[In the following essay, Green finds parallels in the portrayal of marginalized women in “Beyond the Bayou” and Zora Neale Hurston's “Sweat.”]

In the short fiction of Kate Chopin and Zora Neale Hurston, we often see women—particularly women of color—portrayed as a microcosm of society in which we are to view them not only as individuals, but as symbolic representations of the universal problems that women face. Within the microcosm that each writer creates, their female characters deal with issues that range from guilt and fear to racism and Otherness. These issues direct their lives and their interactions with their communities. Women are often marginalized because of their gender, and this separation places them in a position that is by definition divorced from the mainstream. Societal control by a dominant gender or race leads to the exclusion or suppression of those that are not part of the controlling group, and the result is the disempowerment of the nondominant group. The disempowered are placed in the category of Other—literally, that which is Other than the One dominant societal group. While any hierarchically structured society may create a One vs. Other dichotomy, Chopin and Hurston both construct communities in which woman is equated with Other in their short stories “Beyond the Bayou” and “Sweat”.

Initially, the female protagonists of both stories must overcome overwhelming fear that predates the beginning of their narratives and motivate their actions. Once each woman conquers her fear, she is poised to grapple with an underlying Otherness that she has served as the driving force in her life. For Delia in “Sweat,” that Otherness is based in both gender and race; for La Folle in “Beyond the Bayou,” it comes from her ethnicity.

Additionally, “Sweat” and “Beyond the Bayou” recreate a master-slave narrative to illustrate not only the plight of the characters that make up these microcosms, but also the subordinated fate that women often face. In this paper, I define the slave narrative as a representation of male-female relationships in which the woman is under the complete control of the man, and in this capacity, he is symbolically identified with the dominant members of slave holding societies. The woman in this dichotomy then symbolizes the slave, or the group that is forced to submit to the domination of the master. Inherent in the slave narrative is the possibility of rebellion on the part of the disempowered group. In Delia's case, her emotions and sexuality are ruled by an abusive husband. Hurston typically situates her female heros in an exclusively Black community, thus focusing our attention on other issues besides the interaction between the Black and White communities. With our focus diverted from the ethnic issue, she can direct our attention to what she views as a larger issue: the master-slave narrative that underlies the male dominance of woman, with the woman filling the role of slave to her male counterpart's role of master. At the same time, the master-slave narrative in “Sweat” subtextually mirrors the Black experience in slavery, without once commenting on it directly.

In “Beyond the Bayou,” La Folle's socialization—or lack of it—with her white former owners poignantly illustrates the social status of Blacks that continued for decades after the Civil War. P'tit Maitre—“little master” in English—is the source of La Folle's current emotional sustenance in the form of his young son, as well as the lunacy that marks most of her adult life. A wounded P'tit Maitre shocks La Folle as a child, causing her stigmatization. As an adult, he becomes the white patriarch who symbolizes the continuation of racial conflict in the postbellum South. As blacks were enslaved by whites in the South, so is La Folle enslaved symbolically by her fear and literally by her position in Southern society. The source of her fear, and thus the source of her powerlessness, is the White man P'tit Maitre who was formerly her master.

We see different outcomes for Delia and La Folle. Delia Jones in “Sweat” must free herself from her deadbeat, womanizing husband who terrorizes her with his attempts to drive her from her home. Delia remains with Sykes out of fear and guilt which is largely derived from her religious convictions, but his attempt on her life at the end of the story absolves her from her guilt. Delia is successful in her world in that she can support herself, yet her Otherness is not fully dispelled. Although she frees herself from her husband's abuse, and accordingly from one source of her separation from society, she is still marginalized. By the end of the story, she is prepared to address further Otherness in her life—here defined as separation from the Black community—that her fear has obscured. All of her adult life, Delia has been so busy working to support her lazy husband that she has never formed any bonds within her community, but with his death is born the hope that her marginalization will end. As a black woman, she is still in a state of Otherness when compared to the white community. She is in control of her destiny as a financially independent woman, but is still bound by restrictions of acceptable behavior for a black woman in the turn-ofthe-century South.

In “Beyond the Bayou,” La Folle's success is somewhat more nebulous, as she experiences success in overcoming her fear, but her ethnic Otherness is still very pointed. We are told that her paranoia originates in her youth, when an injured man crashed into her family's cabin, bleeding and covered in gunpowder. The shock that this elicits in La Folle causes her to have an irrational fear of crossing the bayou that separates her home from the main part of the plantation where she and her white “family” live. The only thing that motivates her to abandon her fearful refusal to cross the bayou is P'tit Maitre's son, Cheri's, life-threatening accident that simultaneously threatens the safe life that La Folle has constructed for herself. Although she is finally freed from enslavement to her fears, La Folle still fills the role of Other at the end of “Beyond the Bayou” because she is a victim of the prejudice and marginalization that Blacks experienced in the post Civil-War South. Although La Folle, too, begins to address her status as Other within her community, we have less hope that she will be successful because of the historical constructs that she is living within. Chopin positions La Folle as a passive-aggressive symbol at the end of the story, one who is poised to start her rebellion, and extends the master-slave narrative to its logical next stage—that of acting out the rebellion. Chopin uses La Folle as a symbol of the new age of civil rights that will begin to emerge—slowly to be sure—in which African-Americans would begin to emerge from their state of Otherness.

