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Chapter 7 Summary
The years take away Janie's fight, and no matter what Jody does, she does not say anything. She thinks about running away but has nowhere to go. At thirty-five, she feels like "a rut in the road" with "plenty of life beneath the surface but…kept beaten down by the wheels." She sees the changes of age come over Jody, whose energy has left him. His eyes are now absent; his once-prosperous belly sags. Desperate to ignore his own aging, Jody focuses on hers, as if by insulting her and calling her an old woman, he will not look so bad next to her. Janie ignores it until one day in the store, when he crosses the line. Upbraiding her for not cutting a plug of tobacco on the mark, he tells her in front of all the others not to stand there rolling her pop eyes at him with her rump hanging to her knees.
It is like stripping a woman on a crowded street, and the others sense it. Janie rounds on him, telling Jody she may be nearly forty, but he is already fifty, and while she is every inch a woman, when Jody pulls down his britches he looks like the "change uh life." Robbed of his masculinity in front of the jeering men, Jody, realizing they will never respect him again, strikes Janie with all his might and runs her out of the store.
Chapter 7 Analysis
Nearly twenty years of verbal abuse have suppressed Janie's independence, though she recognizes that they have not entirely destroyed her self-determination. She views Jody's aging with a measure of pity until his desperate attempt to humiliate her forces her to fight back. Clinging to her self-esteem, Janie humiliates him with a pointed remark about his flagging masculinity, proving that her words can indeed be more effective than even Jody's powerful actions. This is because Jody, like the rest of the town, relies on his material worth to measure his success, but, once Janie strips him of his illusion of power, the town can separate the wealth from the man, admiring one while pitying the other. With no recourse left, Jody uses his fists. However, the reader senses that his brutality will be largely ineffective in reclaiming Janie and the town's respect.
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