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

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

The train beat on itself and danced on the shiny steel rails mile after mile. . . . the engineer would play on his whistle for the people. . . . And the train shuffled on to Jacksonville. (174)(9)

In the early stages of her relationship with Tea Cake, Janie experiences a multitude of powerful new feelings at the same time that she is haunted by troublesome remnants of the internalized voices of others. Compare Hurston's text with Memphis Minnie's expression of love/hate, pain/pleasure in "Bumble Bee Blues":

She adored him and hated him at the same time. (Their Eyes 163) She tried to look cold but she was smiling in spite of herself. (164) It made her so glad she was scared of herself. (175) Sometimes he makes me happy, then sometimes he makes me cry. He had me to the place once, I wish to God that I could die. (Minnie, qtd, in Garon 106)

In projecting Janie's love and vulnerability, Hurston employs shifts in idiom and address and juxtaposes contrasting feelings, as the blues singer does, to convey mixed emotions and internal conflict.(10) Compare Hurston's text with Minnie's "Moaning the Blues":

Anyhow, she wasn't going back to Eatonville to be laughed at and pitied. She had ten dollars in her pocket and twelve hundred in the bank. But oh God, don't let Tea Cake be off somewhere and hurt and Ah not know nothing about it. And God, please suh, don't let him love nobody else but me. Maybe Ah'm is uh fool, Lawd, lak dey say, but Lawd, Ah been so lonesome, and Ah been waitin', Jesus. Ah done waited uh long time. (Their Eyes 179-80)

Oh the blues got ways sometimes just like a nat'chal man [2x] I don't care which-a-way you turn, they always is on your hands.

Won't you tell me baby, how come you don't come back home? [2x]

I lay down last night with my back door open all night long.

Here come the blues this morning, just 'fore day they shut my door [2x]

But the Lord forgive me, I won't have them things no more.

This morning, setting on the side of my bed

This morning, blues set on the side of my bed

Said I just come brought you a letter, why your plumb good man fell dead.

[Spoken:] Blues, what must I do?

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Mmmmmmmmmm, mmmmmmmmm- mmmmmmmm

Mmmmmmmmm, mmmmmmmmm- mmmm (Minnie, "Moaning")

In this passage from Their Eyes, Hurston moves from a narrator's voice to Janie's voice, from third-person ("she") to first-person ("Ah"), from standard English to Black dialect, and from the narrator indirectly conveying Janie's feelings to Janie talking directly to God about her feelings. As the person, idiom, and address shift, we glimpse the range of Janie's conflicting responses to Tea Cake's disappearance. In "Moaning the Blues," Memphis Minnie begins by addressing her audience, then her lover, then the Lord; finally, the blues addresses her. Like Hurston, Minnie utilizes shifts in address along with personification to' express a range of emotions in response to her lover's disappearance. Hurston's passage evokes passion, fear, jealousy, distrust, shame, and loneliness; Minnie's song suggests betrayal, guilt, disbelief, and grief.(11)