This is a well-worn trope of anything having to do with three
different statuses with the final being "just right", so I present to
you the newest tale on the block: Janie and the Three Hubbies! It's a pretty
liberal simplification, but that's the impression I got once Janie fell out
with two consecutive husbands and finds a new boyf in the immensely charming
Tea Cake. In Goldilocks and the Three Bears, the titular character tries out
three different porridge bowls, chairs, and beds, with one of them in each case
satiating Goldilocks' fancies. Janie admittedly takes a bit more time in
feeling out the first two husbands, and in the case of Joe Starks is intrigued
by him for a little while before flaking, but the folklore dynamic still
remains. As such, each of the husbands occupies a different state of control
over Janie, with Tea Cake representing the "just right" alternative.
Her first marriage
with Logan Killicks is comparatively short-lived as well as totally garbage.
Indeed, her time as Ms. Killicks fulfills all her fears about marriage that
were overseen by Nanny. In the middle of it she learns that "marriage did
not make love", and that her "first dream was dead". Reminder:
this girl is still a teenager! This thing sucks so much that she's already had her
dreams die, come to conclusions about the nature of marriage, and been forced
into premature womanhood! But that's kind of aside the point. Logan's own
relationship with Janie is basically busywork and verbal abuse. Like when he
makes her pile manure and chop wood against her will and yet still calls her
"spoiled rotten"; not quite the vision of married life she ever
wanted for herself (26). Sure, his requests would be justified if she had
chosen the farmer's life for herself (though the mocking wouldn't) but she
clearly never wanted to, making Logan perhaps the "too cold"
porridge: intimately distant and expectant of too much.
Janie quickly
moves on to the next bowl/chair/bed when she meets the driven Joe Starks, a
passing-through respectable man with dreams of the future and ambition to
spare. Especially when Joe flings promises to have her made a wife but
"treated lak a lady", one can see how this new status is extremely
appealing to an overworked, underage farmer's wife (29). However, what Joe sees
in her is almost the polar opposite of the Killicks' treatment; instead of the
hardworking expectations of farm life, she is made a trophy wife by Starks,
with little mobility of what she wants to do. Unfortunately, she's stuck with
the sexist control for 17 years, and this predictably damages her independent
spirit quite heavily. "The years took all the fight out of Janie's face
(...) Plenty of life beneath the surface but it was kept beaten down by the
wheels" is how she's described after so long being held on a pedestal she
didn't want to be on (76). She does eventually work up the strength to just
roast the hell out of Jody's saggy britches in the middle of the supermarket
("when you pull down yo' britches, you look lak de change uh life") and
pops his vanity into bleeding "like a flood" in front of everyone
(79). Which I guess is the way for Janie to move on from each not-right
husband; she didn't pull any punches on Logan's skeleton-head-looking self. But
Starks responds to this pent-up protest by striking his wife in utter
embarrassment and hatred, capping off yet another crappy coupling in painfully
extended duration. There are certainly some partners in the world that would
cherish and play the trophy-wife with enthusiasm, just as there are some
willing farmer women for Killicks, but Janie fits neither of those roles and
strikingly so.
Joe gets sick (presumably from being fatally roasted by his estranged
and angry wife) and eventually dies after a very sad conversation about how
wrong the wedded pair were for each other. At this point, readers are extremely
skeptical about another man ever entering Janie’s world or suggesting married
life, as her own experience in marriage has been completely draining and
horrible. And yet, as the tale would comply, third time seems to be the charm.
Enter from stage right Virgible Woods aka Tea Cake, the liberated,
sweet-talking, and infinitely affable young gun who treats Janie, for once, as
an equal. They meet over a game of checkers, which on so many levels charms
Janie past her previous affairs. Where Logan would’ve made her do more work and
Jody would’ve prohibited, Tea Cake teaches her the fun game and even
compliments her on it, reckoning she’ll “be uh good player too, after a while”
(96). This is just the beginning of Tea Cake’s lovable antics; a hair combing
and invisible guitar picking later Janie seems to be completely at home with
him, and convinced that the character is as sweet as his name might suggest. This
seemingly perfect fit allows her plenty of social and personal freedoms that
she hadn’t seen before.
Which begs the question: is Tea Cake kind of a Manic Pixie Dream Boy? Specifically, a massively desirable, completely available, static
character shallow in its quirkiness and only geared towards making the
protagonist happy? Such a criticism in the small glimpse we’ve seen of Tea Cake
I think is sort of fair; there are no perceivable flaws with him and he is
extremely interested in Janie for vague reason. Of course, we have still seen
very little of this character and thus his motivations are difficult to
analyze. It’s also important to see how much better he is from the previous
husbands and how that might gloss over his flaws a bit. However, MPD people are
often either the deus ex machina of the protagonist’s personal resolution, or
the subject of (weak) tragedy in losing an inexplicably perfect human being who
is solely interested in the protagonist. Both are bad storytelling. But that’s
all a bit more involved than some nicely temperature porridge.
So please, let me know if you agree/disagree with the Goldilocks
similarity or allusion to manic-pixie-dream-ism in Tea Cake. If it's the latter, just don't roast me like Janie roasts bad husbands. Though it would be funny.
