Hurston and Genesis

After reading Hurston, I was already thinking about all the religious imagery, specifically Satan and the snake, when I considered once more the story’s title: Sweat. This, to me, along with musings on the snake, conjured up the curse scene in Genesis 3.

Let’s take a look at the passage:

The woman said, ‘The serpent tricked me, and I ate.’
14The Lord God said to the serpent,
‘Because you have done this,
cursed are you among all animals
and among all wild creatures;
upon your belly you shall go,
and dust you shall eat
all the days of your life.
15I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will strike your head,
and you will strike his heel.’
16To the woman he said,
‘I will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children,
yet your desire shall be for your husband,
and he shall rule over you.’
17And to the man he said,
‘Because you have listened to the voice of your wife,
and have eaten of the tree
about which I commanded you,
“You shall not eat of it”,
cursed is the ground because of you;
in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
18thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
19By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread
until you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.”

There are so many points of contact here that it’s hard to wrap my brain around them all. First, though, notice verse 19: “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground.” Delia is a woman living under the fullest implications of the curse. Ironically, even though the words about work and toil are addressed to the man in the passage, all the work in their marriage seems to fall on her. Sykes certainly conforms to the line in verse 16: “and he shall rule over you.” Thankfully, in this story we Delia beginning to break that rule.

The words to the snake: “I will put enmity between you and the woman” certainly ring true, as Delia is terrified of them. The rest of verse 15 is often seen as a messianic reference, alluding to Christ striking down the devil, putting his foot upon the serpent’s head. Hurston puts a twist on this, though, by having Sykes get bitten, not on the heel, but in the neck. Whereas biblically the serpent loses, here he wins, although this is fitting because Sykes is almost completely the opposite of a messianic figure. One might almost begin to transfer some of the serpent imagery over onto him.

Hurston does this when, referring to the battle between Sykes and the snake, she records “another series of animal screams.” It is as if he is no longer human but an animal, something which his horrifying appearance at story’s end only reinforces.