Pheoby’s Queer Quietness in Their Eyes Were Watching God

• Published in: The Mississippi quarterly Vol. 75; no. 4; pp. 405 - 436
• Main Author: Bagocius, Benjamin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Mississippi State Johns Hopkins University Press 2022
• Subjects: African American literature; American literature; Black people; Eroticism; Hurston, Zora Neale (1891-1960); Listening; Literary characters; Novels; Pauses; Racism; Rural areas; Sexuality; Women
• ISSN: 0026-637X; 2689-517X; 2689-517X
• DOI: 10.1353/mss.2022.a913484

Sedgwick, Johnson, and Henderson encourage thinkers and writers to question definitional consensus on what exactly sexuality is or should be, and to let literary art and cultural artifacts surprise scholars into new imaginings about it. Pheoby is the novel’s only character who pauses for the length of the narrative as a listener to Janie’s tale of sexuality flowing beyond so-called respectable bounds, from the protagonist’s blossoming into sexuality under the pear tree to her first kiss with Johnny Taylor, her sexual repulsion for Logan Killicks, her steamy flirtations with the newcomer Tea Cake, and Janie’s revelations that she is a sexual outlier: “mah love didn’t work lak they love” (Their Eyes 191). Pheoby shifts Janie’s erotic metaphor of speech into one of quietness: “[i]f you so desire,” bringing the subject of eros from speaking to an inner, nearly silent drive: “desire” (6). [...]Pheoby’s “if” invites Janie’s description of desire to remain open-ended if she so chooses. Hurston’s novel shows that a vibrant thread of sexual reimagining was also occurring among Black women who made their homes in rural communities. 3 Pheoby’s “if you so desire” places her within this geographically broad community of Black women and demonstrates the power of queer listening to imagine and create a world beyond the one dictated by the racist heteropatriarchy.