Jane Doe
Professor Lay
Introduction to Literature
29 February 1958
Sweat: Overcoming Oppression
In the short story Sweat, the character of Delia is masked by the elements in her life that
come to define her. As she struggles to triumph over her aversions, she becomes a very strong
woman. In this story, Hurston uses symbols to show the social, marital, and religious oppression
of Delia and how she overcomes them.
The social oppression of Delia is first shown by the contrast of Eatonville and Winter
Park. Eatonville is a black town, full of heritage and lacking in racial oppression. Zora Neale
Hurston actually grew up here herself, and it marks the setting in many of her writings. While it
was a nearly ideal place in the South for blacks at the time to live, Eatonville was dependent on
Winter Park, the neighboring white community (Patterson 92). Delia shares in this dependence,
and it is here that she must find work in order to support herself and her husband, Sykes.
Delia is a washwoman for some of the wealthy families in the white community, and she
works very hard to clean the “great piles of clothes” (Hurston 379). It is interesting to note that
Delia, “put the white things to soak” (Hurston 278), emphasizing the race of the people wearing
these clothes through the color of them. Sykes shows his opinion of the white community when
he “stepped roughly upon the whitest pile of things, kicking them helter-skelter as he crossed the
room” (Hurston 379). Sykes is not employed by the white community, in fact, he is not working
anywhere at all. This outrage could possibly show his anger and bitterness at the white
community because he is unable to find a decent job. Kathryn Lee Seidel comments that because
of the economic situation at the time nearly fifty percent of the time black men were
unemployed. There would have been farm laborer jobs available but they did not pay well
(Seidel 170). Delia is the sole provider for the family because she can do the mundane womanly
jobs the wealthy whites will not do themselves. The story goes on to speak of Delia’s sweat and
blood as she works hard washing clothes. The contrast between the white clothes and the sweat
and blood emphasizes the oppression of Delia from the white community through her job.
When Delia goes into town to deliver the washed clothes, the contrast between she and
the white folks heightens the oppression of Delia. As she comes into town there is a group of
men sitting on the porch of a store watching her and talking about her. This already shows the
contrast because Delia is working hard while the men are sitting there relaxing. The things the
men say also clearly portray them as domineering, saying about her wash job that she “better if
she wanter eat” (Hurston 381). As they sit there enjoying their cigars, Delia must work merely to
survive. The men go on to talk about Sykes’ inhumane treatment of Delia and are well aware of
his affair with another woman, but they do nothing about it. If it had been a white woman in
Delia’s situation, this behavior would not have been allowed. Delia is unmistakably merely a
black worker in the Winter Park community who lives in the lesser town of Eatonville.
Delia’s marital oppression is clearly seen by her relationship with Sykes, who is a
womanizer. When they were first married, Sykes was the sole financial supporter and he loved
Delia very much. But when Delia was not longer good enough to fulfill his desires, things
changed drastically. Now he is not working, yet he is angry at Delia for working. In addition to
no support financially, Sykes does not support Delia as his wife. He abuses her verbally and
physically, has stopped loving her, and now has another woman whom he wants to replace Delia
with. Commentator Kathryn Seidel suggests that the issue of slavery is seen in the story, as
Sykes uses his possession of Delia to his own profit (Seidel 172). One night after a fight, Delia,
“lay awake, gazing upon the debris that cluttered their matrimonial trail” (Hurston 380). This
passage deals with their marriage, calling it a trail. The trees and flowers Delia remembers
represent how her marriage used to be, saying “it was lovely to her, lovely” (Hurston 380).
Hurston shows how over time the trail has become cluttered with garbage to the point that it is
undesirable to walk on. Ultimately there is no trail anymore; their marriage is ending.
Bertha is another clear symbol of Delia’s oppression through Sykes. Bertha is the woman
Sykes is having an affair with, and he even uses Delia’s hard-earned money to pay for housing
for Bertha and to buy her anything she wants. Delia is well aware of the situation, but she is
helpless to do anything about it. Delia even “avoided the villagers and meeting places in her
efforts to be blind and deaf. But Bertha nullified this to a degree, by coming to Delia’s house to
call Sykes out to her at the gate”(Hurston 383). Sykes is so overbearing over Delia that she has
no control over the situation at hand. Delia has already lost Sykes’ love, or rather lust, to another
woman and cannot get it back, and if she lashes out against him, he will beat her.
Delia’s religious oppression goes hand in hand with her marital oppression. From the
beginning of the story Sykes and Delia are contrasted in this manner. After going to church,
Delia is washing clothes on a Sunday night when Sykes comes home and says to her, “You ain’t
nothing but a hypocrite. One of them amen-corner Christians—sing, whoop, and shout, them
come home and wash white folks’ clothes on the Sabbath” (Hurston 379). While Delia is seen
praying and singing at times through the story, Sykes shows to religious behavior at all. He is a
hypocrite of his own words. Whereas Delia is physically weak yet spiritually strong, Sykes is
physically strong and spiritually weak.