WOMAN AS OTHER

Defining women as Other is not a new concept, as women have been “slaves … like domestic animals” for centuries, and this type of thinking has been endorsed by such revered figures as Aristotle. Aristotle suggests a “primary social hierarchy … [in which we see] subordination of the female to the male” (Winter 2). The term Other originates with Simone de Beauvoir in her treatise The Second Self. This cornerstone of feminist theory argues that female biology is not a “fixed and inevitable destiny” (32) because the “human species is forever in a state of change” (33). Accordingly, we can't base our judgements of gender-based equality, or lack of it, on empirically measurable data. The discourse of masculine superiority has traditionally been couched in terms of physical strength, and since men possess that strength in greater measure, women have been relegated to an inferior position. Accordingly, since the patriarchal system has historically set men up as “the One” because of their superior physical strength, an unavoidable dichotomy is established, in which women, who do not possess the same physical prowess as men, become “Other” (xxiii). Modern feminist critics, such as Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, describe feminine Otherness as women being relegated to the position of cultural outsiders, saying that “… because a woman is denied the autonomy … [she is] excluded from culture” (Gubar and Gilbert 19). Women are placed in a position of being “an absence or cipher in the social body” (Showalter 21), rather than useful contributors to that society.

Later feminist critics, particularly women of color, have problematized the Otherness notion of de Beauvoir and her successors. Jane Moore argues that the Other, which she defines as “the position of women in relation to men in patriarchal societies” (75), can be useful. Yet she points out that Other can become a meaningless word if overused: “‘the other’ can quickly become a blanket-term for all that is outside the subject possessed of the power to name the other, for everything that is not self-same. In consequence, the effect of otherness can be erasure of difference, so that, for example, all women—past and present—share the same ontological and epistemological space” (Moore 75). Bell Hooks supports Moore's point, stating that “postmodernist discourses are often exclusionary even as they call attention to, appropriate even, the experience of “difference” and “Otherness” to provide oppositional political meaning, legitimacy and immediacy when they are accused of lacking concrete relevance” (Hooks 23). It becomes increasingly important, to define as specifically as possible the boundaries with which we define the state of Otherness, and therefore an explicit definition of the term is needed for the purposes of this discussion.

Otherness, as I construct it, consists of two parts. First, women are often subject to separation from the power structure of a patriarchal system. Women of color are further marginalized, in many instances, by their ethnicity, creating multiple levels of Otherness in their lives which must each be overcome. In addition, as Winter argues, the “oppression of women … can be understood fully only when the ideology of male domination is examined in conjunction with the ideology of slavery” (2). Otherness, then, is a state of separation from the source of patriarchal power, which may be caused by any combination of ethnic or gender issues, and which is further complicated by the dominant ideology of slavery or other willful domination of a cultural group.

DELIA AS OTHER

When we first meet Delia Jones, she is little more than a workworn doormat, but she is poised on the edge of a transformation. From the outset of their fifteen year marriage, Sykes Jones has subjugated his wife through guilt and fear. He immediately demonstrates his control over Delia by sneaking up behind her and using his bullwhip to imitate a snake crawling on her back. As she is deathly afraid of snakes, her reaction is predictable:

A great terror took hold of her. It softened her knees and dried her mouth so that it was a full minute before she could cry out or move. Then she saw that it was the big bull whip her husband liked to carry when he drove. She lifted her eyes to the door and saw him standing there bent over with laughter at her fright.

(Hurston 38-39)

His tyranny continues throughout the story. Delia stands up to him after this incident, for perhaps the first time in their married life; his response is “cowed … and he did not strike her as he usually did” (Hurston 40). We find further evidence of Delia's well-grounded fear of physical abuse as she lies on her bed that evening; she recalls that “two months after the wedding, he had given her the first brutal beating” (Hurston 41). He brings a rattlesnake to their house, placing its cage right outside the door of the house so that Delia must pass it continually. He knows she is afraid of the snake, but he doesn't care. He cruelly tells her that “tain't no use uh you puttin' on airs makin' out lak you skeered uh dat snake—he's gointer stay right heah tell he die” (Hurston 47). Clearly, Sykes is a man who rules his wife through fear and has no qualms about doing so.

In Delia's narrative, the pointed hostility between Sykes and herself, and the fear that he elicits from her speaks indirectly to the legacy of slavery in the post-Civil War South. Black men were often denied the means to support their families and were subsequently forced into roles that caused others to define them as “not fit tuh carry guts tuh a bear” (Hurston 43). Sykes at first glance, might seem to fit the stereotype of the black man who, because of social restrictions, is unable to provide for his family. In this scenario, Delia's strong work ethic would serve to unintentionally emasculate him. Since Sykes is unwilling rather than unable to work to support them, however, he resents Delia for taking on the masculine role of the bread winner, and thus making him look bad in the eyes of the community. He experiences “vulnerability and uncertainty about his own masculinity” and Delia's limited financial success is

one of the reasons that Sykes cannot bear the sight of his wife because her work makes him feel like less than a man. He resents her working for the white folks, washing their dirty laundry, but he does not resent it enough to remove the need for her to do so. Or perhaps his wife's work has removed the need for him to be a man.

