Pheoby: “Tea Cake is draggin’ you round tuh places you ain’t used tuh… He don’t know you’se useter uh more high time crowd than dat”
Janie: “Tea Cake ain’t dragging me off nowhere Ah don’t want tuh go. Ah always did want tuh git round uh whole heap, but Jody wouldn’t ‘low me tuh” (112).
While Tea Cake fills the role of a companion for Janie, he also provides Janie with a platform for rebellion against Jody, Nanny, and Eatonville. Eatonville’s disapproval of Tea Cake makes him even more attractive to Janie. By having a relationship with Tea Cake she is able to tap into her otherwise suppressed resentment towards Jody and his town. Tea Cake and Janie’s scandalous relationship with him also enables Janie to publically renounce Nanny’s notion that with marriage came love and happiness. Although Tea Cake is attractive because he is younger and adventurous, it is not his character that draws Janie in; rather, it is his ability to foster disproval from Eatonville, and from Jody and Nanny if they were still alive.
Mary-An intriguing argument here--that Janie's attraction to Tea Cake is based on the "bad boy" theory...the whole town sees him as someone not to approve of, and that makes him all that more attractive. What does it say about Janie and her relationships with Jody and Nanny, then, that she has to retaliate, in a way, even after they are dead?
ReplyDelete