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Chapter 16 Summary
The bean-picking season ends, but Janie and Tea Cake stay on, and Janie, with nothing better to do, starts making friends. She gets to know Mrs. Turner, whose husband owns one of the eateries. Mrs. Turner takes pride in her Caucasian characteristics, and idolizes Janie, who is even fairer than she is. However, Mrs. Turner despises Tea Cake, and every other black man and woman whom she feels laughs too loud and makes it impossible for white people to take him or her in. Because of their color, their features and their monkey climbing, Mrs. Turner says light-complexioned people cannot even make a separate race of their own. Instead, they have to be lumped in with all the blacks. Janie has never heard or thought such a thing, so she keeps quiet at Mrs. Turner's tirade, a little dismayed. However, Tea Cake overhears one day when Mrs. Turner tells Janie that her brother would make her a fine husband. Janie says she already has a husband, but even so, Tea Cake is infuriated. He tells Janie to give Mrs. Turner the cold shoulder from now on. Unfortunately, no matter how Janie treats the woman, Mrs. Turner forgives her, because she sees Janie as higher than herself—a kind of deity whose cruelty is expected simply because she is better than everyone else, Mrs. Turner included.
Chapter 16 Analysis
The character of Mrs. Turner represents an unwelcome intrusion of the hierarchy Janie left behind. Representing relative wealth and power in the mostly egalitarian community of the Everglades bean pickers, Mrs. Turner also relies on physical characteristics to define desirability. Again, Janie is perceived as someone "better than the rest," this time by virtue of her fair skin and long hair. Mrs. Turner tries to tempt Janie back to the traditional world of expectations and material and class acquisition, but Janie refuses, ironically confirming for Mrs. Turner than Janie is better than the others are.
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