Seraph on the Suwanee by Zora Neale Hurston

First published: 1948

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Psychological realism

Time of work: Early twentieth century

Locale: Rural Florida

Principal Characters:

• Arvay Henson Meserve, a woman whose insecurities and irrational fears dominate the novel
• Jim Meserve, Arvay’s husband, an enterprising, handsome man of aristocratic but impoverished stock
• Earl David Meserve, the deformed first-born child of Arvay and Jim
• Angeline (Angie) Meserve, the beautiful and sensual daughter of Arvay and Jim
• Kenny Meserve, the youngest son of Arvay and Jim
• Larraine (’Raine) Henson Middleton, Arvay’s jealous older sister
• Carl Middleton, a preacher who, like Jim Meserve, recognizes Arvay’s fineness
• Joe Kelsey, an African American loyal to Jim Meserve
• Dessie Kelsey, Joe’s wife

The Novel

Seraph on the Suwanee signals Hurston’s departure from her usual subject matter, the African American people and their culture, both of which are inextricably intertwined in her other novels. With the depiction of Arvay Henson Meserve, a poor, white, “cracker born, cracker bred” woman, Hurston focuses on the ambitious poor white class of the South.

When the novel opens, Arvay has spent the last several years retreating into a type of religious hysteria resulting from sexual repression. Believing herself to be in love with her brother-in-law, the uninspired preacher Carl Middleton, she alternates between feelings of guilt and erotic fantasy. Perceived by the poor white community of Sawley as “odd,” Arvay finds herself alienated. She constantly compares herself with her voluptuous, flirtatious sister ’Raine, Carl’s wife, and comes up wanting.

When Jim Meserve, the attractive, ambitious newcomer to the “teppentime mill,” decides to court Arvay, she is distrustful. Jim sees her as a woman of beauty and character. Arvay sees only her lack of sexual attractiveness as defined by the Sawley community. She views her mental adultery with her brother-in-law as a reason she is not fit to be the wife of Jim Meserve. In an effort to cleanse herself of her guilty thoughts, she leads Jim to the old mulberry tree, a “cool green temple of peace.” Instead of being purged of guilt, Arvay is raped by her suitor under this natural temple. Seeing his chance now that Arvay has been deflowered—and therefore “ruined”—he sweeps her off to the justice of the peace to cement their bond legally and properly.

The enterprising Jim knows that the turpentine mill offers no financial security or social mobility. He makes plans to make a new start in the Florida citrus groves but must delay the family move when Arvay becomes pregnant with their first child, the mentally and physically deformed Earl David. Arvay, believing that Earl David represents some sort of divine retribution for her mental adultery, becomes overprotective of the child, refusing to acknowledge his violent outbursts.

In Citrabelle, Jim becomes the premier citrus grower in the area. He builds a fine home for his wife and growing family on his carefully cleared and cultivated land. Only one detail mars Arvay’s happiness over such affluence: The house is built in front of a swamp that Arvay instinctively fears because it represents her own dark, guilt-ridden subconscious.

Arvay constantly judges by outward appearances, rather than looking at the realities of life. This injects constant tension into her marriage. During her third pregnancy, Jim teasingly commands Arvay that she must make sure that the child will be a boy. Arvay takes him at his word and is tormented for months by what she imagines might happen to her if the child were to be another girl. She finally confesses the source of her ongoing anxiety. Jim, horrified, astutely realizes that “there was not sufficient understanding in his marriage. . . . It could not keep on like this. He was panging and paining far too much. What help for it except by parting from Arvay?”

The child is a boy, whom Jim names Kenny. Kenny, like his older sister, Angeline, is a winsome, intelligent child. Both children provide a sharp contrast to Earl, who has grown more uncontrollable with age. Jim knows that Earl must be “put away,” but Arvay refuses to see the danger in allowing Earl to remain at home. After Earl viciously attacks a local girl, he hides in the swamp but is killed by a posse.

Years later, Jim decides to leave Arvay and move to the Florida coast. He admonishes her that if she wants to save their marriage, Arvay must make the offer of reconciliation. Instead, she draws upon her secret pride in her “cracker” heritage and decides to move back to Sawley.

When she returns to her hometown, she finds her mother neglected and dying in the filthy, ramshackle Henson home. ’Raine, Carl, and their ugly, mean-spirited children are firmly ensconced within. For the first time, she is able to see past imagined appearances and recognize the truth. After her mother dies, Arvay, in an act of renunciation, burns down the house that has become for her a symbol of evil and stagnation. The mulberry tree is spared because it is where she “had triumphed, and with nothing more than her humble self, had won her a vivid way of life with love. This tree was a sacred symbol.” At last Arvay has made peace with her past and her heritage. She now realizes how clinging to the past had poisoned her marriage. Much wiser, she travels to the coast to find Jim and save their marriage.

The Characters

Arvay Henson is a puzzling female protagonist, one beset by irrational feelings of guilt and inferiority. Hurston admitted to her editor that she, too, found Arvay’s clinging tendencies to be irritating, yet she vowed that Arvay would grow into a self-confident woman. Unlike other Hurston protagonists, Arvay finds self-actualization only in relation to her husband. She discovers her worth only when she realizes that her husband is dependent upon her as a Madonna figure.

Conversely, Arvay is probably the most ambitiously conceived character Hurston ever created. The story is her story, filtered through her own troubled misconceptions. She is a haunted figure. Somewhat shadowy, she is most likely the “Seraph on the Suwanee,” a woman whose ethereal looks inspire her husband but repress her sense of self-worth.

Her husband is another matter. The symbolic significance of Jim Meserve’s name can be interpreted two ways, as serving himself and as one who serves others. Jim is a man burdened by chauvinistic views toward women, views reinforced by his friend Joe Kelsey’s advice that “women folks will love you plenty if you take and see to it that they do. Make ’em knuckle under. From the very first jump, get the bridle in they mouth and ride ’em hard and stop ’em short. They’s all alike, Boss. Take ’em and break ’em.” Both men, black and white, hold dominating and self-serving views toward women.

Despite this flaw, Hurston depicts Jim sympathetically. During the novel’s climax, when Arvay does not make a move to save her husband from a rattlesnake that has entwined itself around his body, Jim instinctively knows that unless she changes, Arvay cannot give him the type of love that he needs: “I feel and believe that you do love me, Arvay, but I don’t want that stand-still, hap-hazard kind of love. I’m just as hungry as a dog for a knowing and a doing love. You love like a coward. Don’t take no steps at all. Just stand around and hope for things to happen out right.” Essentially, both characters become victims of their own twisted sort of thinking. Arvay has allowed her “cracker” heritage to dictate her life. Jim, enslaved by chauvinistic ideas and by his stoic insistence on maintaining silence, locks his wife out of his life, thus not permitting or encouraging her to offer “a knowing and doing love.”

The other characters in Seraph on the Suwanee are one-dimensionally limned, serving as representations of other types of southern personalities or symbols. Angeline, the “angel” figure who is a daughter of the “seraph,” is a sensualist. Unlike her mother, she does not suffer pangs of inferiority or harbor feelings of guilt. She is a true Meserve, self-assured, sensual, and clearly focused on obtaining what she desires. Her pursuit of Hatton Howland is as painstakingly planned and executed as her father’s courtship of her mother was twenty years earlier. The character of Angie signifies what a woman, freed from sexual repression and feelings of inadequacy, can achieve: a knowing and doing love.

Kenny Meserve represents not only the best traits of both of his parents but also the best of southern culture. Handsome, loving, and generous, he has a firm commitment to his family. He even sends money and gifts to his seldom-seen grandmother, Maria Henson. Furthermore, as an artist figure, he represents what has been identified as Hurston’s artistic intent when writing Seraph on the Suwanee: to depict the shared language and culture of black and white Southerners. Kenny is a successful musician because he has skillfully blended the music of the African American into a white medium, just as the novel was to serve as an illustration of the similarities between the white and black southern experiences.

The peripheral characters become symbolic, both in the novel and in Arvay’s mind. Earl David, twisted and unnatural, becomes a living reminder of Arvay’s guilt over Carl Middleton. She is unable to relinquish her hold on Earl because she is unable to free herself from her youthful feelings of sexual guilt. ’Raine, Carl, and their monstrous children symbolize the spiritual stagnation of those who cannot or will not aspire to a better life. To his credit, Carl realizes that Arvay would have inspired him to become a better preacher and a better man. Instead, he is easily duped, partly because of his own feelings of inferiority, and forsakes Arvay in favor of her older sister. Thus the novel offers a complex look at the psychological and metaphysical motivations of poor white Southerners. Although the ending somewhat dubiously validates Arvay’s sense of self, both husband and wife are enveloped within a feeling of peace and harmony, as symbolized by the mulberry tree.

Critical Context

Hurston’s last extant novel has been viewed as a valiant effort to prove to the white literary establishment that an African American writer was artistically and intellectually capable of transcending the race issue. Other African Americans writing at this time, notably Ann Petry, Willard Motley, and Chester Himes, had achieved moderate success depicting white characters.

Hurston’s own motivations for undertaking this divergent turn are threefold. First, she wished to see one of her novels turned into a Hollywood screenplay. Second, she sought to contest the supposition that African American writers were only capable of dealing with black subjects. Third, she wanted to challenge the assumption that the white and African American experiences in the South were divergently opposed. Her subject matter may be different, but her milieu remained the same.

Granted, the words of the Meserves echo the cadences and musicality reminiscent of Hurston’s more memorable African American characters, reflecting Hurston’s premise that there is no white or black dialect, merely a southern dialect. Even though the characters are white, the themes present in this novel mirror those in her earlier works that had dealt solely with the African American folk experience. Arvay Henson, like other Hurston female protagonists, is searching for fulfillment and love. Women, black and white, in this novel are viewed as lesser creatures than men, creatures whose spirits must be tamed. In addition, Seraph on the Suwanee shares the focus of her other fiction; that is, love, marriage, personal growth, and exploration of the feminine psyche predominate the work.

Bibliography

Boyd, Valerie. Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston. New York: Scribner, 2002. Detailed biography of Hurston, covering her personal and professional lives and relating them to the major historical events through which she lived.

Carby, Hazel V. Foreword to Seraph on the Suwanee, by Zora Neale Hurston. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. Offers a historical overview of Hurston’s writing of the novel as well as a comparison/contrast analysis to Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937).

Coleman, Ancilla. “Mythological Structure and Psychological Significance in Hurston’s Seraph on the Suwanee. ” Publications of the Mississippi Philological Association (1988): 21-27. Sees a parallel between the Psyche/Cupid myth and the story of Arvay and Jim Meserve.

Glassman, Steve, and Kathryn Lee Seidel, eds. Zora in Florida. Orlando: University of Central Florida Press, 1991. A collection of essays that deal with the major phases of Hurston’s life in Florida in relation to her work.

Hemenway, Robert. Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977. The standard biography of Hurston. Argues against the view that Seraph on the Suwanee is assimilationist.

Howard, Lillie P. Zora Neale Hurston. Boston: Twayne, 1980. Addresses and explores the chauvinism issue. Questions Arvay’s decision to rejoin her husband.

Hurston, Zora Neale. Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters. Edited by Carla Kaplan. New York: Doubleday, 2002. A collection of more than five hundred letters, annotated and arranged chronologically.