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Seraph on the Suwanee
This novel of turn-of-the-century white "Florida Crackers" marks a daring departure for the author famous for her complex accounts of black culture and heritage. Full of insights into the nature of love, attraction, faith, and loyalty, Seraph on the Suwanee is the compelling story of two people at once deeply in love and deeply at odds. The heroine, young Arvay Henson, is convinced she will never find true love and happiness, and defends herself from unwanted suitors by throwing hysterical fits and professing religious fervor. Arvay meets her match, however, in handsome Jim Meserve, a bright, enterprising young man who knows that Arvay is the woman for him, and refuses to allow her to convince him otherwise. With the same passion and understanding that have made Their Eyes Were Watching God a classic, Hurston explores the evolution of a marriage full of love but very little communication and the desires of a young woman In search of herself and her place in the world.
400 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1948
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About the author
Zora Neale Hurston
184 books5,421 followersNovels, including
Their Eyes Were Watching God
(1937), and nonfiction writings of American folklorist Zora Neale Hurston give detailed accounts of African American life in the South.
In 1925, Hurston, one of the leaders of the literary renaissance, happening in Harlem, produced the short-lived literary magazine Fire!! alongside Langston Hughes and Wallace Thurman shortly before she entered Barnard College. This literary movement developed into the Harlem renaissance.
Hurston applied her Barnard ethnographic training to document African American folklore in her critically acclaimed book Mules and Men alongside fiction Their Eyes Were Watching God . She also assembled a folk-based performance dance group that recreated her Southern tableau with one performance on Broadway.
People awarded a Guggenheim fellowship to Hurston to travel to Haiti and conduct research on conjure in 1937. Her significant work ably broke into the secret societies and exposed their use of drugs to create the Vodun trance, also a subject of study for fellow dancer-anthropologist Katherine Dunham, then at the University of Chicago.
In 1954, the Pittsburgh Courier assigned Hurston, unable to sell her fiction, to cover the small-town murder trial of Ruby McCollum, the prosperous black wife of the local lottery racketeer, who had killed a racist white doctor. Hurston also contributed to Woman in the Suwanee County Jail , a book by journalist and civil rights advocate William Bradford Huie.
In 1925, Hurston, one of the leaders of the literary renaissance, happening in Harlem, produced the short-lived literary magazine Fire!! alongside Langston Hughes and Wallace Thurman shortly before she entered Barnard College. This literary movement developed into the Harlem renaissance.
Hurston applied her Barnard ethnographic training to document African American folklore in her critically acclaimed book Mules and Men alongside fiction Their Eyes Were Watching God . She also assembled a folk-based performance dance group that recreated her Southern tableau with one performance on Broadway.
People awarded a Guggenheim fellowship to Hurston to travel to Haiti and conduct research on conjure in 1937. Her significant work ably broke into the secret societies and exposed their use of drugs to create the Vodun trance, also a subject of study for fellow dancer-anthropologist Katherine Dunham, then at the University of Chicago.
In 1954, the Pittsburgh Courier assigned Hurston, unable to sell her fiction, to cover the small-town murder trial of Ruby McCollum, the prosperous black wife of the local lottery racketeer, who had killed a racist white doctor. Hurston also contributed to Woman in the Suwanee County Jail , a book by journalist and civil rights advocate William Bradford Huie.
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July 17, 2011A former professor of mine once said, while discussing DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, that it's a book about female pleasure and female identity but not necessarily about female independence. The same can be said about Zora Neale Hurston's compelling but in many ways frustrating 1948 novel Seraph on the Suwanee. The character arc of the protagonist, poor white "Cracker" Arvay Henson, is in some ways an ultra-traditional one: she must learn to be the best wife possible to her husband, Jim Meserve. Nor is there anything progressive in the Meserve definition of a "good wife": early in the novel, Jim lays out for Arvay his vision of matrimony and gender relations:
Jim is not a caricature of Southern male arrogance. He's a sympathetic character; possibly the most sympathetic in the novel. He genuinely loves Arvay and he's an extremely hard worker, doing his utmost to live up to his own image of husband as reliable provider. What's more, he's up front about the contract he wants Arvay to enter into, although her initial reaction is "this deal is too good to be true," she eventually agrees. The rest of the book deals with Arvay's (very) slow realization that it's harder than she expected to live up to the terms Jim laid out, and with her even slower metamorphosis into a person able to hold up her end of the arrangement.
As a modern-day feminist fresh off of Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, the most difficult thing to wrap my mind around here is the question of whether or not Hurston is critiquing Jim's worldview. It would be easy to jump to her notoriously controversial biography and her other books to feed conjecture on this issue, but sticking to the text of Seraph on the Suwanee: what is being presented here? Is Arvay to be taken as an unfettered agent, who enters freely into a legal and emotional contract with Jim Meserve and is therefore bound by love and honor to conform as best she can to his proposed marriage model? This is certainly the reading that suggests itself initially, complete with a happy ending for the couple when Arvay finally finds the courage, assertiveness and commitment within herself to be the wife Jim wants. On a subtler level, though, does the very length and difficulty of Arvay's journey imply a critique of Jim's expectations? Or of the social context in which the couple lives? It's a question on which I'm still vacillating.
