Criticism of Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston’s book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, was highly criticized after its release into print. Critics accused her of ignoring the racism and oppression of the colored peoples in the South at that time. Others accused her of always having independent feminine characters whose behavior defaces African American men and whose stories always end up in situations of domestic violence. Some try to take this criticism farther to say her novels were merely a way to promote female empowerment. This caused Hurston to stop writing when she saw the amount of criticism her peers had piled upon her. One of the critics who was responsible was responsible for this was Richard Wright. A black man trying to push for black and white equality, his criticism was mainly focused on Hurston’s negative portrayal of black men and women, accusing her of reinforcing stereotypes. He also was full of contempt towards the idyllic endings of Hurston’s books, saying that real life was not that way and she was being ridiculous.

            I find myself both agreeing and disagreeing with Hurston’s critics. Her book does seem to involve an independent woman, disgrace the black man, and includes domestic violence. I can also see how this would easily be linked to extreme feminism. This I can see as reasonable, however, given the terrible conditions for women at the time. I only disagree with the extreme lengths she went to disgrace men, where she could have just empowered women. The negative depictions of colored people at the time were completely correct, however. They were not as much reinforcing stereotypes but reinforcing the truth. As for idyllic endings, don’t most of the fiction works of the world end with some sort of “happily ever after”? Why criticize Hurston for making a good, happy end for her characters?

Sources:

Webb Constance. Richard Wright: A Biography (c) 1968

Hurston, Zora. Their Eyes Were Watching God. (c) 1937