whiteness of it all: Patriarchal dysfunction and feminist consciousness in Zora Neale Hurston's "Seraph on the Suwanee"

In Seraph on The Suwanee, Zora Neale Hurston continues a tradition of covert resistance on the part of a black culture struggling to survive within a hostile white society. Her last published novel reveals a talent for combining art and politics and in many ways represents a synthesis of her race, class, and gender consciousness which had grown over the years. Instead of her familiar focus on black culture, however, this paper argues that Hurston uses the story of a conflictive white marriage to create an insightful social critique that challenges a patriarchal society characterized by inequalities of race, class, and gender.