A few examples of the trouble between Jim and Arvay. While Jim's initial portrait of married life seems to remove most agency from the wife (her decisions don't matter because she doesn't have a mind to make up; she need only laugh, act loving, have babies and get waited on—oh, and "make [her husband] happy"), Arvay soon finds that her own passive yet insecure personality is a surprisingly bad match for these expectations. It's not so easy, after all, to act loving, kind and carefree when her husband decides to delay a move she's desperate to make; or when he takes her religion in vain; or when she finds he's been running an illegal liquor still on their property for fifteen years and never mentioned it. It's not so easy to be the person who is supposed to like all the decisions, but gets to make none of them.
Like Lawrence's Lady Chatterley, therefore, Arvay is constantly holding back a part of herself, hoarding her own wilfulness against her partner and refusing to submit herself to his will. And because she's devoting so much time to resentment and doubt, she doesn't see all the things he's constantly doing to support her and even, one could argue, submit himself to her in turn. He moves to a new place because she wants to, and scrambles hard to establish himself there (she doesn't realize how hard he's working or how broke they are, because he never mentions it and does his best to hide it from her). She talks frequently about how scared it makes her to live next to a swamp, so he plots and plans a way to clear it (at which point she is confused about why he went to so much trouble). He doesn't insist on institutionalizing their violent son, because he sees how much it means to her (but she resents him for even suggesting her son could act violently). And so on. It's only after she lets go of her insecurities and directs her self-will toward supporting, rather than resenting, her husband that she is able to look outside herself and notice the ways in which Jim has been loving her with his actions all along.
But those actions, those unexplained and hidden actions. They're a source of the real frustration in the novel, and the possible source of any critique Hurston may have for Jim Meserve's marriage model. Because, seriously: this is a couple the majority of whose problems could be completely resolved with a few heart-to-heart conversations. If Jim were able to say, "I cleared the swamp because I knew it scared you and I didn't want you to be scared," or if Arvay could put aside her passive-agressive anger and really speak to Jim about her pain over his indifference toward their disabled son, and if the other person could just listen: ninety percent of problems SOLVED. Instead, sitcom-like, they indulge in three decades of unnecessary misunderstanding.
Yes, heaven forbid they should talk about it. In Jim's mind, if Arvay doesn't see his motivation on her own, she won't truly believe or appreciate it if he tells her. On the other hand, his own glorification of female mindlessness and passivity makes a bad training for the kind of active, intuitive reading he's looking for here. What's more, Jim's gender formulations are those of the culture at large: this is a group of people who use the word "rape" for consensual, passionate adult sex—presumably an extension of the assumption that women need their decisions made for them. From my perspective, then, the tension in the relationship is largely due to Jim's insistence on an "actions speak louder than words" ethos, even in the face of Arvay's demonstrated inability to read actions. Neither partner is willing to train the other, and they have the bad luck to have ended up with communication styles that are actively opposed.
In the end, Hurston grants Arvay agency up to at least this point: while Jim says that women have no minds to make up, and that all that will be required of a wife of his is to laughingly receive bounty, he is actually looking for a much subtler understanding of how to read and perform acts of love and consideration, and perform them bravely and well. When Arvay finally breaks through her cloud of self-centered vagueness and commits to her husband, she likens her situation to a battle, if only a battle to stand by her man whatever he may do.
Hurston is one of those writers, like Willa Cather, whose work sits uneasily at the border of feminism—and nothing of hers I've read is AS uneasy at that border as Seraph on the Suwanee. As a person who believes submission and domination relationship models are inherently flawed, this is a challenging novel for me—not because I'm incapable of reading books that diverge from my personal ideology, but because I spent this reading unsure to what degree my concerns were or were not the concerns of this book. By focusing on the power dynamics of gender, am I a good reader or a bad one for Seraph on the Suwanee? I'm still not sure. But as usual, Hurston provides ample food for thought.
Women folks don't have no mind to make up nohow. They wasn't made for that. Lady folks were just made to laugh and act loving and kind and have a good man do for them all he's able, and have him as many boy-children as he figgers he'd like to have, and make him so happy that he's willing to work and fetch in every dad-blamed thing that his wife thinks she would like to have. That's what women are made for.
Jim is not a caricature of Southern male arrogance. He's a sympathetic character; possibly the most sympathetic in the novel. He genuinely loves Arvay and he's an extremely hard worker, doing his utmost to live up to his own image of husband as reliable provider. What's more, he's up front about the contract he wants Arvay to enter into, although her initial reaction is "this deal is too good to be true," she eventually agrees. The rest of the book deals with Arvay's (very) slow realization that it's harder than she expected to live up to the terms Jim laid out, and with her even slower metamorphosis into a person able to hold up her end of the arrangement.
