Legacy of Dysfunction:Family Systems in Zora Neale Hurston'sJonah's Gourd Vine

Abstract

In Diana her violence 2003 Miles study that observed of causes domestic that, traumatic while violence race experiences, can in be socially work the of psychic constructed Zora Neale processing Hurston, to foster of Diana Miles observed that, while race can be socially constructed to foster viol nce that auses traumatic experiences, the psychic processing of trauma is human process, not racial one (7). Miless project psychological analysis of works of a black, female artist whose worldviews have been previously explained within contexts of race, gender, and/or sociology (6) is uniquely appropriate to Hurstons work and merits further critical contributions. Raised in an all-black, self-governing town, Hurston often looks in her fiction beyond black/white binaries to study common denominators of human psychodynamics fact obscured by ethnocentric criticism of her work. Her portrayal of troubled Crittendon, Potts, and Pearson marriages in Jonah's Gourd Vine is case in point. Critics reasonably have suggested that Hurston highlights the relationship between racial insecurity and sexual oppression in lives of black people (Meisenhelder 43), but they have overlooked novels further value as literary exploration nonpareil of multigenerational nature of marital dysfunction itself, which is culturally shaped only in its origins and expressions, not in its intrapsychic mechanisms. Hurston infused her fiction with her own, hard-earned insights into marital dysfunction. She was nine years old when her father re-married few months after her mother s death. In Hurstons published version of events, her new stepmother (upon whom she modeled selfish, gold-digging Hattie Tyson) saw her stepchildren as competition her husband s affections (Hurston, Dust 73). She ordered Hurstons older sister out of house and sent her husband to beat his first-born daughter with buggy whip for commenting