Goldilocks and the Three Husbands (and Manic Pixie Dream Tea Cake)

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.