Fraternal Fractures: Marriage, Masculinity, and Malicious Menfolk in Zora Neale Hurston’s “Sweat” and “Magnolia Flower”

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Notes

¹ Gibson, Salvific Manhood: James Baldwin’s Novelization of Male Intimacy, 4.

² Here Gibson references “religious crises,” whereas I am concerned with domestic crises and their impact on women’s lives.

³ While Gibson focuses exclusively on James Baldwin’s novels, he discusses the notion of fraternal crisis that foregrounds my argument about Hurston’s male characters. See pp. 16–18.

⁴ West, “Introduction,” xxiv. West argues that the questions are implicit to Their Eyes Were Watching God but that Hurston was exploring them long before publishing it.

⁵ Jones, “Foreword,” xi. Here Jones suggests that Hurston’s short fiction is the best part of fruit. She posits that the novel is like a whole watermelon and that Hurston’s short stories get right to the heart of the matter, the most delicious part of the fruit.

⁶ Hamon is a biblical allusion to Haman, the main antagonist in the Old Testament book of Esther.