1st Edition

The Assertive Woman in Zora Neale Hurston's Fiction, Folklore, and Drama

By Pearlie Mae Fisher Peters Copyright 1998
    200 Pages
    by Routledge

    198 Pages
    by Routledge

    Hurston was renowned for her portrayal of assertive women in her fiction, folklore, and drama. This book explores her development as an assertive woman and outspoken writer, emphasizing the impact of the African American oral traditions and vernacular speech patterns of Harlem, Polk County, and her hometown of Eatonville, Florida on the development of her personal and artistic voice. The study traces the development of her assertive women characters, the emphasis upon verbal performance and verbal empowerment, the significance of down home Southern humor, and the importance of an ideology of assertive individualism in Hurston's writings and analyzes changes in Hurston's personal style.
    Hurston articulated an assertive spirit and voice that had a profound influence on the development of her professional reputation and on the course of African American literature, folklore, and culture of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. This study combines literary criticism and biography in tracing her often controversial career. This wide-ranging book focuses upon links between Hurston's fiction and nonfiction, and includes analysis of her plays, which have often been neglected in studies of her writing.(Ph.D. dissertation, State University of New York-Buffalo, 1989; revised with new introduction)

    Chapter 1 “Ah got de law in mah mouf”: Negotiating Respect in the Hurston Mold; Chapter 2 The Other Woman in Hurston’s Art: The Literary Foil to the Assertive Woman; Chapter 3 The Assertive Woman in Conversation and Combat: Dimensions of the Talking and Fighting Phenomenon; Chapter 4 Big Sweet, Polk County’s Queen of Talk and Song; Chapter 5 Big Sweet and the Talk Experience in the Jook; Chapter 6 Big Sweet in Polk County; Chapter 7 Laura Lee in “The Conscience of the Court”; Chapter 8 Missie May in “The Gilded Six Bits”; Chapter 9 Daisy in “Mule Bone” and The Domestic in “Story in Harlem Slang”; Chapter 10 Delia in “Sweat”; Chapter 11 Lucy in Jonah’s Gourd Vine; Chapter 12 Janie in Their Eyes Were Watching God;

    Biography

    Pearlie Mae Fisher Peters