As a modern-day feminist fresh off of Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, the most difficult thing to wrap my mind around here is the question of whether or not Hurston is critiquing Jim's worldview. It would be easy to jump to her notoriously controversial biography and her other books to feed conjecture on this issue, but sticking to the text of Seraph on the Suwanee: what is being presented here? Is Arvay to be taken as an unfettered agent, who enters freely into a legal and emotional contract with Jim Meserve and is therefore bound by love and honor to conform as best she can to his proposed marriage model? This is certainly the reading that suggests itself initially, complete with a happy ending for the couple when Arvay finally finds the courage, assertiveness and commitment within herself to be the wife Jim wants. On a subtler level, though, does the very length and difficulty of Arvay's journey imply a critique of Jim's expectations? Or of the social context in which the couple lives? It's a question on which I'm still vacillating.
A few examples of the trouble between Jim and Arvay. While Jim's initial portrait of married life seems to remove most agency from the wife (her decisions don't matter because she doesn't have a mind to make up; she need only laugh, act loving, have babies and get waited on—oh, and "make [her husband] happy"), Arvay soon finds that her own passive yet insecure personality is a surprisingly bad match for these expectations. It's not so easy, after all, to act loving, kind and carefree when her husband decides to delay a move she's desperate to make; or when he takes her religion in vain; or when she finds he's been running an illegal liquor still on their property for fifteen years and never mentioned it. It's not so easy to be the person who is supposed to like all the decisions, but gets to make none of them.
Like Lawrence's Lady Chatterley, therefore, Arvay is constantly holding back a part of herself, hoarding her own wilfulness against her partner and refusing to submit herself to his will. And because she's devoting so much time to resentment and doubt, she doesn't see all the things he's constantly doing to support her and even, one could argue, submit himself to her in turn. He moves to a new place because she wants to, and scrambles hard to establish himself there (she doesn't realize how hard he's working or how broke they are, because he never mentions it and does his best to hide it from her). She talks frequently about how scared it makes her to live next to a swamp, so he plots and plans a way to clear it (at which point she is confused about why he went to so much trouble). He doesn't insist on institutionalizing their violent son, because he sees how much it means to her (but she resents him for even suggesting her son could act violently). And so on. It's only after she lets go of her insecurities and directs her self-will toward supporting, rather than resenting, her husband that she is able to look outside herself and notice the ways in which Jim has been loving her with his actions all along.
But those actions, those unexplained and hidden actions. They're a source of the real frustration in the novel, and the possible source of any critique Hurston may have for Jim Meserve's marriage model. Because, seriously: this is a couple the majority of whose problems could be completely resolved with a few heart-to-heart conversations. If Jim were able to say, "I cleared the swamp because I knew it scared you and I didn't want you to be scared," or if Arvay could put aside her passive-agressive anger and really speak to Jim about her pain over his indifference toward their disabled son, and if the other person could just listen: ninety percent of problems SOLVED. Instead, sitcom-like, they indulge in three decades of unnecessary misunderstanding.
Jim dropped down and began to unlace his shoes. He got more quiet and took a long time before he looked up at Arvay again.
"So you really ain't got no notion why I wanted that swamp cleaned off, have you, honey?"
"Naw I told you. Not at all."
Jim jerked off first one heavy shoe and then the other.
"Well, maybe it'll come to you some day."
They didn't talk about it anymore and went on to bed.
Yes, heaven forbid they should talk about it. In Jim's mind, if Arvay doesn't see his motivation on her own, she won't truly believe or appreciate it if he tells her. On the other hand, his own glorification of female mindlessness and passivity makes a bad training for the kind of active, intuitive reading he's looking for here. What's more, Jim's gender formulations are those of the culture at large: this is a group of people who use the word "rape" for consensual, passionate adult sex—presumably an extension of the assumption that women need their decisions made for them. From my perspective, then, the tension in the relationship is largely due to Jim's insistence on an "actions speak louder than words" ethos, even in the face of Arvay's demonstrated inability to read actions. Neither partner is willing to train the other, and they have the bad luck to have ended up with communication styles that are actively opposed.
In the end, Hurston grants Arvay agency up to at least this point: while Jim says that women have no minds to make up, and that all that will be required of a wife of his is to laughingly receive bounty, he is actually looking for a much subtler understanding of how to read and perform acts of love and consideration, and perform them bravely and well. When Arvay finally breaks through her cloud of self-centered vagueness and commits to her husband, she likens her situation to a battle, if only a battle to stand by her man whatever he may do.
Nothing ahead of her but war, and she was ready and eager for it to start. She sat down again on the coil of rope and pleasured herself with the night. She sat and fed her senses with the light, the movement of the sea and the march of the stars across the sky. This was all hers until death if only she had the courage and the strength to hold it, and that she meant to do.
Hurston is one of those writers, like Willa Cather, whose work sits uneasily at the border of feminism—and nothing of hers I've read is AS uneasy at that border as Seraph on the Suwanee. As a person who believes submission and domination relationship models are inherently flawed, this is a challenging novel for me—not because I'm incapable of reading books that diverge from my personal ideology, but because I spent this reading unsure to what degree my concerns were or were not the concerns of this book. By focusing on the power dynamics of gender, am I a good reader or a bad one for Seraph on the Suwanee? I'm still not sure. But as usual, Hurston provides ample food for thought.