The symbol of the snake throughout the story identifies Sykes with the devil, and this
causes Delia much oppression. The snake is a reference to Genesis 3 where God talks to the
serpent saying, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring
and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel" (vs. 15). Delia refers to Sykes as
the devil from the beginning of the story when she says, “whatever goes over the Devil’s back, is
got to come under his belly. Sometime or ruther, Sykes, like everybody else, is gointer reap is
sowing” (Hurston 380). Sykes, like the snake, will cause trouble for Delia, but this passage
foreshadows the story’s end. From the beginning of the story we learn that Delia is deathly afraid
of snakes. When Sykes’ bull whip accidentally fell on her while she was washing clothes, she
panicked greatly and then immediately looked over at Sykes, as if relating the two. Then later in
the story Sykes brings home a six-foot rattlesnake purposely to make Delia angry and to try to
drive her out of the house. To this Delia replies, “Ah hates you tu de same degree dat Ah useter
love yuh” (Hurston 384). Here Delia’s religious beliefs combine with her relationship with Sykes
as she hates the evil she sees.
The snake continues to oppress Delia, and next it shows up in the hamper of clothes she
is washing. A sign of fear and torment, she sees it and is afraid. Hurston describes it as an
“insanity of fear” (Hurston 385). Delia hates its power over her, its control, its evil, its being.
What she hates about the snake she also despises about her husband. Delia finally gets away
from it and is free, a parallel to the very end, where she is vindicated by the death of her
husband. The fact that the snake appears in the hamper of clothes is also important to the story.
The clothes serve as a double-symbol, first representing the white community and now
representing innocence. Here the evil of Sykes is contrasted with the innocence of Delia. Like
the snake in the hamper, Sykes has disrupted Delia’s innocence, but the snake gets out of the
hamper, again another foreshadow to the end. Seidel suggests the importance of Delia’s
innocence to her, because her washing job is so vital to her (177). Just as the serpent in Genesis
is out to destroy humanity, Delia is very devoted to the laundry and to keeping it clean in spite of
Sykes’ disruptions, and it is at this point that she begins to overcome her oppression.
Delia escapes the snake and runs into the barn, where she experiences her first taste of
freedom. She has finally escaped the trap of her husband and her flee from the snake is symbolic
of her freedom from Sykes. The fact that her sleep here is described as a, “twitch sleep”(Hurston
386) shows that peace has not yet fully come. The spreading grayness in the sky foreshadows the
coming death of Sykes. As Sykes is destroying the snake’s cage, he is thinking Delia has been
destroyed by the snake, but this assumption is not true, and soon he finds himself battling the
snake. As Delia is watching this happen, “it made her ill. She crept over to the four o’clocks”
(Hurston 387). This contrast is important because her ill feeling shows that she cares for the
humanity of Sykes, yet she is watching among flowers, which are a symbol of beauty and
happiness. This shows a role reversal, and now Delia is experiencing some happiness while
Sykes is in pain. The flowers could also refer back to the beauty that she experienced before the
trail became cluttered with debris, showing her once beautiful feelings for Sykes.
As Sykes calls out for Delia moments before his death, she continues to be liberated. This
is shown by the rising of the sun as it “crept on up” (Hurston 387). Delia’s care for him causes
her to leave the flower-bed and as she goes inside she finds him on his hands and knees. This
shows freeing from her religious persecution because the hypocrite is now taking a worship
stance of the faith she portrayed throughout the story. She has triumphed over her marriage, and
now she is triumphing over Satan. It is now too late, and nothing can be done to help Sykes. The
final line of the story reads, “she could scarcely reach the chinaberry tree, where she waited in
the growing heat while inside she knew the cold river was creeping up and up to extinguish that
eye which must know by now that she knew” (Hurston 387). This refers back to a religious song
she sang earlier in the story about crossing the biblical Jordan River into freedom. Though Delia
got to cross her Jordan, it was not how she had hoped to. Commentator Cheryl Wall says, “This
good Christian will never cross Jordan in a calm time” (151). Though in a way unexpected, Delia
is an overcomer.
As Delia is forced into action, she prevails over what was holding her down. She is free
from the rule of Sykes to become who she wants to be, and she has fought off Satan. As far as
social oppression is concerned, Delia overcomes it to a degree because she is no longer
connected to Sykes, but white dominance was an issue that prevailed in the United States for
years to come and Delia alone could not win that battle. Delia indeed overcame a lot, and she is a
stronger, freer woman because of it.
Works Cited
Hurston, Zora Neale. Sweat. not sure how to site this b/c it is in the book of short stories.
Patterson, Tiffany Ruby. Zora Neale Hurston and A History of Southern Life. Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 2005.
Seidel, Kathryn Lee. Zora in Florida. Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1991.
Wall, Cheryl A. Women of the Harlem Renaissance. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press,
1995.