TEWWG Quotations

Chapter 1:

“Now, women forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly” (1).

Chapter 2:

“Oh to be a… tree in bloom! With kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world! She was sixteen… and she wanted to struggle with life but it seemed to elude her” (11).

Chapter 3:

“Yes, she would love Logan after they were married. She could see no way for it to come about, but Nanny and the old folks had said it, so it must be so. Husbands and wives always loved each other, and that was what marriage meant” (21).

“She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman” (25).

22 (top) – waiting for love

22 (bottom)- logan would never hit Janie

25 – waiting for change

Chapter 4:

“She wasn’t even angry. Logan was accusing her of her mamma, her grandmamma and her feelings, and she couldn’t do a thing about any of it… A feeling of sudden newness and change came over her” (32).

“He…helped her to the seat beside him. With him on it, it sat like some high, ruling chair . From now on until death she was going to have flower dust and springtime sprinkled over everything. A bee for her bloom” (32).

Chapter 5:

“It must have been the way Joe spoke out without giving her a change to say anything one way or another that took the bloom off of things. But anyway, she went down the road behind him that night feeling cold. He strode along invested with his new dignity, thought and planned out loud, unconscious of her thoughts” (43).

“‘Ah aimed tuh be uh big voice. You oughta be glad, ‘cause dat makes a big woman outa you.’ A feeling of coldness and fear took hold of her. She felt far away from things and lonely (46).

See page 50 for themes

Chapter 6:

“She went through many silent rebellions over things like that. Such a waste of life and time. But Joe kept saying that she could do it if she wanted to and he wanted her to use her privileges. That was the rock she was battered against” (54).

“’They oughta be shamed uh themselves! Teasin’ dat poor brute beast lak they is! Done been worked tuh death; done had his disposition ruint wid mistreatment, and now they got tuh finish devilin’ ‘im tuh death” (56)

“Janie want to hear the rest of the play-acting and how it ended, but she got up sullenly and went inside. She came back to the porch with her bristles sticking out all over her and with dissatisfaction written all over her face. Joe saw it and lifted his own hackles a bit” (70).

“Somebody got to think for women and chillun and cows. I god, they sho don’t think non theirselves” (71).

“She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside her… It was her image of Jody tumbled down and shattered. But looking at it she saw that it never was the flesh and blood figure of her dreams. Just something she had grabbed to drape her dreams over” (72).

“Janie… thrust herself into conversation” (75).

55 hair rag –subservient, women=property

69-joe suppressing happiness

71- Jody slaps her

Chapter 7:

“She didn’t read books so she didn’t know that she was the world and the heavens boiled down to a drop. Man attempting to climb to painless heights from his dung hill” (76).

“Janie had robbed him of his illusion of irresistible maleness that all men cherish, which was terrible… she had cast down his empty armor before men and they had laughed” (79).

Chapter 8:

“Ah’m stone dead from standin’ still and tryin’ tuh smile” (83).

“You done lived wid me for twenty years and you don’t half know me atall. And you could have but you was so busy worshippin’ de works of yo’ own hands” (86)

“Then she starched and ironed her face, forming it into just what people wanted to see” (87).

Chapter 9:

“She had found a jewel inside herself and she had wanted to walk where people could see her and gleam it around… [angels] beat [man] down to nothing but sparks…the lonesomeness in the sparks make them hung for one another, but the mud is deaf and dub like all other tumbling mud balls, Janie had tried to show her shine” (90).

Chapter 10:

“‘Ah just ain’t never learnt how.’ He set it up and began to show her and she found herself glowing inside. Somebody wanted her to play. Somebody thought it natural for her to play. That was even nice” (95-96).

Chapter 11:

“He is just saying anything for the time being, feeling he’s got me so ill b’lieve him…But oh what I wouldn’t give to be twelve years younger so I could b’lieve him” (105).

“He looked like the love thoughts of women, He could be a bee to a blossom---a pear tree blossom in the spring” (106).

“After a long time of passive happiness, she got up and opened the window and let Tea Cake leap forth and mount to the sky on a wind. That was the beginning of things” (107).