July 26, 2023
Seraph on the Suwanee was the last novel Zora Neale Hurston published before her death in 1960. In it, she tells of the relationship and marriage of Arvay and Jim Meserve, a white couple from Florida. This is Hurston's only novel where the main characters are white. Arvay comes from a poor white working-class background while Jim comes from a white upper-middle-class background. Arvay and Jim had a love-hate relationship for each other and I had the same feelings for them both. Jim was very emotionally abusive and controlling to Arvay while Arvay put up with Jim's mess and kept going back to him. Jim was misogynist and Arvay was racist. None of them were likeable although I had more sympathy for Arvay. The story definitely kept me engaged but I was not a fan of the ending.
December 19, 2008
Zora Neale Hurston is some kind of genius. This novel follows one woman's innermost feelings and insecurities as she goes from an awkward teenager to a wife and a mother. The description on goodreads says that this book is about a marriage "full of love but with very little communication," but seeing as that marriage starts with rape and kidnapping, I would say I think NOT. Actually, I think this book has a real feminist lens on the feelings of powerlessness and guilt that are imposed on women in their relationships, but without vindicating those feelings or letting women off the hook with them. In breaking with Black authors and writing about white folk for once, Zora gets into the stuff that's really personal and that lives inside our crazy irrational brains. I was frustrated for a good part of this book but loved it in spite of (because of?) that.
July 22, 2021
“She didn’t belong where she was, that was it. Jim was a Meserve. Angeline was a Meserve. Kenny was a Meserve, but as far as they concerned, she was still a Henson. Sort of a Handmaiden around the house. She had married a Meserve but She was not one of them. A handmaiden like Hagar who found favor in the master’s sight. They didn’t have to count her when anything important was to be done. Just go right and ignore her”.
- Seraph on the Suwanee by Zora Neale Hurston.
.
.
Any relationship that started with Rape will never be romantic to me regardless of the guy already redeemed himself at the end of the story, it is still HELL-TO-THE-NO to me. Consent, motherfucker, do you understand it? Okay, enough ranting - lets get back to the story - The story took place in the rural area in Florida. We followed the main character, Arvay Henson , a southern white girl whose apparently according to everyone has passed her marriage age (which at that time, she barely turned 21). Arvay Henson is deeply in love with his brother in law but decided to just keep it down because she knew it will never be realised. Then, Jim Meserve appeared in the story in all his glory, charmed almost all girls in the small town but he decided to make Arvay his wife. While Arvay agreed to the marriage, Jim felt that Arvay is too distant and felt it is too risky to wait until wedding to make Arvay his wife. Just like how a classic patriarchal and misogynistic value always love to oppress women, his friend indirectly hinted that Jim should just use force because at the end of the day, the woman will love it. I am not gonna lie, my blood boiled few times reading this book. It has nothing to with Zora’s writing - it’s just my feminist ass couldn’t take an entitled man depiction in the plot ; not in the book and never in real life. So the rape happened and just like that, Arvay and Jim proceeded with the marriage. Given the time setting of the storyline, Arvay might felt relieved that Jim still married her at the end, so she served him as best as she can l, like a housewife are expected to be back then. They have 3 Kids - Earl, Angie and Kenny from their marriage. There’s no progression or any turn of events for the plot. We can only see Arvay’s helplessness in dealing with a very flawed relationship with her husband. I must say Earl is the only connection that Arvay felt as somewhat an extension of herself but that has been cut off when Earl died. Overall, the book is engaging from start to finish but i just found it is very problematic to read about relationship that started with RAPE. While this is my first novel of Hurston, i think i should pick up her famous novel ‘Their eyes were watching god’ and make a comparison because many people liken this novel with it.
- Seraph on the Suwanee by Zora Neale Hurston.
.
.
Any relationship that started with Rape will never be romantic to me regardless of the guy already redeemed himself at the end of the story, it is still HELL-TO-THE-NO to me. Consent, motherfucker, do you understand it? Okay, enough ranting - lets get back to the story - The story took place in the rural area in Florida. We followed the main character, Arvay Henson , a southern white girl whose apparently according to everyone has passed her marriage age (which at that time, she barely turned 21). Arvay Henson is deeply in love with his brother in law but decided to just keep it down because she knew it will never be realised. Then, Jim Meserve appeared in the story in all his glory, charmed almost all girls in the small town but he decided to make Arvay his wife. While Arvay agreed to the marriage, Jim felt that Arvay is too distant and felt it is too risky to wait until wedding to make Arvay his wife. Just like how a classic patriarchal and misogynistic value always love to oppress women, his friend indirectly hinted that Jim should just use force because at the end of the day, the woman will love it. I am not gonna lie, my blood boiled few times reading this book. It has nothing to with Zora’s writing - it’s just my feminist ass couldn’t take an entitled man depiction in the plot ; not in the book and never in real life. So the rape happened and just like that, Arvay and Jim proceeded with the marriage. Given the time setting of the storyline, Arvay might felt relieved that Jim still married her at the end, so she served him as best as she can l, like a housewife are expected to be back then. They have 3 Kids - Earl, Angie and Kenny from their marriage. There’s no progression or any turn of events for the plot. We can only see Arvay’s helplessness in dealing with a very flawed relationship with her husband. I must say Earl is the only connection that Arvay felt as somewhat an extension of herself but that has been cut off when Earl died. Overall, the book is engaging from start to finish but i just found it is very problematic to read about relationship that started with RAPE. While this is my first novel of Hurston, i think i should pick up her famous novel ‘Their eyes were watching god’ and make a comparison because many people liken this novel with it.