(Howard 67)

Rather than assuming the traditional masculine role as breadwinner, Sykes instead perpetuates Delia's literal enslavement to her washboard and her symbolic enslavement to him. She can not stop working—to do so would mean losing her home and eating irregularly—but because of this, her emasculated husband can only relate to her violently. He takes on the symbolic, dominant role of master, forcing Delia to submit to his will even when such submission results in her humiliation or physical injury. Delia is a slave to his temper and must passively submit to his violent outbursts. Yet like the many oppressed people that she represents, Delia begins to rebel, and is ultimately freed from the control of her oppressor.

Fear is not the only tool that Sykes uses to control Delia, however. Up to the epiphany that Delia experiences at the end of the story, we see consistent evidence that she is strongly motivated by guilt. For all of his sloth, Sykes is not a stupid man; he masterfully manipulates Delia in such a way that her guilt keeps her in a subservient position—one in which she will tolerate his abuse. We see most manifestations of Delia's guilt couched in religious terms. The story begins and ends on Sunday, and although Delia works late on these evenings to prepare the week's washing, she seems to harbor some guilt for working on her Sabbath. She does not squeal at Sykes for kicking her laundry around the room when he barks at her that “Ah done tole you time and again to keep them white folks' clothes outa dis house” (Hurston 39). When he attacks her faith, though, she is quick to protest. He taunts her, saying

Yeah, you just come from de church house on a Sunday night, but heah you is gone to work on them clothes. You ain't nothing but a hypocrite. One of them amen-corner Christians—sing, whoop, and shout, then come home and wash white folks' clothes on the Sabbath.

(Hurston 40)

At this point she gives a “little scream of dismay” and not only tells him to “quit grindin' dirt into these clothes” but protests that she can't “git through by Sat'day if Ah don't start on Sunday” (Hurston 40). Her protest starts now because he has touched a nerve; if Delia didn't feel some guilt for working on Sunday, Sykes' remark wouldn't elicit such a defensive response. Her guilt may be momentarily silenced when she bravely tells Sykes that her “cup is done run ovah”(Hurston 49) when he refuses take the rattlesnake away, but is “glad she did not have to quarrel before she … drove the four miles to Woodbridge” to attend church (Hurston 49). She has gone so far as to change her church membership; she tells Sykes that “Ah got mah letter fum de church an'moved my membership tuh Woodbridge—so Ah don't haftuh take no sacrament wid yuh”(Hurston 48). Delia takes her religion seriously enough that she wants to separate it from the man who would taint it with hatred.

In most of the passages in which Sykes is discussed, Hurston clearly identifies him with snakes, a traditionally Satanic image.¹ Hurston uses the snake in two opposing ways. On one hand, Sykes is identified with the snake. He lies like the serpent in Eden, and brings a rattlesnake to Delia's home which he attempts to use to bring about her death just as the serpent in Eden brings about the fall and subsequent death of Adam and Eve. In “Sweat”, the snake is simultaneously a positive, empowering symbol, as it brings about justice rather than undermining it. Although the snake is intended to cause Delia's death, she escapes, and listens to Sykes' gruesome death as the snake's bites poison him slowly and painfully.

Delia's narrative suggests that she feels that she deserves Sykes' abuse in some way. The deprecating fashion with which she endures Sykes' initial attack on her implies that she may have felt that she brought some of her suffering upon herself, at least up to the point that the narrative begins. Descriptions of her working around him after he throws the whip on her (Hurston 39), remaining calm while his “whole manner [is] hoping, praying, for an argument” (Hurston 39), and the picture of her “thin, stooped shoulders” sagging as he speaks (Hurston 39), all describe a woman who is not accustomed to fighting back. Hurston gives us the image of a slave who has been beaten repeatedly. These descriptions are followed by her comment that “Ah ain't for no fuss t'night Sykes, Ah just come from taking sacrament at the church house” (Hurston 39).

While religion and its accompanying trappings are a source of comfort and continued guilt for Delia, the reason for her guilt is always somewhat ambiguous. Delia seems to feel a strong responsibility to maintain her marriage because of the strength of her religious convictions. She attends church regularly and speaks seriously of the church sacraments. Since marriage is sacred to most religions, its sanctity may motivate her to keep her relationship together. In other venues, however, such as the unpublished “The Fiery Chariot,” Hurston subverts the entire idea of religion as a solace for the oppressed, which calls into question Delia's overt religious faith. The attitudes of Southern white slave holders towards the religious fervor of their black slaves paint an inaccurate picture of the laborer praying for release from their suffering. As Hemenway argues

the accepted white cliche about the origins of the black Christian church has always been that the notion of heaven was particularly appealing to laborers in bondage. While this life may be hard, if one trusted in the Lord a better day was coming … [but] the Lawd is exposed as a fraud and a sham, nothing but a plantation owner masquerading in a sheet … the slave is made fun of, but so is Massa. He is soooooo bright, soooo “white and clean,” and the black man is soooo humble in his sight that the Christian support for white supremacy is exaggerated into mockery.

