Mrs. Turner’s Lack of Ability to embrace her Race

            Although Mrs. Turner is black, she does not like blacks and wishes she were white. She believes whites have more power than blacks. Mrs. Turner complains to Janie about not being white and talks about how she worships her god to achieve her goal of being white, even though it is physically impossible to reach. At the end, Mrs. Turner juxtaposes her god with Tea Cake’s realistic God. This in turn causes Mrs. Turner to be upset and shows the reader that she will never be able to embrace her own race. In the passage, Mrs. Turner feels inferior to Janie and becomes so obsessed with being white that she is willing to sacrifice part of herself in order to try to become white, instead of embracing her own race.

            Mrs. Turner feels that Janie is better and more powerful than her because Janie has lighter skin. While with Janie, Mrs. Turner feels “honored by Janie’s acquaintance” (2) because Janie has a lighter skin. Lighter skin, according to Mrs. Turner, imbues the individual with more power. She then elaborates on Janie’s power by saying she “forgave and forgot snubs” (3) because “anyone who looked more white folkish than herself was better than she was” (4-5).  “white folkish” (4-5) shows Mrs. Turners inferior tone towards Janie, because Janie is lighter than Mrs. Turner. Her diction of “white folkish”(4-5) also shows how obsessed she is with the white race. Her diction of “negroid” (7) and “negroness” (8) shows that she doesn’t like to associate herself with other blacks. This is shown by her formal way of saying black which is uncommon for people of that race to refer to each other by. She most likely has fairly light skin which is why she doesn’t like to associate herself with dark skinned blacks. Mrs. Turner believes that she is inferior to Janie because Janie is light skinned. However, she believes she is superior to dark skin blacks because she has fairly light skin.

            Mrs. Turner worships her god in order to try and obtain white characteristics. Mrs. Turner’s god being lower case shows that her god isn’t the real God. Mrs. Turner Metaphorically “set[s] up her idols and buil[ds] altars” (10) to worship her god to try and become white, which is impossible. She tries to justify her god by juxtaposing her god and the real God when she says she “accepts any inconsistency and cruelty from her deity as good worshippers do from theirs” (11-12). Janie disagrees with Mrs. Turner by claiming that “all gods who receive homage are cruel” (13-14) and will “dispense suffering without reason” (14) for sacrificing part of one’s self because it is important to embrace yourself. Mrs. Turner thinks that she is “like all other believers [and] built an altar to the unattainable - Caucasian characteristics for all” (19-20), which is a hyperbole because not all believers of God wish to be white like Mrs. Turner. Mrs. Turner uses detailed imagery to elaborate on her “paradise [which is] a heaven of straight-haired, thin-lipped, high-nose boned” people. She believes that these characteristics are what everyone wants. Mrs. Turner wants to be white so bad that she believes that all blacks want to be white and can’t see that worshipping her god is not realistic or normal.

            Mrs. Turner then realizes that most blacks do not wish to be white and that she only likes Janie for her light skin; however she still refuses to embrace her own blackness. The passage has a distressed and sad tone by Mrs. Turner stating that it was “distressing to emerge from her inner temple” (28) to realize that other blacks didn’t agree with her views. The imagery of “black desecrators howling with laughter before the door” (29) with “terrible banners and swords!” (30) allows the reader to understand the wakeup call that Mrs. Turner faced when she found out that she was the only one who truly wanted to be white. She knew she was the only one who wanted to be white because of the mockery she faced, instead of people joining her worship. The syntax of the italicized phrase ‘and swords’ (30) emphasizes that she felt hurt by their cruelness of mocking of her views. She also metaphorically “paid homage to Janie’s Caucasian characteristics” (31-32) because she felt “as if she herself had become whiter” (34-35) when she was with Janie. She sees that she only likes Janie because she metaphorically becomes whiter. She doesn’t appear to feel bad because she continues to see Janie, and is still unwilling to embrace her own race. Mrs. Turner’s god is again juxtaposed with the real God when she recalls the memory of Tea Cake saying “aw, don’t make God look so foolish-finding fault wid everything He made” (38-39). Instead of feeling bad for disgracing the real God and seeing her wrongs, Mrs. Turner “hates Tea Cake for his defilement of divinity…[and] mockery of her” (35-36) and continues to not embrace her own race.

            Even with the sheer impossibility of Mrs. Turner becoming white, she continues to sacrifice herself for her god. Even when struck by her god, she believes she is doing the right thing and continues her worship. Being obsessed with becoming white makes Mrs. Turner become a person that many people do not like because she is friends with someone strictly because of their light skin, defiles the real God, and looks down upon her own race instead of embracing her own black power.

Ali Field

IB English

Mrs. Manning

October 1, 2012