May 15, 2019
The last of Hurston's four published novels, Seraph on the Suwanee differs from her other novels in that the major characters, Jim Meserve, his wife Arvay Henson and their three children Earl, Angeline and Kenny, are white. The experiment is not entirely successful, though not really due to any misunderstanding of white characters, although they sometimes seem too much like the Black characters of her other novels, and the lack of overt racist attitudes (though there is certainly a good deal of the patronizing kind) is perhaps more a reflection of Hurston's ideological position than realistic for the time and place.
The novel is told from the perspective of Arvay and is really the story of her transition from a timid girl with low self-esteem to a self-confident woman who has respect for herself. Through much of the novel, neither Jim nor Arvay are particularly likeable characters; it seems at times like a parody of Their Eyes Were Watching God -- Jim is a lot like Joe Starks, and Hurston even reuses some of his dialogue from the earlier novel, and like Joe he treats Arvay as if she has no mind of her own. Unlike Janie, however, it often seems true; Arvay, as she eventually realizes, acts "dumb" and is frequently petty and stubbornly self-destructive, until near the end she comes to a realization that she is following in the footsteps of her father and sister and frees herself from their influence, symbolically burning her old family home. The book is difficult to like until the end, when it becomes clearer what Hurston was trying to describe, and the change is too sudden to be entirely credible. It's certainly not a novel that would be popular with feminists the way the earlier novel has been. Nevertheless, once I finished it, I thought it was a worthwhile book to have read.
The novel is told from the perspective of Arvay and is really the story of her transition from a timid girl with low self-esteem to a self-confident woman who has respect for herself. Through much of the novel, neither Jim nor Arvay are particularly likeable characters; it seems at times like a parody of Their Eyes Were Watching God -- Jim is a lot like Joe Starks, and Hurston even reuses some of his dialogue from the earlier novel, and like Joe he treats Arvay as if she has no mind of her own. Unlike Janie, however, it often seems true; Arvay, as she eventually realizes, acts "dumb" and is frequently petty and stubbornly self-destructive, until near the end she comes to a realization that she is following in the footsteps of her father and sister and frees herself from their influence, symbolically burning her old family home. The book is difficult to like until the end, when it becomes clearer what Hurston was trying to describe, and the change is too sudden to be entirely credible. It's certainly not a novel that would be popular with feminists the way the earlier novel has been. Nevertheless, once I finished it, I thought it was a worthwhile book to have read.
November 19, 2018
I love Hurston's writing, and this book is no exception. However, it is an exceptional work for Hurston, in that the protagonist is white, and the story mainly about white characters. Apparently, white folks were not ready for this at the time, and was not a great success. This is not only a pity because of the close-mindedness of readers wanting to limit her subject matter, but also because it meant that publishers lost interest in Hurston after that, dooming her to poverty in her later years.
I put off the book for years, having read that it was not her best, so glad I finally read it now. I was caught up in the story right from the beginning, all the way through to the end. The gender politics of it are off-putting, but Hurston is such a good writer that I didn't let that stop me. It may not be as great as her other books, but still fascinating. The edition I read included some good back matter: An essay about Hurston by Henry Louis Gates, one by Hurston biographer Valerie Boyd, and one about the book by Hazel V. Carby, all worth reading.
I put off the book for years, having read that it was not her best, so glad I finally read it now. I was caught up in the story right from the beginning, all the way through to the end. The gender politics of it are off-putting, but Hurston is such a good writer that I didn't let that stop me. It may not be as great as her other books, but still fascinating. The edition I read included some good back matter: An essay about Hurston by Henry Louis Gates, one by Hurston biographer Valerie Boyd, and one about the book by Hazel V. Carby, all worth reading.
February 12, 2015
I love Zora Neal Hurston. The originality of her voice is amazing. Her plots are steady and engaging without ever being contrived. And her characters are stunningly real, nuanced, and flawed. This is my favorite of her novels, despite (as another reviewer pointed out) some of its disturbing sexual politics. I think it's my favorite because it's the most hopeful. It's a story of a tremendously flawed relationship, but one that is buoyed over a lifetime by love and, under it all, understanding. It's a tremendous journey of character.
June 13, 2018
I feel as if I discovered a hidden treasure. I loved Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Hurston’s autobiography, Dust Tracks on the Road, but had never heard of this one. I found it listed under her “other works” in the front of Barracoon (another good one) and found it at my library. Quite different from her other books, in that it is about a white “Florida cracker” family rather than African-American. Very engaging from start to finish.
August 23, 2021
I dunno, it just felt like this was missing some of the Hurston joyousness and her celebration of folksy commonsense. Instead, I found myself extremely frustrated by the main characters and their dysfunctional marriage characterized by a complete lack of communication. It's possible if I was stuck on a longer flight, I would have finished it anyway, but I after a 20 hr plane delay I was set FREEEEEEEEEE.