(Hemenway 225)

In light of this argument, we can interpret Delia's religious “faith” as something of a farce. Hurston may intend her to be read as a grotesque character, who so overexemplifies the traditional faith that is exemplified by black spirituals as to make it laughable. Accordingly, she could then subtly suggest that religion is merely another tool of the white community which is used to keep blacks docile by providing the “opiate to the people” of which Karl Marx speaks. Further, neither Hurston's own life, nor her other major characters, support the idea that Hurston viewed marriage as a sacred pact. Hurston herself was married and divorced two times, once because she could not follow her husband and her career simultaneously (Hemenway 94) and once because her much younger husband could not work or maintain a home, and was often abusive (Hemenway 273). In Hurston's most important novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, the protagonist, Janey, also has three husbands, all of which Hurston disposes of when Janey has outgrown them. It is arguable, then, that what Hurston succeeds in doing in “Sweat” is subverting the entire concept of religion being a solace to the oppressed, and picturing it as yet another tactic of the oppressors with which they can keep their slaves under control. Thus Delia's supposed guilt over her relationship with her husband and her fears that it will taint her seemingly pure and innocent faith may be subversion of the entire issue of religious faith as a mainstay in the existence of an oppressed people.

Although “Sweat” gives ample evidence of Delia's emotional manipulation by her husband, it is equally clear that she is at a turning point in her relationship with him at the beginning of the story. In their initial confrontation, even as she is fearful of Sykes, she surprises him by standing up to him. She argues with him about the laundry—significantly, she does this after he calls her a hypocrite (Hurston 40)—and when he boasts that he has “promised Gawd and a couple of other men, Ah ain't gointer have [white people's laundry] in mah house. Don't gimme no lip, neither, else Ah'll throng ‘em out and put mah fist up side yu’ head to boot” (Hurston 40). Hurston's description of Delia's reaction to the abuse warns us that a change is imminent:

Delia's habitual meekness seemed to slip from her shoulders like a blown scarf. She was on her feet; her poor little body, her bare knuckly hands bravely defying the strapping hulk before her. “Looka heah, Sykes, you done gone too fur”She seized the iron skillet from the stove and struck a defensive pose, which act surprised him greatly, coming from her. It cowed him and he did not strike her as he usually did.

(Hurston 40)

She is tired of being ordered about and abused, and her stance shows Sykes that she isn't going to tolerate his ill treatment any longer. That evening, when she retires, Delia lies awake, looking back at her marriage, and comes to the conclusion that all she has left is her home. She experiences an emotional awakening, realizing that things will never change between her and Sykes: “if it were not Bertha it would be someone else” (Hurston 41). She takes the first step on the path to self-empowerment, and begins to relinquish the guilt that has bound her to her husband. She can now “build a spiritual earthworks against her husband. His shells could no longer reach her. AMEN” (Hurston 42). Again, Hurston subverts Delia's faith by basing her “faith” on hatred, which goes against the Christian concept of “love thy neighbor as thyself.” Hurston connects the spiritual and the earthly in this passage, and although Delia attributes her decision to stand up for herself to her religion, she is, in fact, strengthened by her hatred rather than her religion. When Sykes returns from his lover's bed early in the morning, hissing at her for her earlier impudence, she feels a “triumphant indifference to all that he was or did,” for probably the first time in their marriage (Hurston 42).

Delia's empowerment and the freedom that it will bring continue rapidly once she has admitted that her relationship is dead. The religious image of Christ describes her humiliation as Sykes parades Bertha in front of the townspeople: “Delia's work-worn knees crawled over the earth in Gethsemane and up the rock of Calvary many, many times during these months” (Hurston 46), again underscoring Hurston's ironic use of the Christian myth as a source of comfort to enslaved peoples. Yet because of her humiliation, Delia is empowered to stand up to her husband without guilt. We see her come to something approximating peace with the rattlesnake, and given Sykes' close association with snake imagery throughout the story, we infer that she also comes to terms with her hatred for her husband. She sees the snake with its fangs embedded in the mesh of its cage and “this time did not run away with averted eyes as usual. She stood for a long time in the doorway in a red fury that grew bloodier for every second that she regarded the creature that was her torment” (Hurston 48). She gathers strength to confront Sykes again from the heat of her righteous anger; he has humiliated her and tormented her with her fears for the last time. Sykes, characteristically, refuses to remove the snake from her house, and she calmly tells him that “Ah hates you, Sykes … Ah hates you tuh de same degree dat Ah useter love yuh. Ah done took an' took till mah belly is full up tuh mah neck” (Hurston 48). She further informs him that the next time he hits her, she will tell the “white folks,” whom she presumes will arrest and try him for his abuse (Hurston 49)². Significantly, this is the only mention of the white folks in the story. Hurston only invokes them as a higher power when Delia is beginning to transcend the miserable existence that Sykes has forced upon her. However, this also illustrates that when Delia transcends the Otherness that her relationship with Sykes implies, she will still be in a marginalized position which she will have to address.

Although Sykes argues with Delia, he doesn't physically attack her. Her new calmness, compared with her screaming at the beginning of the story (Hurston 38-39), frightens Sykes. He responds by putting the snake in her laundry basket, assuming that it will frighten her, and then kill her before she regains her senses enough to escape it. Sykes' plan backfires, however. Delia does, indeed find the snake in her laundry basket, but escapes unharmed. She moves through various stages of dealing with his treachery during the night that she spends in her hay barn, feeling like a “gibbering wreck” for an hour (Hurston 50), but later regathering her composure and evaluating what has happened:

Finally she grew quiet, and after that came coherent thought. With this stalked through her a cold, bloody rage. Hours of this. A period of introspection, a space of retrospection, then a mixture of both. Out of this an awful calm³.

