Zora Neale Hurston, Haiti, and Their Eyes Were Watching God

10 - Zora Neale Hurston’s Vodun-Christianity Juxtaposition: Theological Pluralism in Their Eyes Were Watching God

237 10 Zora Neale Hurston’s VodunChristianity Juxtaposition Theological Pluralism in Their Eyes Were Watching God Nancy Ann Watanabe Zora Neale Hurston’s subscription of West African Vodun in Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) falls within an African American literary practice traceable from Charles Chesnutt’s conjure tales published at the turn of the twentieth century to Toni Morrison’s ninth novel, A Mercy, published in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Relegating Vodun material to a subtextual level in Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston succeeds in imbuing her second novel with West African traditional beliefs and practices—old and new—as pervasive natural forces emanating from a cosmic doxology that harmonizes with, reconciles, and even reinforces the beliefs of Christianity. Hurston’s narrative artistry penetrates to the heart of black consciousness by combining the spiritualism of ancient African theology with the Christian religious culture of African Americans . She initially delineates in Jonah’s Gourd Vine (1934), her first novel, a mutually reinforcing religious interaction that juxtaposes native West African Vodun1 with Judeo-Christian theology in her representation of the African-derived Haitian divinity Damballah Ouedo, the most important Voudoun loa (spirit or god) and father of creation.2 In Their Eyes Were Watching God, she again parallels African and Western religions in her representation of the Haitian Voudoun storm god Shango, the Yoruba divinity who was originally the third king of ancient Oya. Derek Collins and Daphne Lamothe discuss parallels between Janie Mae Crawford and the Haitian Voudoun goddess of love, Ezili Freda (Erzulie Freida), and Edward M. Pavlić discusses the Yoruba orisha (spirit or god) Esu-Elegbara’s influence in the novel. I widen the scope of African traditional findings 238 Nancy Ann Watanabe initiated in these pioneering studies by challenging the widespread supposition that Jonah’s Gourd Vine was “impressive” as a first novel and “well received by both the critics and the public,” but “prepared few readers for the book that was to follow” (Gates and McKay, “Zora Neale Hurston,” 998). Jonah’s Gourd Vine is a Vodun-Christianity-American novel that is a prelude to Their Eyes Were Watching God, which on its surface appears to be simply an exuberant novel about female maturation set in exclusively African American, American Indian, and black diaspora spaces. But it is also a brilliant testimony to the Vodun ideal of spiritual integrity that Hurston labors to achieve throughout her literary art. When Janie tells the story of her life to her best friend, Pheoby Watson, who in addition to being a confidante is a symbolic representative of Southern Baptist Eatonville , Florida, she recounts experiences from her infancy, childhood, and adulthood. She also covertly and subliminally celebrates elemental values about life that have provenance in the theology of West African Vodun. Examination of Hurston’s ambitious attempt to incorporate the symbology of Vodun cosmology in Jonah’s Gourd Vine reinforces elucidation of Their Eyes Were Watching God as an outgrowth of Hurston’s anthropological investigations. Hurston constructs a unique form of theological resonance through nature divinities that yokes the two novels. Jonah’s Gourd Vine establishes the snake divinity Damballah’s influence on its protagonist John Buddy Pearson, and Their Eyes Were Watching God shows the thunder god Shango’s impact on the spiritual lives of its main characters, Janie Mae Crawford and Vergible “Tea Cake” Woods. The protagonists in Jonah’s Gourd Vine, Hurston’s West African Vodun male novel, and Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston’s Haitian Voudoun female novel, engage in individual quests to discover spiritual meaning in their lives within the social context of their respective African American Christian communities. Hurston includes in their pilgrimages provocative expressions of their twin Christian and Vodun cultural influences and beliefs. Their Vodun journey begins with outwardly seeking movements of escape from the confinement of their Southern Baptist homes. Existential desires identified with their deepest emotional urges motivate Hurston’s protagonists to seek unknown horizons. Hurston ’s novels featuring cultural elements retained from the transatlantic Middle Passage of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries conflate the Christian tradition into which her protagonists are born with conscious and unconscious religious survivals traceable to Hurston’s perpetuating the theological rhythm and design of West African Vodun. Hurston is arguably the first twentieth-century American novelist to make sociopolitical use of West African Vodun theology in depicting Zora Neale Hurston’s Vodun-Christianity Juxtaposition 239 African...