August 10, 2025
tw: rape mention; spousal violence
I'm giving this book a 3.5 rounded up to 4 stars. Is the reader supposed to feel sympathy or understanding for Jim? He raped her and was abusive during the marriage. He also had issues with communicating with Arvay. I mean, I disliked him truly. I didn't feel satisfaction when Arvay and Jim reconciled at the end.
I am keeping in mind though that this novel was written in 1948 and the standards of how we treat women is wildly different from now.
I'm giving this book a 3.5 rounded up to 4 stars. Is the reader supposed to feel sympathy or understanding for Jim? He raped her and was abusive during the marriage. He also had issues with communicating with Arvay. I mean, I disliked him truly. I didn't feel satisfaction when Arvay and Jim reconciled at the end.
I am keeping in mind though that this novel was written in 1948 and the standards of how we treat women is wildly different from now.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 28, 2018
The forward to this novel was very enlightening. Apparently, African American authors were seen as more talented if their characters were white. On the other hand, if the characters were Black, the authors were seen as radical or protesters. In addition, Zora was of the opinion that Blacks didn't have a unique style of language but that their language was the same as the whites and she, I believe, was trying to make this point with this novel.
The storyline was interesting but lagged near the end; I felt that the story was unnecessarily long. The characters were flat and although there were supporting characters of color, the storyline follows the marriage of the two main characters. The characters had this circumspect aspect of their relationship that didn't come to a head until the end and without much of a climax. It's definitely not "Their Eyes Were Watching God".
The storyline was interesting but lagged near the end; I felt that the story was unnecessarily long. The characters were flat and although there were supporting characters of color, the storyline follows the marriage of the two main characters. The characters had this circumspect aspect of their relationship that didn't come to a head until the end and without much of a climax. It's definitely not "Their Eyes Were Watching God".
October 30, 2023
3.5.
What's the point of having an afterword if it has nothing to do with the actual book?
What's the point of having an afterword if it has nothing to do with the actual book?
February 28, 2023
Zora Neale Hurston is best known for her classic novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. She’s a symbol of the Harlem Renaissance - a highly educated anthropologist, who wrote on themes of race and feminism. Seraph on the Suwanee was her last novel, and is unique in the fact that she departs from her typical subject matter to write the story of a middle class white family in mid 20th century Florida, with a female lead that is very happily subject to the typical social/familial/marital constructs of the time. Upon publication, Zora was criticized for these bold creative choices, but she felt strongly that she was an “American author” (not a “black author”) , meaning that she was qualified to write an American story about characters of any race and background. She was also criticized for her choice of vernacular, which was typically used to depict her black characters in the south - however, she argued that as a native Floridian and anthropologist, she was qualified to determine that accents, colloquialisms, etc were unique to locations - not to races. For all these reasons and more, this book is an amazing historical study, opening up the floor for many conversations of thought. And isn’t that, in itself, a sign of true art?
Favorite quotes:
“There is always room in oblivion. That is one place that is never full.”
“‘Yes, Jim, I hear you.’
The sweetness of the moment swept over Arvay so that she almost lost consciousness. Jim shook her roughly and growled.
‘Well, hell! You don't act like it. What the hell you think I got a neck for if it ain't for you to be hugging?’”
“All that had happened to her, good or bad, was a part of her own self and had come out of her. Within her own flesh were many mysteries. She lifted her left hand before her eyes and studied it in every detail with wonder. With wonder and deep awe like Moses before his burning bush. What all, Arvay asked of herself, was buried and hidden in human flesh? You toted it around with you all your life time, but you couldn't know. If you just could know, it would be all the religion that anybody needed. And what was in you was bound to come out and stand.”
Favorite quotes:
“There is always room in oblivion. That is one place that is never full.”
“‘Yes, Jim, I hear you.’
The sweetness of the moment swept over Arvay so that she almost lost consciousness. Jim shook her roughly and growled.
‘Well, hell! You don't act like it. What the hell you think I got a neck for if it ain't for you to be hugging?’”
“All that had happened to her, good or bad, was a part of her own self and had come out of her. Within her own flesh were many mysteries. She lifted her left hand before her eyes and studied it in every detail with wonder. With wonder and deep awe like Moses before his burning bush. What all, Arvay asked of herself, was buried and hidden in human flesh? You toted it around with you all your life time, but you couldn't know. If you just could know, it would be all the religion that anybody needed. And what was in you was bound to come out and stand.”
January 23, 2021
5/5 stars.
"But between the tree and the world there stood that house. Now Arvay looked at it with a scrutiny, and darkened. Seeing it from the meaning of the tree it was no house at all. It was an evil, ill-deformed monstropolous accumulation of time and scum. It had soaked in so much of doing-without, of soul-starvation, of brutish vacancy of aim, of absent dreams, envy of trifles, ambitions for littleness, smothered cries and trampled love, that it was a sanctuary of tiny and sanctioned vices. Its walls were smoked over with the vapors from dead souls like smoky kerosene lamps."
It started out a bit slow, but in the end, I really enjoyed this book. Hurston's writing style allows for a lot of reflection, and her novels (at least for the two that I've now read) commonly have personal reflection and growth as a motif. "Their Eyes Were Watching God" was a wonderful novel, and this one, while less known, was as well. Interested in reading the rest of her work.