“Well, Ah done de bes' Ah could. If things ain't right, Gawd knows tain't mah fault.”

(Hurston 50-51)

Sykes' attempt on her life has unwittingly supplied the final element for Delia. She is empowered because she is freed from any guilt which has tied her to her husband. Once again, Hurston undermines religion as a source of comfort. If Delia's guilt were truly based in a faith that believed in God and his laws, human betrayal would not have the power to release her from her guilt. However, Sykes' treachery has the effect of absolving her of all responsibility for their relationship and for his imminent death. She can now let him die and embrace the freedom that his death symbolizes. Although she is emotionally freed from Sykes in the kitchen when she tells him that she hates him, his death is required to complete her transformation. She is physically as well as spiritually free from the threat that he imposed on her self as well as her property. She can now listen to “dat ol' scratch” that “is woke up now” and “muse at the tremendous whirr” (Hurston 51) that she hears when the snake strikes Sykes as if she were watching a movie—something that is not real. Because she is released from Sykes and the guilt that tied her to him, she can assume the role of the casual observer. Looking in the window and listening to his screams makes Delia ill—she must lie down in the garden to recover from her revulsion (Hurston 52)—but she makes no move to help the now-stricken man. The closest thing to emotion that she feels through the whole ordeal is a “surge of pity too strong to support” (Hurston 53). Sykes dies with the full knowledge that Delia knows he is dying and that she is no longer guilt-motivated. Because of his oppressive, violent treatment, she does not have to save him to be at peace with herself.

With Sykes dead, Delia is free. Although the narrative ends the moment before Sykes dies, we are confident that Delia will continue to act as an empowered woman, because she has already taken control of her destiny through her handling of Sykes, and that her newfound freedom will give her the inner strength to address a larger issue in her life. Throughout her marriage to Sykes, Delia has lived in a state of Otherness—she has continually been separated from the community that she should have bonded with. She has made little effort to connect with the townspeople for two reasons: she is grossly overworked, attempting to support herself and her shiftless husband, and she is too humiliated by his illicit affairs to have more than minimal contact with her neighbors. The community makes no effort to transcend Delia's separateness. Instead, they discuss her in a detached manner or look down on her, if they think about her at all. We hear their opinions most clearly when Delia drives her mule and buckboard full of clean laundry by Joe Clarke's store. They comment on her regularity in delivering the laundry, on Sykes' slothfulness in providing for her, and on her looks when she was young: “she wuz a right pretty li'l trick when he got huh. Ah'd uh mahtied huh mahself if he hadnter beat me to it … she wuz ez pritty ez a speckled pup” (Hurston 43). Delia is no more of a woman to the men at the store than she is to her husband. She is an object to pass the time talking about, nothing more. No meaningful interaction takes place between the two, and Delia is in no way part of their community⁴. The discussion turns, at one point, toward exacting justice on Delia's behalf; Clarke comments that “no law on earth kin make a man be decent if it ain't in ‘im” (Hurston 43). The consensus among the men is that the best thing to do with a man like Sykes is “lay on de rawhide till they cain't say Lawd a' mussy … we oughter kill ‘im” but in the end, “the heat was melting their civic virtue” (Hurston 44) and the conversation turns to things more important than a mere unfortunate object. The fact that the object in question is a woman is insignificant.

Delia does not merely hold the position of Other with the men of the community, however. Often, the entire female community is portrayed as Other, yet the only distinctive Other that we see in “Sweat” is Delia. Merchant, one of Joe Clarke's porch sitters, describes his wife's attitude towards Delia: “She tol' him [Sykes] tuh take ‘em right straight back home, ‘cause Delia works so hard ovah dat washtub she reckon everything on de place taste lak sweat an' soapsuds” (Hurston 43). The description smacks of “asterperious-ness”—Hurston's term for haughty—rather than sisterhood or compassion. Even among the women, Delia is not respected. She is a workhorse. Period. Again, Delia's Otherness is forced on her by Sykes' behavior. At end of the story, however, she is poised to deal with her Otherness and to become reinvolved with community now that the primary source of her Otherness has been removed.

The slave narrative subtext of “Sweat,” in which we see Delia being overpowered by Sykes, seems to symbolize the struggle of the Black community against the prejudices of the White community as well as Delia's personal need to overcome the separation from the microcosm of society that is her small town. The dialogue between Sykes and Delia is peppered with orders, demands and beatings and their relationship demonstrates a master-slave narrative, even down to the physical force that requires her obedience. Delia can occasionally escape Sykes' wrath by behaving subserviently towards him, but more often this strategy does not work, and no matter how cooperative Delia is, she is beaten anyway. Symbolically, the same narrative is at work subtextually. The Black community continued to be oppressed during Hurston's lifetime, nearly a century after the legal enslavement that ended with the Civil War. No matter how intelligent, polite or ingratiating a Black individual was, the white prejudice was often insurmountable. So while Hurston focuses our attention on the gender-based dynamics between Sykes and Delia, she also allegorically reminds the reader that just as Delia lives as a virtual slave to Sykes' sloth and violence, so did the Black community remain enslaved by prejudice and lack of opportunity.

