It is worth noting that the work of Zora Neale Hurston called “Sweat” brought up a gender conflict as the main subject for discussion. In particular, this short story reveals aggression and sexist oppression against black women by black men. In this story, the husband attempts to kill his wife by placing a rattlesnake in a basket full of dirty laundry (Hurston 6). As a result, the snake creeps onto the bed and bites the man who prays to his wife for help, but the heroine decided not to do anything.
The details that were most interesting to me center around the fact that the author provided an open discussion of the oppression of African-American women by men. Given the time this story was written; it can be assumed that such an image of women was not approved. In particular, it is possible to state that the publishers did not want to see stories on the pages of their publications depicting the depressing, albeit truthful, realities of the life of black women. The main heroine, after years of oppression, decides that she has had enough. The author writes that “she could hear Sykes calling in a most despairing tone as one who expected no answer” (Hurston 9). It becomes clear that the life-changing decision not to help her husband was a difficult one, but the woman had to make it. After reading this story and additional literature on the topic, I realized that I need to learn more about this time through the writings of African American writers. I suppose that they have had great cultural significance as literary answers to the problems of race and gender, filtered through their artistic consciousness.
Work Cited
Hurston, Zora Neale. Sweat. 1926. Web.