Zadie Smith Quote

Not long ago I sat down to dinner with an American woman who told me how disappointed she had been to finally read Middlemarch and find that it was Just this long, whiny, trawling search for a man! Those who read Middlemarch in that way will find little in Their Eyes Were Watching God to please them. It’s about a girl who takes some time to find the man she really loves. It is about the discovery of self in and through another. It implies that even the dark and terrible banality of racism can recede to a vanishing point when you understand, and are understood by, another human being. Goddammit if it doesn’t claim that love sets you free. These days self-actualization is the aim, and if you can’t do it alone you are admitting a weakness. The potential rapture of human relationships to which Hurston gives unabashed expression, the profound self-crushing love that Janie feels for Tea Cake, may, I suppose, look like the dull finale of a long, whiny, trawling search for a man. For Tea Cake and Janie, though, the choice of each other is experienced not as desperation, but as discovery, and the need felt on both sides causes them joy, not shame.