"But between the tree and the world there stood that house. Now Arvay looked at it with a scrutiny, and darkened. Seeing it from the meaning of the tree it was no house at all. It was an evil, ill-deformed monstropolous accumulation of time and scum. It had soaked in so much of doing-without, of soul-starvation, of brutish vacancy of aim, of absent dreams, envy of trifles, ambitions for littleness, smothered cries and trampled love, that it was a sanctuary of tiny and sanctioned vices. Its walls were smoked over with the vapors from dead souls like smoky kerosene lamps."
It started out a bit slow, but in the end, I really enjoyed this book. Hurston's writing style allows for a lot of reflection, and her novels (at least for the two that I've now read) commonly have personal reflection and growth as a motif. "Their Eyes Were Watching God" was a wonderful novel, and this one, while less known, was as well. Interested in reading the rest of her work.
July 11, 2025
Hurston so accurately portrays how resentment builds through lack of communication, though Arvay and Jim’s actions are done out of love for one another, making it a tough read. Still a little confused on what Hurston’s definition of love is here ! I like that this is not just about marriage, but also motherhood/parenthood. Hurston shows how traits and status manifest in Arvay and Jim’s children and how Arvay deals with it. Ugh
June 18, 2025
zora neale Hurston the woman u are …
February 9, 2023
Witnessing Arvay succumbing to love was heartwarming but it's Zora Neale Hurston's literary craftsmanship that shines. She breathes life into her folksy characters and turns their mundane surroundings into other worlds. Her writing is the blueprint for Southern fantasy.
July 13, 2011
(FROM JACKET)This novel of turn-of-the-century white "Florida Crackers" marks a daring departure for the author famous for her complex accounts of black culture and heritage. Full of insights into the nature of love, attraction, faith, and loyalty, "Seraph on the Suwanee" is the compellilng story of two people at once deeply at odds. The heroine, young Arvay Henson, is convinced she will never find true love and happines, and defends herself from unwanted suitors by throwing hysterical fits and professing religious fervor. Arvay meets her match, however, in handsome Jim Meserve, a bright, enterprising young man who knows that Arvay is the woman for him, and refuses to allow her to convince him otherwise. With the same passion and understanding that have made "Their Eyes Were Watching God" a classic, Hurston explores the evolution of a marriage full of love but very little communication....
December 18, 2007
This is Hurston's last published novel. It is also the novel that gets the least critical attention because it does not fit comfortably within the feminist or African American literary traditions. This is the most experimental of her novels. In her letters, we learn that Hurston was trying to say something about the state of marriage American society. The novel's heroine, Arvay Henson, is a challenge to readers. I think Hurston struggled to identify with her as well, which makes her occasional ambivalence towards Arvay disconcerting due to what happens to this character in the novel. None-the-less, it deserves a read as I believe Hurston weaves a close connection between this novel, and her most famous--Their Eyes Were Watching God.
May 23, 2019
Hurston's least known novel, written about white Southerners in Florida, an odd study of marriage, communication, & growth. Having read her 4 novels, it was my least favorite, but that doesn't mean it was necessarily the least interesting or worth reading. Certainly it was the one I understood least & for me it raised more questions than it answered. But questions are an excellent gateway to good discussion.
December 14, 2022
I really struggled with how to rate and review this book. On the one hand, Zora Neale Hurston’s writing style is incredibly engaging, and I was captivated. But on the other hand, the plot was surprisingly grotesque, most ostensibly in the fact that it depicted and condoned rape. Regardless, it was interesting to get into the mind of ZNH as well as gain more insight into what it might have been like to live in Old Florida.
January 8, 2008
I wish Hurston wrote more novels from a woman's perspective. Reading this along with Their Eyes Were Watching God was like having the soft insistent voices inside every woman's head be voiced aloud on paper. What amazes me is that this is such a sympathetic portrait of a poor white woman by a poor black woman.
March 28, 2015
I read this in Florida while escaping a brutal New England winter. The book was the best thing about the whole vacation, that's how good it is - beautifully written, characters drawn with great emotional insight.
July 30, 2019
There are a lot of interesting ideas and questions being articulated in this text. While I may not agree with the gender politics being presented here, the book is a fascinating and enjoyable read.
May 4, 2013
One of my favorites. A poignant sometimes frustrating story of marriage, love, and communication.
February 17, 2015
I spent the better part of this book disliking Arvay, but she came around in the end
August 16, 2017
A bit slow in parts, a nice story.
July 3, 2020
In an effort to decolonize my reading preferences I have been undertaking novels by black authors. Zora Neale Hurston is an important figure in African American Lit, and her story is fascinating, albeit sad, how an educated, prolific author, the recipient of 2 separate Guggenheim Fellowships could die penniless and be buried in a unmarked grave is hard to come to terms with. Hurston's impact on future writers is undeniable, Alice Walker the author of The Color Purple is the one who discovered and marked Hurston's grave in 1975.
