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Waste and Whiteness: Zora Neale Hurston and the Politics of Eugenics
African American Review, Winter, 2000 by Chuck Jackson
(27.) While the constipation/laxative scene after the porch certainly thrusts anality at the reader, it is not the only scene in which anality (and, by implication, the asshole) figures prominently. Arvay and Jim's first marital argument takes place in bed, as Arvay reads the biblical story of Cain and Abel. Jim insists that Cain had "'no sense of humor' "and that he "'was so chuckle-headed that he couldn't even take a joke'" (66). Much to Arvay's horror, Jim proceeds to theorize that Cain "'never would have got into all that trouble if he could have seen a joke. He never would have up and scorched a stinking, rotten cabbage under God's nose for no sacrifice. Common sense ought to have told him God wouldn't stand for him stinking up Heaven and all like that. How come he couldn't have made God a nice cool salad and took it to Him?' "(66). Arvay is shocked to hear Jim "mock" the Bible in such a way, and refuses to sleep with him that night. However, the subtext here about jokes and stinking cabbages under God's nose implies an integration of anality in an otherwise pristine text; the fact that Jim and Arvay have a "battle which raged and roiled" suggests that passion (in some form) has erupted from the discussion of anal metonymies in bed. More clearly, at the novel's close, Arvay (finally) makes an anal joke of her own. When Carl Middleton pays an uninvited visit to Arvay in her hotel, he complains to her about injuries which took place on the Henson property (in an attempt to weasel some money out of her). Arvay insists that Carl tell her where he is hurt on his body, and Carl replies, " 'I been trying to treat you like a lady. Where I'm hurt at ain't to be exposed in public.... it's my behind, and could be inside injuries besides for all I know.... I guess now you want me to show it to you.' "Arvay quips, "'Nope .... My Mama always told me not to look on backlands.... I'm in no way responsible, but if you're in as bad a fix as you say, I can tell you something mighty good for a case like that. Get hold of some m utton tallow, then melt it together with some teppentime and grease yourself good back there.'" Arvay publicly humiliates Carl in the hotel, but seems unaware that she is making a joke, "'But I ain't joking. It really is mighty healing. Takes the soreness right out. I keep it on hand all the time'" (292). The point here is that Arvay is able to articulate her relation to her own behind--how to care for it when it is sore, how to grease it when it needs lubrication--so that, while Hurston does not need to come out and say "asshole" (just as Arvay does not need to see Carl's in order to know whether it is healthy or injured), it is clear to the reader that Arvay is an expert at this orifice's care.
Works Cited
Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Trans. Helene Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1984.
Bordelon, Pam, ed. Go Gator and Muddy the Water: Writings by Zora Neafe Hurston from the Federal Writers' Project. New York: Norton, 1999.
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