Zora Neale Hurston’s Experiments: Tracing the Portrayal of Romantic Relationships in “Under the Bridge,” “Muttsy,” and “Monkey Junk”
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| Year of publication | 2012 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | The paper analyzes Hurston's early short fiction, in particular her rarely anthologized and only recently discovered works, "Under the Bridge," "Muttsy," and "Monkey Junk," in order to search for ways in which Hurston portrays romantic relationships. In particular, it seeks to explore Hurston's discussion of the viability of marriage as the ideal framework for heterosexual love as well as the role of her female characters, Vangie, Pinkie, and the unnamed wife, in their respective relationships. The three stories are compared and contrasted with Hurston's longer fiction, namely with her novels Their Eyes Were Watching God and Seraph on the Suwanee, in order to trace the author’s experiments in her early short fiction in creating the characters of Janie and Arvay and their tumultuous romances in her later novels. |