wn mind had tuh be squeezed and crowded out to make room for yours in me” is the way Janie explains it to Joe as he is dieing of liver disease (133). After Joe dies, Janie meets and falls in love with a younger man, Tea Cake. The character of Tea Cake is important in looking at women’s roles because he shows that it is traditional male attitudes toward women that keep them in their submissive roles. Janie and Tea Cake leave town to get away from the image the people still have of Janie as “Mrs. Mayor Starkes.” This means a new identity for Janie— but this time she is able to build her own identity and what she gave up for Tea Cake she gives up willingly, because she loves him. Janie is able to have this kind of relationship with Tea Cake because he was carefree; he is not caught up in the social or political roles than most men strive for — he just wanted to have fun and support Janie. The difference in this relationship is illustrated by the fact that Tea Cake asks Janie to come work with him in the fields. “Tea Cake asks and Janie consents to work in the fields . . . his requests stem from a desire to be with Janie . . . it isn’t the white man’s burden that Janie carries; it is the gift of her own love” (Williams, xv).The same roles for women can be seen in James Baldwin’s Go Tell it on the Mountain, a book written be a man, from a male’s perspective. Gabriel’s relationship with his mother is similar in many ways to Janie’s with Nanny. Gabriel is drawn to a wild lifestyle, against his mother’s wishes. “’Honey,’ their mother was saying, ‘don’t let your old mother die without you look her in the eye and tell her she going to see you in glory” (Baldwin 76). It is Gabriel’s mother’s wish that Gabriel dedicate himself to the lord, and straighten his life out, and just like Nanny’s wish that Janie m...
