Junto’s willingness to socialize with the black population and his predatory sexual desires of black woman, appears to make him socially tolerant, but he is fact fueled by a constant predatory watch. Unfortunately, Juno’s interest in Lutie comes from a play of desire where he gazes upon her as a whore or a possible mistress, which originates from a racist ideology that defines all black woman that way. Lutie also experiences this when she is watched in the home of the Chandlers, “Whenever she entered a room where they were, they stared at her with a queer, speculative look…...But I wouldn’t have any good-looking colored wench in my house. Not with John. You know they’re always making a pass at men. Especially white men.’ “ Mrs. Hedges,
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In spite of his hatred for her, Min is possessive of Jones and the money he saves her by her living with him and is, therefore, worried that his obsessive infatuation with the obviously more attractive Lutie will lead to his eventual kicking her out of his apartment. This is why she resorts, at the advice of Mrs. Hedges, to go to David the Prophet for magical paraphernalia to use against Jones—along the way, “determinedly repeating, ‘And I ain’t a-goin’ to be put out’” (122). But it dawns on Min, as evidenced by her increasing trepidation, that this visit to David is, in fact, “the first defiant gesture she had ever made” in her life (126); and this is where Petry reveals the true extent of Min’s grievances. This defiant gesture stands in sharp contrast to Min’s putting up with “the actions of cruelly indifferent employers” while doing parttime domestic work (126), with some of her female bosses having been “openly contemptuous women who laughed at her to her face even as they piled on more work,” leaving her—and notice the tellingly gothic language—“to be buried under the great mounds of dirty clothes [taking] days to work her way out from under them, getting no extra pay for the extra time 84 involved” (126, italics added). Then there are Min’s various, previous husbands who “had …show more content…
It is an ironic defiance that, in fact, reaffirms Min’s dependence on a man. And through Min, Petry makes the reasons for this dependence clear—if black men suffer greatly from the housing discrimination and urban segregation of the New Overseer, black women suffer even more so. Min wants— needs—to hang on to Jones and stay in his apartment “because there she was free from the yoke of that one word: rent,” that word meaning for her “padlocked doors with foul-mouthed landladies standing in front of them or sealed keyholes with marshals waving long white papers in their hands” (127, italics added). Min knows how single black women are viewed as especially easy pickings by predatory, opportunistic realtors and landlords; she knows how she stands no chance alone—that, by contrast, with “a man attached to her she could have an apartment,” which she goes so far as to call “a real home” (133), illustrating how black female migrants were left to settle for, even be delighted by, so little. This is why, even
In spite of his hatred for her, Min is possessive of Jones and the money he saves her by her living with him and is, therefore, worried that his obsessive infatuation with the obviously more attractive Lutie will lead to his eventual kicking her out of his apartment. This is why she resorts, at the advice of Mrs. Hedges, to go to David the Prophet for magical paraphernalia to use against Jones—along the way, “determinedly repeating, ‘And I ain’t a-goin’ to be put out’” (122). But it dawns on Min, as evidenced by her increasing trepidation, that this visit to David is, in fact, “the first defiant gesture she had ever made” in her life (126); and this is where Petry reveals the true extent of Min’s grievances. This defiant gesture stands in sharp contrast to Min’s putting up with “the actions of cruelly indifferent employers” while doing parttime domestic work (126), with some of her female bosses having been “openly contemptuous women who laughed at her to her face even as they piled on more work,” leaving her—and notice the tellingly gothic language—“to be buried under the great mounds of dirty clothes [taking] days to work her way out from under them, getting no extra pay for the extra time 84 involved” (126, italics added). Then there are Min’s various, previous husbands who “had …show more content…
It is an ironic defiance that, in fact, reaffirms Min’s dependence on a man. And through Min, Petry makes the reasons for this dependence clear—if black men suffer greatly from the housing discrimination and urban segregation of the New Overseer, black women suffer even more so. Min wants— needs—to hang on to Jones and stay in his apartment “because there she was free from the yoke of that one word: rent,” that word meaning for her “padlocked doors with foul-mouthed landladies standing in front of them or sealed keyholes with marshals waving long white papers in their hands” (127, italics added). Min knows how single black women are viewed as especially easy pickings by predatory, opportunistic realtors and landlords; she knows how she stands no chance alone—that, by contrast, with “a man attached to her she could have an apartment,” which she goes so far as to call “a real home” (133), illustrating how black female migrants were left to settle for, even be delighted by, so little. This is why, even