, just like how being with Tea Cake gives Janie hope that true love can exist for her. Mrs. Turner represents the desire for obtaining unrealistic life goals.
By the time Janie marries Tea Cake, she has become a strong and independent woman. She had stood up to Jody and virtually killed him with her words for humiliating her for so many years. Janie has become a full member of the Everglades community, listening to local stories and telling her own, no longer allowing herself to be repressed as she was in Eatonville.
ReplyDeleteIn the face of her demonstrated strength and the equality of their relationship, it is hard to fathom why Janie allows Tea Cake to beat her when he becomes jealous of Mrs. Turner’s brother. The narrator acknowledges that Janie has done nothing to inspire this jealousy. She has never flirted with Mrs. Turner’s brother. She rejected Mrs. Turner’s suggestion that she even consider leaving Tea cake and unambiguously reaffirmed her love for Tea Cake. A friend’s comment suggests that Janie didn’t put up any resistance to Tea Cake’s beating and that despite her lack of culpability, the beating is not objectionable. “Lawd! Wouldn’t Ah love to whip uh tender woman lak Janie! Ah bet she don’t even holler She just cries, eh Tea Cake?....mah woman would spread her lungs all over Palm Beach County, let alone knock out my jaw teeth” By letting Tea cake beat her, is the author suggesting that men sometimes need to show that they are the boss and women should allow this???
What makes this all the more puzzling is that Janie shows that she does have the will and strength to fight back. When Tea Cake indulges Nunkie’s flirtatious behavior, “Janie cut him short with a blow and they fought from one room to the other, Janie trying to beat him.”