"The world in a jug and the stopper in hand": 'Their Eyes' as blues performance

African American Review, Fall, 1998 by Maria V. Johnson

When my bed get empty makes me feel awful mean and blue [2x] My springs are getting rusty sleepin' single like I do.

Through personification, musical personae and literary characters come face-to-face with their feelings. Compare the following examples from Bessie Smith's "Jailhouse Blues" and Hurston's text:

Good mornin' blues, blues how do you do (how do you do)? Good mornin' blues, blues how do you do? Said I jus' came here to have a few words with you. (Smith) The big house . . . creaked and cried all night under the weight of lonesomeness. Then she'd lie awake in bed asking lonesomeness some questions. (Their Eyes 137)

In "Jailhouse Blues" the singer reasons with the blues, a metaphor suggesting on one level her giving voice to her feelings and on another level her wish to reason with the jailkeeper or confront the "system." Similarly, by externalizing emotions Hurston gives voice to Janie's feelings, and Janie confronts her past, takes stock of the present, and envisions her future.

Through the use of hyperbolic imagery, singers and storytellers dramatize oppressive conditions and feelings of powerlessness.(7) In Bessie Smith's recording of "Mean Old Bedbug Blues," for example, the bedbug embodies the abusive forces which the singer faces. The depth of the singer's powerlessness and pain is conveyed as this very small being is pictured very big:

Bedbugs big as a jackass, will bite you and stand and grin [2x] Will drink all the bedbug poison, turn around and bite you again.

In Their Eyes, when Matt attempts to defend his treatment of the mule (" 'Ah does feed 'im. He's jus' too mean tuh git fat'"), the "mule-talkers" use hyperbole along with irony to confirm the mule's powerlessness and subjugation to Matt's abuse:

"Us all knows he's mean. Ah seen 'im when he took after one uh dem Roberts chillun in de street . . . . [he]

wuz dead in behind 'im and gainin' on 'im every jump, when all of a sudden de wind changed and blowed de mule way off his course . . . and before de ornery varmint could tack, de youn-gun had got over de fence." (84)

Like the blues singer, Hurston uses the lingistic process of inversion to reverse power relationships and turn conventions around. In the following examples from Bessie Smith's recording of "Downhearted Blues" and Hurston's text, the biggest thing (the world) is made small, tangible, and controllable:

I got the world in a jug, the stopper's in my hand [2x] I'm gonna hold it until you, men come under my command. (Smith)(8)

"You'se got de world in uh jug and make out you don't know it. But Ah'm glad tuh be de one tuh tell yuh." (Their Eyes 157)

In "Downhearted Blues" the metaphor boasts a woman's power over men. In Hurston's text, it signifies Janie's powerful hold on Tea Cake, and her own power which Tea Cake helps her to discover by mirroring the image back to her.

In portraying Janie's relationship with Tea Cake, Hurston draws frequently on the language, situations, and themes of the blues. The blues character of the relationship is initially signaled by a traditional blues couplet "sung" by Janie to Pheoby which expresses both Janie's new-found sense of freedom and her intent to marry Tea Cake and leave the Eatonville community: "'Some of dese mornin's and it won't be long, you gointuh wake up callin' me and Ah'll be gone'" (173). Structurally, the line marks closure in the chapter and signals a new beginning for Janie - a new marriage and a new life. On the next page, Hurston celebrates Janie's subsequent departure with a second song, a signifying nod to the vaudeville tune "Shuffle Off to Buffalo," as Janie waves goodbye to the silence Jody has imposed on her and embraces the music-filled freedom which life with Tea Cake offers: