From Asses to Angels: Mule Imagery in Zora Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God

Zora Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God is richly dense in meaning and purpose using poetic language and folkloric imagery to convey its messages. One dominating motif in the first half of the novel is that of the mule. Four times it appears: Nanny explains that “ de nigger woman is de mule uh de world;” Logan buys a second mule so Janie can help with the plowing; Matt Bonner’s overworked and underfed mule runs away and becomes the butt of the town joke; and the same, but newly emancipated, mule is dragged out after its death for a ceremonial funeral. At last, Huston’s freed and heaven-bound mule inverts the terms of accepted hierarchies, namely white over black, and male over female, liberating, if but momentarily, black women from these unquestioned social paradigms.

Historically, Western ideas of hierarchy have fostered racism by placing black people below white people simply because blacks supposedly lack the human ability to reason. For example, Hume and Kant proposed that blacks, because of their significantly lower intellectual abilities, were "naturally inferior" to whites and cited the lack of “arts” and “sciences” among blacks as evidence for their atrocious claim. Africans and African Americans have subsequently been put to the plows like mules. However, subordinate to their male counterparts, black women are one rung lower on the social ladder. Nanny explains: “So de white man throw down de load and tell de nigger man tuh pick it up. He pick it up because he have to, but he don’t tote it. He hand it to his womenfolks. De niggerwoman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see.”

Huston’s choice of animal to represent the oppression of black women is significant considering the mules’ conception and connotation. The mule is of mixed heritage: a male donkey and a female horse. Donkeys have aptly been characterized as stubborn, foolish and disagreeable, while horses are known for their strength, intelligence, and sociability. The description of mules reveals a striking parallel to Janie Crawford. Like a mule, she is the product mixed inheritance; Nanny, her grandmother was raped by her white slave owner and later, Leafy, her mother, was raped by her school teacher. Both the slave owner and the school teacher are the untamed jackasses in the mule lineage while the black women are the beautiful mares whose heritage is tainted from the rapes.

It is in this context, then, that makes it easy for the reader to understand why Janie feels empathy for Matt Bonner’s mule when some of the townsmen decide to torment the animal. After seeing Janie’s disapproval of the mule’s mistreatment, in an act that is deemed as honorable as Lincoln’s liberation of the slaves, Jody buys the mule for five dollars so the “poor brute beast” can rest. The town’s comparison of black slaves to the mule further demonstrates that even black people have accepted the social paradigm of white above black. Furthermore, Janie’s empathy for the animal is indicative of the binary symbolism of the animal. She feels for the mule not only because she identifies with the mule as a member of the black race, but, more specifically, she identifies with the mule because she is the lowest of the low—she is a black woman.

However, the imagery of the white man driving the black, female mule “tuh death” is reversed when the recently-freed mule dies and ascends to “mule-heaven.” The entire town, everyone except Janie that is, gathers just outside of the community to give their good-humored respect to the deceased animal. In true preacher fashion, Sam Watson employs the belly of the beast as a pulpit and speaks of the joys of “mule-heaven.” Among miles of corn, cool water, and a river of molasses, “Up there, mule-angels would have people to ride on.” The image of mules riding on the backs of men suggests a new hierarchy for Hurston, a new hierarchy that challenges the old, a new hierarchy with black women at the top.