Essay On Eatonville

873 Words4 Pages
The people of both Eatonville and the Everglades have a particular point of view of Janie despite their differences in setting. In Eatonville, Janie is quickly put on a high pedestal by Joe as the ‘Mayor’s Wife’ and becomes the envy of the town. Joe does not allow her to attend town gatherings and Janie rapidly becomes alienated from the community as a result. When she returns to town at the beginning of the novel, “The women took the faded shirt and muddy overalls and laid them away for remembrance. It was a weapon against her strength and if it turned out of no significance, still it was a hope that she might fall to their level someday” (Hurston 2). Janie is heavily criticized for her common appearance upon her return to Eatonville. The…show more content…
Eatonville is not much of a town before Joe arrives. However, he transforms Eatonville into a place worthy of his governance. He adds a post office, general store, and lampposts. His house itself “had two stories with porches...bannisters and such things. The rest of the town looked like servants’ quarters surrounding the ‘big house’” (47). With the richness of his house, Joe ensures that the rest of the town feels beneath him in order to assert his power over the town. This description of the town gives it the impression of order and that there are distinct class differences. The Everglades are considerably less classy and wilder. It is described as a place that is “big and new” with “Ground so rich that everything went wild” (129). Janie and Tea Cake live in nothing more than a shack and that is more than what most people who stay there have. There is nothing clean and orderly about the Everglades where life is a cycle of working in the muddy bean fields during the day and partying at night. The most class distinctive feature in the town is of the big houses of the white people and the shacks of the black people. The imagery associated with Eatonville and the Everglades clearly show the differences between their
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