Tea Cake and Janie in Chs 12-15
Chapter 12 opens up with the town gossiping about Janie and her new man, Tea Cake. “Tea Cake and Janie gone hunting. Tea Cake and Janie gone fishing. Tea Cake and Janie to Orlando to the movies” (Hurston 105). Phoeby confronts Janie about her capers with Tea Cake, why she isn’t mourning anymore, and that she should marry the undertaker with he huge house. Janie says that she and Tea Cake are “as good as married already” (Hurston 109) and that she’s leaving Eatonville to go off to Jacksonville and marry him. Then in the next chapter, Tea Cake goes off with some of Jane’s hidden money and throws a huge party for some of the locals. He doesn’t tell Janie about it until later, though, because he “‘wuz skeered you might git all mad and quit me for takin’ you ‘mongst ‘em’” (Hurston 119). Janie tells Tea Cake that she “‘aims to partake wid everything…don’t keer what it is’” (Hurston 119).
The next few chapters include Tea Cake gambling and winning big but getting stabbed, both of them moving down to the Everglades, Janie working alongside Tea Cake in the bean fields, and Janie fighting Tea Cake over his suspicious relations with Nunkie.
What I found most interesting about this whole section of the book was how even though Janie still holds the belief that Tea Cake has set her free, the relationship still limits Janie. The earliest example of this is the fact that Tea Cake starts picking out Janie’s outfits, simply because he likes her in blue. Janie doesn’t seem to mind at all, and in fact seems to like it, but all the same it seems like evidence of the control Tea Cake has over Janie. Tea Cake still puts Janie on a bit of a pedestal, too, like when he doesn’t invite her to the huge get-together he organized. “‘Dem wuzn’t no high muckty mucks’” (Hurston 118), Tea Cake tells Janie.
Also, Janie doesn’t work alongside Tea Cake until he asks her to. “She is so in love with him that her place is wherever he wants it to be, that she is able to let him slap ‘her around a bit to show he was boss’, that she waits for him at home or goes with him to work, as he wishes” (Reich, “Phoeby’s Hungry Listening”). There seems to be an air of dependency in the relationship, that of Pheoby’s dependance on Tea Cake, despite Janie’s presumption that the relationship is completely mutual with her and Tea Cake sharing everything. For instance, when Janie can’t seem to function while Tea Cake goes off for the first time. She just sits around all day and worries, revealing her dependence on him.
I know I wrote in a comment on one of Leena’s posts that I believed Tea Cake completely sets Janie free, but after reading chapters 12-15, I changed my mind. What do you guys think chapters 12-15 reveal about Tea Cake and Janie’s relationship?
~Sarah-Claire
