The Female Condition on the Short Story “Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston

Abstract

This essay aims to analyze the short-story “Sweat” by the American writer Zora Neale Hurston. The analysis, oriented by the feminist criticism, will be based on the theory of the pioneer studies of Butler (2003), Gilbert and Gubar (2000), and Scott (1995). At the short story, the protagonist Delia, a poor black woman who lives on a small town, and who is responsible to maintain her house working hard, faces a sequence of internal and external conflicts caused by a marriage that has failed. We will show that, once it is take place in a context of a patriarchal society, the narrative presents the trajectory of a woman who is constantly assaulted physically and psychologically by her husband, and submitted to the embarrassment of a treason. Thus, the trajectory of the female character is defined as a Calvary, and it is directly related with her social condition, and, most importantly, by her gender.