Sweat

The story’s opening paragraph immediately introduces the reader to the intensity of Delia Jones’s work. It is 11:00 p.m. on a Sunday, and she is squatting on the kitchen floor sorting laundry. The concise details reveal that she is an efficient businessperson, carefully planning her week’s labor so she can deliver clean laundry and pick up the next week’s work in the same trip on Saturday. To have the work done well, she must start after church on Sunday and work steadily throughout the week.

Sykes Jones is introduced in Paragraph 2 and appears in Paragraph 3. Sykes is the story’s antagonist, and some critical elements of his character are introduced on first mention. First, it is revealed that Sykes is on Delia’s mind throughout her work—but not in a positive way. Rather, Delia “wonder[s] through it all where Sykes, her husband, had gone with her horse and buckboard” (Paragraph 2). This simple sentence foreshadows both Sykes’s freeloading behavior and Delia’s sense of ownership of her material possessions (it is her horse, not the horse or their horse).

Sykes arrives with a cruel prank: dropping the tail of the whip over Delia’s shoulder. Before she realizes what it really is, Delia is seized with a terror so strong that she cannot stand or open her dry mouth. When she realizes it’s only a whip, she screams at Sykes for preying on her fear of snakes; the revelation of this character trait foreshadows Sykes’s rattlesnake trap later in the story. In this scene, although she reprimands Sykes, Delia is nonetheless in a submissive position on the floor while he stands over her in the doorway. His callous laughing response reveals their relationship dynamic, demonstrating that he is careless about her feelings and enjoys her suffering. Her fear of snakes is exactly why he tricked her with the whip.

Delia shifts the conversation to Sykes’s whereabouts and careless use of her belongings, reminding him that she is the one who feeds the pony and she doesn’t want Sykes to drive around using a whip. This sets up the couple’s marital disputes over work, money, and the rights to property conferred by marriage. The conflict about work gains new dimensions as readers learn about the source of Delia’s business. While holding the whip, Sykes says, “Ah done tole you time and again to keep them white folks’ clothes outa dis house” (Paragraph 9). The continued presence of the whip implies that their fighting is not only verbal but also physical, which is confirmed later in the story. This exchange also brings the racial tensions of their world to the fore. Sykes does not condemn the work itself but the fact that Delia works for the white people of their community, which is likely racially segregated, given the story’s setting in the 1920s American South.

Delia continues her work, and Sykes kicks through the sorted clothes piles, mixing them back together and dirtying the fabric. The tension rises as Delia realizes he is actively trying to escalate the argument, “hoping, praying,” for a fight. Too exhausted to fight, Delia mentions that she has just come from church, but this gives Sykes more ammunition. Aiming to wound, he insults her as a false Christian and again attacks the fact that her services are provided to white people, calling her “one of them amen-corner Christians—sing, whoop, and shout, then come home and wash white folks’ clothes on the Sabbath” (Paragraph 13). The racism driving this economy is not a major focus in the story, but it is an integral part of the backdrop of the characters’ lives. Sykes declares that he has promised God and the other men in the community that he will not allow the white folks’ clothes or Delia’s business in his house any longer.

In this moment, Delia defies her abusive husband for apparently the first time, marking the start of her journey toward independence. She stands bravely, and her “habitual meekness” disappears. Sykes’s threat to cut off her livelihood is a step too far. She defends her work fiercely, declaring that she has worked—and financially supported him with that work—throughout their marriage. Her clients’ backgrounds are irrelevant; Delia is practical and proud of her hard labor regardless. She declares the house, like the work, to be her own and asserts that she will never leave it. When she picks up an iron skillet from the stove, Sykes is “cowed” and doesn’t beat her “as he usually did” (Paragraph 21). As she lays alone in bed that night, Delia meditates on the marriage. Despite intense sadness and loneliness in her thoughts, she comes to a moment of resolution: Sykes will no longer be able to hurt her or control her. As Delia embraces independence, she feels “a triumphant indifference to all he was or did” (Paragraph 28).