Inherent in the slave narrative is the possibility of rebellion by the oppressed. Delia progresses from a subservience to her husband at the beginning of the story, to that of an individual who has successfully revolted and gained her freedom. Her freedom comes at a price, that of Sykes' life, but his violent domination of her life has prescribed his end, just as slavery typically ends in civil unrest and the often bloody overthrow of the slaveholding community. Delia is freed from Sykes' control through her rejection of his dominance of her life. She casts aside the “debris that cluttered their matrimonial trail. Not an image [was] left standing along the way” (Hurston 41). What is still standing is Delia's house, the symbol of her freedom from both her pathetic husband and the imperialistic, dominant existence that he prescribed for her. Hurston focuses our attention on the gender-based dynamic between Sykes and Delia, yet she also reminds the reader that just as Delia lived as a virtual slave to Sykes' sloth and violence, so did the Black community remain enslaved by prejudice and lack of opportunity.

LA FOLLE AS OTHER

La Folle in “Beyond the Bayou” also experiences Otherness, but her separation is based exclusively on her race rather than being coupled with her gender, as Delia's is. We immediately discover that La Folle is surrounded by the source of her fear; since childhood, she has refused to cross the bayou which “curved like a crescent around the point of land on which La Folle's cabin stood (Chopin 175). Each day, she looks out at the symbol of her fear. As the story unfolds, however, it becomes clear that it is not actually the bayou that she fears, but what it signifies—death, destruction, separation from community—and the threat that these factors pose to her way of life.

La Folle is a victim of the racial discord and resulting insanity that was the Civil War. She is frightened “out of her senses” as a child when her then-master's child staggers into her cabin. This isolated incident takes place during the Civil War (Toth 70), instead of over 35 years later as does the rest of the story. La Folle's shock at seeing her young master stagger through the door, “black with powder and crimson with blood” sets up a metaphor of bodily fluids that Chopin refers to again later in the story to describe La Folle's fear. She paints a gruesome picture of the white man covered in black gunpowder that mingles with his bright red, still flowing blood. If we attempt to visualize the grisly scene, it is not hard to understand how the sight could have permanently marred the psyche of a small child. Since her frightful experience, La Folle is content to stay in her cabin away from “sight and knowledge” (Chopin 175). Ignorance is preferable to taking the risk of leaving the safe haven she has created for herself.

La Folle's isolated, marginalized lifestyle places her, by definition, in the category of Other. She has little way of interacting with the members of the black community, as she rarely leaves her little plot of land across the bayou from Bellissime and never crosses the bayou to the white folks house. The physical barrier formed by the Bayou prevents real interaction between black and white. La Folle is known to have “more physical strength than most men, and made her patch of cotton and corn and tobacco like the best of them” (Chopin 175). She tends her own gardens, bakes, cleans, washes, and relaxes when she likes, and she owes no explanation of her time to anyone, as far as we can tell. However, La Folle may be left alone because she can support herself; she can, after all, tend her plot of ground as well as most men.

La Folle seems content with this state of Otherness at the beginning of the narrative. She is largely left alone except by the people she loves, and the people La Folle loves are P'tit Maitre's white children. The children, especially Cheri, love La Folle in return, but they love her in the way that a child loves a pet. Their interaction consists of La Folle entertaining them and doing things for them; the relationship takes place on the children's terms. La Folle never goes to the children, rather, they always seek her out, and neither party questions the quality of their interaction because society dictated that former slaves would not interfere in the workings of white families.

We are consistently reminded of La Folle's separation from both the Black and the White communities. Although we see that she shares a close relationship with Cheri, P'tit Maitre's son, we are also not allowed to forget that their races are different—a fact that defines the necessity of their separation in the post-Civil War South. Cheri doesn't just stroke La Folle's hand but “strokes her black hand” (Chopin 176). She speaks in a Black dialect; Cheri's speech, while not perfect, is good by Creole standards. La Folle, like the rest of the Black community, lives in a cabin instead of at the mansion, Bellissime, and tends a garden plot (Chopin 175) instead of attending “very fine dinners” (Chopin 176) where items like almonds, raisins and oranges are common fare. Rather than having her home surrounded by patches of flowers, she instead has cows grazing up to her fence (Chopin 176). We are not allowed to forget, even momentarily, that La Folle is a member of that “Other” community—the one that is not White.

Before La Folle is prepared to deal with—or even begin to realize—her state of Otherness, she must first overcome her fear, and she comes face-to-face with it when Cheri is injured in a hunting accident. She is the first person to find the injured child, and rapidly carries him to the edge of the bayou, where she shouts for help, to no avail. All the while, his cries of “it hurt so bad” (Chopin 177) ring in her ears, doubtlessly similar to those uttered by his father after he was chased and injured during the War. The reader suspects that La Folle is experiencing a flashback to the dreadful night when P'tit Maitre staggered into her cabin. The words that Cheri groans in the present are probably frighteningly similar to those moaned by his father on the night that she lost her senses.