This novel took me by surprise because its about white people! The foreword mentions this was last of Hurston's novels to be published. The foreword reads, "Hurston's second ambition involved a challenge to the literary conventions of the apartheid American society in which Hurston lived -- conventions she felt dictated that black writers and artists should be concerned only with representing black subjects." However, the wikipedia article on this book reads, "Seraph on the Suwanee is a 1948 novel by African-American novelist Zora Neale Hurston.[1] It is her last published novel, and was written after her publisher rejected two novels about black characters." So who knows.
The main character of this novel is Avary, a "cracker" (white trash Floridian) who achieves upward mobility after catching the eye of a handsome, sought-after Yankee Jim Meserve (although he does RAPE her early into the relationship, the more I read books written in the past the more I learn that rape was just HAPPENING ALL THE GODDAMN TIME). To me it was a story of a push-and-pull kind of love, of miscommunication, of a women's role in her family, in her marriage and of life in Florida at the time.
"This was a Sunday and the sawmill and the 'still was silent. No Yankees passing through. The Negroes were about their own doings in their own part of town, and white Sawley [home-town of the main character] was either in church or on the way."
I found this quote interesting because I feel like it speaks to the fact this is a story about white people coming from a black author, in the way that black people in the story are not ignored, the society is segregated but that does not mean that the other side doesn't exist.
Did I like this book? Avary bugged the hell out of me, at times I was hate-reading as she seemed dead set on being miserable. But it was also relatable, the way you can get so indignant and worked up about what you imagine other people think of you, regardless if it is rooted in reality. I don't know, I still feel very confused about the whole thing, the romance, although strong, was not one I particularly wanted to root for.
This novel took me by surprise because its about white people! The foreword mentions this was last of Hurston's novels to be published. The foreword reads, "Hurston's second ambition involved a challenge to the literary conventions of the apartheid American society in which Hurston lived -- conventions she felt dictated that black writers and artists should be concerned only with representing black subjects." However, the wikipedia article on this book reads, "Seraph on the Suwanee is a 1948 novel by African-American novelist Zora Neale Hurston.[1] It is her last published novel, and was written after her publisher rejected two novels about black characters." So who knows.
The main character of this novel is Avary, a "cracker" (white trash Floridian) who achieves upward mobility after catching the eye of a handsome, sought-after Yankee Jim Meserve (although he does RAPE her early into the relationship, the more I read books written in the past the more I learn that rape was just HAPPENING ALL THE GODDAMN TIME). To me it was a story of a push-and-pull kind of love, of miscommunication, of a women's role in her family, in her marriage and of life in Florida at the time.
"This was a Sunday and the sawmill and the 'still was silent. No Yankees passing through. The Negroes were about their own doings in their own part of town, and white Sawley [home-town of the main character] was either in church or on the way."
I found this quote interesting because I feel like it speaks to the fact this is a story about white people coming from a black author, in the way that black people in the story are not ignored, the society is segregated but that does not mean that the other side doesn't exist.
Did I like this book? Avary bugged the hell out of me, at times I was hate-reading as she seemed dead set on being miserable. But it was also relatable, the way you can get so indignant and worked up about what you imagine other people think of you, regardless if it is rooted in reality. I don't know, I still feel very confused about the whole thing, the romance, although strong, was not one I particularly wanted to root for.
November 1, 2019
Arvay Henson came from a Florida “cracker “ family and had already fallen in her own self esteem from little to nothing before handsome Jim Meserve came along. How does a man like Jim will himself to break the cycle of ignorance and poverty while most everyone he ever knew just wallows in the mud of self pity? Arvay is so convinced that she can never be worthy of anything more than a shack in the “teppen time” woods that her heart isn’t open to love Jim, expecting him to quit her any day.
Hurston’s famous use of local idiomatic styles of speech is a prominent feature here, helping to set the time and place, and to define character differences to some degree as well.
Zoe’s Neal Hurston uses a mostly white southern cast of characters here, a change from her typical writing about black people and their struggles. Arvay and some others display prejudices of anyone different from themselves at all, especially black folks and people from other cultures and countries, but there is a naive absence of the cruelty experienced by blacks on the Suwanee around 1910-1920.
As the reader, I struggled to feel empathy for the main characters. They harm themselves and each other repeatedly and seem to not learn, grow and change. At one point Arvay botches an attempt to talk about this very thing. Jim shows he gets it by saying it this way:
“Some folks are surface water and are easily seen and known about. Others get caught underground, and have to cut and gnaw their way out if they ever get seen by human eyes.”
Hurston’s famous use of local idiomatic styles of speech is a prominent feature here, helping to set the time and place, and to define character differences to some degree as well.
Zoe’s Neal Hurston uses a mostly white southern cast of characters here, a change from her typical writing about black people and their struggles. Arvay and some others display prejudices of anyone different from themselves at all, especially black folks and people from other cultures and countries, but there is a naive absence of the cruelty experienced by blacks on the Suwanee around 1910-1920.
As the reader, I struggled to feel empathy for the main characters. They harm themselves and each other repeatedly and seem to not learn, grow and change. At one point Arvay botches an attempt to talk about this very thing. Jim shows he gets it by saying it this way:
“Some folks are surface water and are easily seen and known about. Others get caught underground, and have to cut and gnaw their way out if they ever get seen by human eyes.”
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