In many ways, the muck--the Everglades--could be
considered something like an Eden for Janie. All of her life, Janie has dreamed of a
place where she can be herself and she can love the man she is with for all of the right
reasons. It never was possible with Logan or with Joe, but with Tea Cake and surrounded
by the way of life in the Everglades, Janie finally realizes her
dream.
As we learn from the
narrator:
Tea
Cake's house was a magnet, the unauthorized center of the "job." The way he would sit in
the doorway and play his guitar made people stop and listen and maybe disappoint the
jook for that night. He was always laughing and full of fun too. He kept everybody
laughing in the bean
field.
It is this description
of "the center" of things that touches on Janie's dream of love and happiness. It is
this element of fun and good-natured humor that brings Janie closest to her dreams. Even
at work in the fields, Janie and Tea Cake are in love and enjoying the fun of each
other's company:
But all day long the romping and playing they
carried on behind the boss's back made her popular right away. It got the whole field to
playing off and on. Then Tea Cake would help get supper
afterwards.
The love and the
fun that Janie and Tea Cake are able to create breaks down gender-stratified roles she
has played up until the point in her life. As she
says:
Clerkin'
in dat store wuz hard, but heah, w ain't got nothin' tuh do but do our work and come
home and love.
In fact,
throughout this chapter, Janie's memories of the store in Eatonville--and the actions on
its porch from which she was prohibited--are central to her self-actualization. As she
says, in Eatonville:
The men held big arguments [...] like they used
to do on the store porch. Only here [on the muck], she could listen and laugh and even
talk some herself if she wanted to. She got so she could tell big storied herself from
listening to the rest.
It is
in the Everglades that Janie finally finds her voice and realizes her
dreams.
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