Ultimately, the only way for La Folle to overcome her fear is to cross the bayou. At this point, she does transcend the margins of her Otherness, becoming part of the community of women, because she takes on a mother's role as she cares for the injured Cheri. Though in the grip of “extreme terror” (Chopin 177), she forces herself to cross the bayou because it is the only way to save him. She shuts her eyes and starts to run, but she is so overcome by fear that she can not look until the awful deed is done and she is on the Other side of the bayou (Chopin 178). As she crosses the bayou, Chopin again uses the image of bodily fluids to indicate La Folle's overwhelming fear, only this time it is described by the “saliva [that] had gathered in a white foam on her black lips” (Chopin 178). Ironically, the colors are reversed here. When P'tit Maitre was the injured one, the black powder stood out on his white skin, punctuated by the red blood. In the present, the white spit stands out against La Folle's black skin. Chopin makes a significant assertion here, and one fairly uncommon in the post-War South. The color of the fear is insignificant. Black or white, it is still fear. Similarly, the color of the individual does not matter. Black or White, all are still people, with the same fears and needs for acceptance in the community—a colorless community.

La Folle's dread of crossing the bayou is remarkably similar to Delia's fear of the rattlesnake. Her closed eyes, quivering body and “distorted face” during her crossing remind the reader of Delia's feeling of being a “gibbering wreck” (Hurston 50) after seeing the rattlesnake in the house. Similar to Delia's need to lie down on the cool earth to recover after nearly becoming ill at Sykes' screams, La Folle must tightly close her eyes to hide from the “unknown and terrifying world” (Chopin 178) and after delivering the child safely to his father's arms, that world “turned black—like that day she had seen powder and blood” (Chopin 178). She passes out cold on the ground, and again, the colors and body fluids intermingle, signifying La Folle's fear. The faint that La Folle falls into mirrors the “twitch sleep” that Delia experiences after finding the rattlesnake in her laundry basket (Hurston 51).

The colored fluid metaphor does not appear again in the story, however, because La Folle overcomes her fear. She regains consciousness in her cabin, under the care of the “old black mammy” who concocts a potion that will strengthen La Folle (Chopin 179). As soon as La Folle is coherent, the woman caring for her leaves her alone and goes home. Other members of the community “had come, and found that the stupor clung to her, [and] had gone again” (Chopin 179). Her neighbors are curious about her fate, but they are not wailing for her potential loss. They are merely bystanders to the events as they unfold. Clearly, although the fear is gone now, La Folle is still separated from the community.

La Folle's fear is truly gone when she awakens the next morning. She is calm, “as if no tempest had shaken and threatened her existence but yesterday” (Chopin 179). She dresses in her best clothes, because it is Sunday. Her emancipation takes place on the traditional Christian holy day, just as Delia's does. She crosses the bayou “as if she had done this all her life” (Chopin 179). Now that she if free of her fear, like Delia, La Folle is ready to confront her Otherness. We actually see the beginnings of La Folle's attempts to integrate herself into the white community, whereas with Delia, we know that it is necessary for her to bond with the black community as her next step.

“Exultation possessed her soul” as La Folle looks back at the river and the bayou that she has just crossed (Chopin 180). For her, this is one reward for having overcome her fear, but the best rewards are to come. She crosses over once again to check on Cheri and his mother is surprised to see La Folle at her door: “quickly and cleverly she dissembled the astonishment she felt at seeing La Folle” (Chopin 180). We can read this passage in two ways. Madame may merely be surprised at La Folle's appearance; after all, she has never come to the house except in the single emergency that threatened Cheri. However, we should read some measure of insecurity into this surprise as well. La Folle's love for Cheri is well-known about the plantation, but until now it has been limited by the amount of time that he has chosen to spend with her. Suddenly, La Folle is presenting herself on the family doorstep—and at the front door. Blacks were still expected to go to the back door of the house at the turn of the century when Chopin was writing. It was highly unusual—and daring—for a Black woman to come to the front door and expect to be admitted to the house. Madame may have viewed La Folle's visit as quite an unexpected intrusion.

Regardless of her feelings at finding La Folle at her doorstep, Madame does not allow any liberties. She does not invite La Folle into the house, and asks her to “come back when [Cheri] awakes” (Chopin 180). She clearly delineates herself as a member of the White community from La Folle, a member of the Black community. La Folle's ethnic Otherness is poignantly obvious here, when even after her extraordinary efforts the day before, which most likely saved the life of Madame's son, La Folle is not treated as a hero or even a welcome guest. She is told to return when it is more convenient.

La Folle does not accept this Otherness as that which is due to her, however. Without ever raising her voice, she communicates loudly that she does not find the separation of her Otherness acceptable any longer. “Non, madame. I'm goint wait yair tell Cheri wake up,” La Folle tells his mother. Without waiting for an answer, she “seated herself upon the topmost step of the veranda” (Chopin 180). This is not the action of a woman who is cowed, or who readily accepts her place. Rather, the gentle refusal to leave is La Folle's sign that she will not be dismissed because she is a member of the Other race—that had been traditionally less important than the One white race. Instead, she sits and waits, contemplating the “beautiful world beyond the bayou” (Chopin 180). That is to say, she considers a life in which she is not limited by the bayou that signifies her fears or her separation from community. She considers a life in which she is at the center of the community, where she feels she belongs.