The second scene presents the wider community and provides more information about Delia, Sykes, and their marriage. It begins with a group of men socializing on a porch on a hot day. Representing everyday life was important to Hurston and is often a key element of her work. The group’s conversation expands the reader’s understanding of daily life in this story by highlighting Delia’s suffering and the community’s mix of respect and pity for her, and by detailing Sykes’s violence and infidelity and the community’s disdain for him. This disdain naturally extends to Bertha, the partner in Sykes’s current affair. When Sykes and Bertha arrive, conversation shuts down and people make excuses to leave, but the pair are never directly confronted or condemned. This scene can be read as commentary on how communities react or fail to react to domestic violence, and on public responses to infidelity and other acts of “private sin.” The affair’s public nature makes the offense worse, and this shame is compounded when Delia passes by as her husband buys treats for his lover. Sykes’s promises to get anything for Bertha soon expand to promising to get rid of Delia so Bertha can live in their house.

The story resumes three months later, with Sykes and Bertha carrying on their affair even more openly than before. To stress Delia’s continued suffering, as well as Sykes’s violence and threats to take over the house, Hurston applies biblical terms: Delia has “crawled the earth of Gethsemane” and climbed “the rocks of Calvary” (Paragraph 58). This sense of strife is heightened by the intense summer heat that permeates the setting.

When Sykes brings home the rattlesnake, he makes clear that he intends to terrorize Delia as part of his plan to drive her from her home. He refuses to get rid of the snake or kill it, telling Delia that he cares more for the snake than for her. He suggests she should leave via a threat: “Dat’s nice snake and anybody doan lak ’im kin jes’ hit de grit” (Paragraph 67). If Delia is afraid of the snake, she should hit the road. Delia remains steadfast, and their stalemate continues, but this escalation brings the narrative closer to its climax.

Things come to head when Delia finds the snake clinging to the cage’s wire top by its fangs. This pushes Delia to her next stage of defiance or independence. She plainly tells Sykes that she hates him. Despite the insults he throws back, she asserts her power by issuing her own ultimatum: declaring that she will not leave her home and that he must leave. She no longer cares about his affairs or what he does. She wants him gone.

The story then returns to where it began: It is Sunday night, and Delia is preparing to work after spending the day and evening at church. The story’s climax unfolds as Delia opens her laundry basket in the bedroom, where she finds the angry rattlesnake. It is clear that Sykes trapped the snake there in a last effort to either make her flee the property or kill her. The details of this final trap are loaded with symbolism: Snakes represent sin in the Christian tradition, and Sykes has committed many, chiefly abuse and infidelity. The bedroom setting underscores how those sins have harmed Delia and eroded their marriage. The snake’s presence in the bedroom signals that the conflict and violence between the couple is finally boiling over.

Delia flees the house to hide in the hayloft, where she enters the final stage toward independence. Her introspection in this moment leads to “an awful calm” as she thinks, “Well, Ah done de bes’ Ah could. If things ain’t right, Gawd knows tain’t mah fault” (Paragraphs 91-92).

When Sykes returns home, she does not confront him—but neither does she warn him that the snake is still loose in the house. The story reaches its climax as Delia enacts the very passive violence of listening and watching from the window as the snake strikes her husband. When she finally approaches the scene, the story makes clear that she has no intention of helping him. Despite a passing thought that “Orlando with its doctors was too far” (Paragraph 110), her only response to the dying man is to flee back into the yard where she can avoid his gaze. The story closes with Delia standing in the growing heat of the sunrise, realizing that Sykes must “know by now that she knew” (Paragraph 110). Delia’s liberation from Sykes is now complete: As his sins destroyed his marriage, his cruel trap destroys his life. Though Delia now has the house and her freedom, she is unsettled by her role in Sykes’s death, and so her victory is bittersweet.