Dec 16 2008
Their Eyes: chapters 14-16
When Tea Cake and Janie moved they met a lot of new people, one being Mrs. Turner. She had a fascination with white people and hated the black culture/race. Janie appealed to her because of her light skin and long hair, but she hated Tea Cake because his skin was so black. Mrs.Turner looked down on anyone who was black and talked about how she disapproved of their loud behavior.
“Behind her crude words was a belief that somehow she and others through worship could attan her paradise–a heave of straighthaired, thin-lipped, high-nose boned white seraphs” “She paid homage to janie’s Caucasian chracteristics as such. And when she was with Janie she had a feeling of transmutation, as if she haerself had become whiter.”
Both of these quotes appear on page 145. Mrs. Turner is so obsessed with the white culture, and it is almost tragic because she will never be able to attain her dream of being white. No matter how hard you try to change you can’t always rid yourself of your background. Her race is something that will always be with her, and her choice to look down upon it has isolated her from the people of the town. She makes it very clear that she does not want to socialize with the rest of the black community, however this doesn’t make her the most popular person in town.
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