Zora Neale Hurston's "Sweat": from oppressive domesticity to subversive domestic violence

• Autores: María Frías-Rudolphi
• Localización: The Short Story in English [Recurso electrónico]: crossing boundaries / Gema Soledad Castillo García (ed. lit.), María Rosa Cabellos Castilla (ed. lit.), Juan Antonio Sánchez Jiménez (ed. lit.), Vincent Carlisle Espínola (ed. lit.), 2006, ISBN 8481387096, págs. 368-377
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This paper focuses on Delia —from Hurston’s short story “Sweat”— a victim of a violent romantic relationship who suffers at the hands of an abusive husband until she, finally, cannot take any more of it, and kills him.

    Using Campbell, Stets, and White’s theories on domestic violence, I will try to assess to what extent Hurston’s discourse on battered women not only crosses fixed boundaries but surpasses them all, and at the same time subverts previous discourses on African American women’s passive victimization. I will try to show that Delia’s involuntary but unconsciously desired killing of her husband acts as a metaphor for Hurston’s re-mapping the theme of black female victimization.