P'tit Maitre symbolizes the Master of the slave narrative in “Beyond the Bayou.” The English translation of his name, little master, and his pointed absence in the story's present place him squarely in the position of White patriarch. He lives in the big house while La Folle lives in a cabin, and his lifestyle is leisurely while hers is based on working to support herself. Although no obvious antagonism exists between La Folle and P'tit Maitre, the little master does not share any type of relationship with her. He is portrayed as separate, yet part of a community—the White community—that holds the power. However, La Folle's action of sitting on the front steps the morning after Cheri's accident begins to subvert the superior attitude that Blacks faced. She silently refuses to participate in a dialogue that is based in the master-slave narrative, thus positioning herself such that she can begin to rise above her separated societal status.

Chopin uses La Folle to symbolize the dawning of a new age for the former slaves. Although Chopin's family owned a few slaves prior to the Civil War, the tone of her Creole stories is generally positive towards the Black community. We see a definite distinction between black and white in “Beyond the Bayou,” however, as is most aptly illustrated by Madame's refusal to treat La Folle as a welcome guest, even after the heroic actions that ended in saving Cheri's life. I argue that Chopin intentionally troubles the then-prevailing notion of the black community's inferiority to the white community, and symbolizes this problematizing at the end of “Beyond the Bayou.” After La Folle has been summarily dismissed by Madame, she seats herself on the topmost step of the big house. She looks out over the plantation, and the sun is rising behind her. The rising sun symbolizes literally the dawning of a new life for La Folle, one in which she no longer fears crossing the bayou. On an individual level, La Folle's crossing of the bayou places her in a position to be assimilated into the black community rather than being excluded by her self imposed isolation. She is also positioned as a symbol of the dawning of civil rights for African Americans, which began in Chopin's lifetime. The sun rises behind La Folle as she sits on the steps, symbolizing the dawn of freedom for the entire African American community.

Both Delia and La Folle must overcome remarkable obstacles in order to reach a point in their journeys at which they can confront possible solutions to the Otherness which confines them. Each, in her own way, recovers from her fear, gains her freedom, and is poised to overcome her Otherness. The reader finishes both of the stories with the expectation that the women in them will continue to grow, to stretch and to become a part of their communities. They will, we believe, truly dispel their Otherness just as they have dispelled the fear that ruled their lives at the inception of their narratives.

Notes

1. Since the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis, the snake has been an image closely associated with evil and with the devil himself. Hurston consistently equates Sykes Jones with snake and Satanic imagery throughout “Sweat.” When Sykes first appears in the story, he is tormenting Delia with the whip, acting as if a snake is crawling on her (39). As Delia lies on her bed after her first confrontation with her husband, she says aloud that “whatever goes over the Devil's back, is got to come under his belly. Sometime or ruther,Sykes, like everybody else, is gointer reap his sowing” (42), clearly identifying the devil with Sykes; it is Sykes whose comeuppance she is predicting. The storekeeper Joe Clarke describes him as squeezing the life out of Delia, similar to the way a snake might strangle its victim (43-44); Old Man Anderson continues the image with the comment that they should take Sykes and his woman and “lay on de rawhide” (44)—again, a whip image that reminds the reader of a snake. He brags to his neighbors, calling himself a snake charmer (47) and clearly tells Delia that he likes the snake better than her (47). Delia makes ambiguous remarks about “ol Satan” (49) and “dat ol' Scratch” (51) that could be intended to mean either the rattlesnake or Sykes Jones. Ultimately, the snake that Sykes is identified with throughout the story kills him, in an ironic twist of images. Sykes, who we see as a nearly Satanic figure throughout the story, meets his demise at the fangs of “ol Satan.”

2. Delia's assumption that the “white folks” will come to her aid against Sykes' abuse is uncharacteristic ofthe real plight of Blacks in the South of the 1920's; “Sweat” was written/published in 1926. Realistically, her complaint would have been met with a cursory investigation at best and mirth at worst. The outcome most likely would have been more injury for Delia by Sykes' hand. This passage bears examination, however, as it suggests that Hurston views the Black community as subordinating the White community by the simple act of ignoring it. She seems to show the White community in a position of power; it is to them that Delia feels she must go for legal aid. She only refers to the White folks once in the story, and that when she is trying to scare her undereducated husband. Hurston creates an ambiguous Otherness between the two communities; she privileges the Black community over the White in many instances, yet this statement may cause readers to question her views. She articulates her views in an article condemning the Supreme Court's decision in the case of Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education. “The whole matter revolves around self-respect of my people,” she argues. “I regard the ruling of the United States Supreme Court as insulting rather than honoring my race” (Spunk xii). This argument, made nearly 30 years later (1954), maintains that decision devalued the “already existing black institutions” (Gubar 1639) and seems to continue her lifelong assertion that the Black community was autonomous, self-sufficient, and in no way needed the approval of the White community.

3. Hurston's verbiage changes significantly in this passage. Before and after this passage, she relies on concrete words to convey her message, using little in the way of articles or demonstrative adjectives. In this passage alone, she relies on the words “this” and “that”to carry her from one sentence to another and from one thought to the next. In the 5 sentences that make up this pivotal paragraph, these demonstrative adjectives appear 4 times, and each in a place where she usually would use a concrete term. The seemingly purposeful ambiguity of her words cries out for a linguistic interpretation that I am not qualified to give.

4. The reader is led to wonder if Delia's life would have been any better had she chosen someone Other than Sykes as her husband. The men's habit of lounging on the porch of the Clarke's store, dribbling cane-knots and gossiping begs the question of whether she would have worked just as hard regardless of whom she married.

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