“All the feats that circumstance could provide and the heart fell, attacked her on ever side. This was a new sensation for her, but no less excruciating. If only Tea Cake would make her certain” (108).

“Nobody else on earth kin hold uh candle tuh you, baby. You got de keys to de kingdom” (109).

Chapter 12:

marriage: “it always changes folks, and sometimes it brings out dirt and meanness dat even de person didn’t know they had in ‘em theyselves” (113).

“Dis is uh love game. Ah done lived Grandma’s way, now Ah means tuh live mine” (114).

“Sittin’ on proches lak de white madam looked lak uh mighty fine thing tuh her. Dat’s whut she wanted for me---don’t keer what it cost. Git up on uh high chair and sit dere…Ah got up on de high stool lak she told me, but… Ah done nearly languished tuh death up dere” (114)

Chapter 13:

“God, please suh, don’t let him love nobody else but me…. Ah been so lonesome, and Ah been waitin’” (120).

“Tea Cake wasn’t doing an bit more harm trying to win hisself a little money than they was always doing with their lying tongues. Tea Cake had more good nature under his toe nails than they had in their so called Christian hearts. She better not hear none of them…talking about her husband!” (126)

“Janie looked down on him and felt a self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out form its hiding place” (128).

Chapter 14:

“Sometimes Janie would think of the old days in the big white house… What if Eatonville could see her now in her blue denim overalls and heavy shoes?...She was sorry for her friends back there and scornful of the others. The men held big arguments here like they used to do on the store porch. Only here, she could listen and laugh and even talk some herself if she wanted to” (134).

Chapter 15:

“They wrestled on until they were doped with their own fumes and emanations; till their clothes had been torn away; till he hurled her to the floor and held her there melting her resistance with the heat of his body, doing things with their bodies to express the inexpressible” (137)

Chapter 16:

“All gods who receive homage are cruel, all gods dispense suffering without reason Otherwise they would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood” (145).

Chapter 17:

“He had whipped Janie… it revealed that awful fear inside him. Being able to whip her reassured him in possession. No brutal beating at all. He just slapped her around a bit to show he was boss” (147).

“Janie is wherever Ah wants tuh be. Dat’s de kind uh wife she is and Ah love her for it” (148).

Chapter 18:

“It was so easy to be hopeful in the day time when you can see the things you wish on. But it was night, it stayed night. Night was striding across nothingness with the whole round world in his hands” (158).

“The monstropolous beast had left his bed. The two hundred mile an hour wind had loosed his chains. He seized hold of his dikes and ran forward until he met the quarters; uprooted them like grass and rushed on after his supposed-to-be-conquerors, rolling the dikes, rolling the houses, rolling the people” (162).

“Havoc was there with her mouth wide open… Janie stood on the edge of things and looked over the desolation” (167).

“You don’t have tuh say, if it wuzn’t for me, baby, cause Ah’m heah, and then Ah wnt yuh tuh know its uh man heah” (167).

Chapter 19:

“That big old dawg with the hatred in his eyes had killed her after all. She wished she had slipped off the cow-tail and drowned then and there and been done. But to kill her through Tea Cake was too much to bear” (178).

“God snatched me out de fire through you. And Ah loves yuh” (180).

“It was the meanest moment of eternity… She had wanted him to live so much and he was dead…She had to hug him tight for soon he would be gone, and she had to tell him for the last time” (184).

“It was not death she feared. It was misunderstanding. If they made a verdict that she didn’t ant Teac Cake and wanted him dead, then that was a real shin and a shame. It was worse than murder” (188).

Chapter 20:

“They had begged Janie to stay… But the much meant Tea Cake and Tea Cake wasn’t there. So it was just a great expanse of black mud” (191).

“love ain’t something lak uh grindstone dat’s de same thing everywhere and do de same thing tuh everything it touch. Love is lak de sea. It’s uh movin’ thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore” (191).

“Of course he wasn’t dead. He cold never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking. The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped in over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called her soul to come and see” (193).

FEMALE/MALE

Mud (covering glow/gleam)

Horizon/sea

Animalistic/hurricane---control

Soul (personified)