New Historicism has developed from the “New” Criticism’s inclination to treat works of literature in a historical void, as if a poem or novel had no association to its historical context whatsoever. Political developments in the 1960s, especially a desire on the part of literature professors to figure out how understanding literature might help in understanding social problems, has led critics to the theory of New Historicism. The New Historicist stipulations include the fact that images and narratives do important cultural work. They serve as a kind of workshop where cultural problems, hopes, and obsessions are addressed or avoided.
Consequently, New Historicists argue that the best backdrop for interpreting literature is to place it in its historical context: what coexisting issues, anxieties, and struggles does the work of literature resonate, deflect, or try to work through? New Historicists also tend to stress that authors and poets are not secular saints–that even though they may be more circumspect about their societies than the average citizen, they nonetheless participate in it. Consequently, New Historicist critics often point out places in artists’ work where their attitudes do not anticipate our own, or may even be distasteful to us.
There are, however, some complaints made about New Historicism. Firstly, some say that it tends to reduce literature to a footnote of history, and neglects the uniquely literary qualities of the work in question. At its worst, New Historicism’s emphasis on connecting literature to politics can become a forum where critics praise artists for their progressive views and chastise them for reactionary ones. They should, instead, accept that cultures have problems, those problems are complicated, and learn from how artists tried to grapple with those problems without giving them a grade card (Jones 233).
New Historicism plays an important role in understanding Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. There are many problems and issues that are broached by the author, mostly through the recollection of the main character, Janie Crawford. While this story deals primarily with Janie’s life from age sixteen to approximately the age of forty, the novel also deals with the problems that society faced even before Janie’s birth. The major issue that is involved before Janie’s birth is the rape of her mother, Leafy Crawford, by her schoolteacher, a white man.
When this novel was set, approximately twenty years after the Civil War, rape was still an important issue in black society. Rape was rampant, but less was done about it. It was just accepted as one of the burdens of black women, especially the act was perpetrated by a white man. If the act had involved a black man with a white woman, however, there would be a huge uproar, as well as activity, within the white community. This is a typical double standard of the time, because it is was acceptable to allow a horrible action for a certain set of people and disallow it for another group of people based solely on the color of their skin.
Racism is one of the main issues addressed in this novel as well. People were, and still are, discriminated against continuously because of the color of their skin. The influence of white society is ever present, hanging over the novel like an oppressive cloud. For example, Janie’s husband Jody paints his house “a gloaty, sparkly white,” (44) humiliates the citizens of Eatonville in similar ways as the white man would, and forces Janie into the slavish servitude reflected by the identity-confining head rag he makes her wear (51).
Yet, Janie fights Joe’s tyranny by telling him off just before he dies in Chapter Eight, then reclaims her own identity by burning up “every one of her head rags” (85). Similarly, Janie encounters Mrs. Turner, Hurston’s symbol of internalized racism, who doesn’t “blame de white folks from hating [African-Americans] ’cause Ah can’t stand ’em mahself” (135). It is also evident that Tea Cake has internalized some of his own oppression and that he has internalized the way that whites see him. Even though he has a wonderful community outside of the whites, he still does not trust the Indians.
His friend says to him, “You know the Indians are going east, man. It’s dangerous. ” And Tea Cake replies, “Indians don’t know much of nothing, to tell the truth, Else, they’d own this country still. The white folks ain’t gone nowhere, they ought to know if it’s dangerous. ” That is because he doesn’t listen to the natives. Internalized racism is meant to describe the association of negative qualities that black people had come to accept of themselves, because of white society’s stereotypes. A good example of internalized racism is present in Phillis Wheatley’s poem, “On Being Brought from Africa to America.
The very first line of the poem states, “‘Twas mercy brought me from my pagan land”(Norton Anthology 573,1). Not many Black people were thankful about being kidnapped and sold into slavery, yet Wheatly says “’twas mercy” because here she was able to learn about Jesus, and accept him as her redeemer. She goes on to say, “Some view our sable race with scornful eye. /Their color is a diabolic dye”(5-6), emphasizing the views white society held about black people. Their black skin made the akin to the devil. She goes on to say, “Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain, / May be refined, and join the angelic train”(7-8).
She is apologizing for being black almost, and saying that Jesus can redeem even them, who are akin to the devil. This poem is a typical example of internalized racism, because it shows how a black woman became apologetic for the color of her skin, and tries to make up for it by acquiring white Christian values. Most importantly of all, religion is an aspect which influences the plot a great deal. At that time, people had little education, and their faith in God is what kept them going, they depended on God to answer their payers. Today, however, much has changed, and science has become a replacement for religious faith.
Our world is more secular. The following quote shows the point in the novel where Hurston took the title of her book: “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” (151). This was spoken when a huge hurricane was expected. This along with several other passages from the novel, such as the following quote spoken by Janie to Pheoby: “It’s uh known fact, Pheoby, you got tuh go there tuh know there.
Two things everybody’s got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin’ fuh theyselves ” (183) show that religion was a big problem of the time. It is felt that everyone had not only the right, but also the responsibility to find their God and to worship him if they wanted a chance at survival. Another chief problem faced by the people of the time was the idea of trying to survive with the low quality of work available at the time. People worked as migrant workers, very similar to those in Jon Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath.
People, especially in the black community, would work tedious jobs for very little pay in order to survive. Because this wasn’t long after the end of slavery, the overall population of blacks in the United States still wasn’t very educated. They had to do whatever they could do for money, whenever they could get it. Janie, however, was less exposed to this because she grew up in the Washburn’s backyard, and had luxuries, such as hand-me-downs, that no other girls her age enjoyed.
She also received an education, as Nanny’s dream was for her to become a schoolteacher. However, her relationship with Tea Cake exposes her to the harsh lives migrant workers endured. While many people feel envious of the money and power that Janie possesses through her marriage with Logan Killicks the potato farmer, and Joe Starks the Mayor of Eatonville, they were more envious when she found true love with Tea Cake. “Janie looked down on him (Tea Cake) and felt a self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from its hiding place” (122).
Her quest throughout the novel is her search for true love, which she finally finds with Tea Cake, a man who does not try to control or mold her. The plot involves many of the problems that deal with love. These problems include, but aren’t limited to envy, lust and spousal abuse. Spousal abuse was very common at the time this story was written. Similar to the before mentioned problem of rape, little was done about spousal abuse in those days. Women were quite often treated like objects, more than they were as human beings.
This is evident when Joe Starks uses Janie as a status symbol more than as a wife. She does all of the work behind the scenes, and he takes all the credit. He makes her do most of the work in the store, even though “the store itself kept her with a sick headache” (54). Rather than self-destruct under the constant realities of racism and misogyny she receives throughout her life, Janie Crawford does the opposite at the close of Their Eyes Were Watching God. The novel’s final image states what Janie does throughout the story – taking her difficult past in and growing stronger and wiser as a result of it.
Zora Neale Hurston believed that freedom “was something internal. The man himself must make his own emancipation” (189). Likewise, in her defining moment of identity formation, Janie “pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see” (184). At the end of a novel focusing on self-revelation and self-formation, Janie survives with her soul – made resilient by continual struggle – intact.
The New Historicism interpretation of this novel helps emphasize the racial struggle that Janie and her husbands endure, as well as the hardships of the time, and the values placed on women. Read out of historical context, this novel might almost seem to embrace white society. At the beginning, in Washburn’s yard, Janie has no idea she is not white until she sees a picture of her self. This could falsely lead the reader to believe the story is about equality. However, Hurston accurately and vividly portrays the complex and profound lives of the black community during this era.
