Summary
The story opens at eleven o'clock on a spring Sunday evening in Florida. Delia Jones, a washwoman, would ordinarily have gone to bed at nine o'clock, but she stays up late working on Sunday evenings because she has developed a special routine that saves her half of a day's work the following Monday. On Saturday, she returns the clean laundry to the white people for whom she works, and at the same time she collects the soiled laundry. On Sunday evening after church, she sorts the great mass of laundry into different piles according to color.
On this particular evening, Delia squats sorting laundry on the kitchen floor, "humming a song in a mournful key" (1022), and wondering where her husband Sykes has wandered off to with her horse and buckboard. Suddenly, "something long, round, limp, and black" falls upon her shoulders and slides to the floor next to her. Delia has a great fear of snakes, and she is so scared by this event that her mouth dries up and she is unable to move or make a sound for a whole minute.
However, she soon sees that it is not a snake after all but the bull whip that Sykes likes to carry when he drives. When she looks up, he is at the doorway laughing because of Delia's reaction to his prank. She screams at him for doing something so cruel, when he knows how afraid she is of snakes. Sykes replies that it is precisely because of how afraid she is of snakes that he did it. Delia tells him that "Gawd knows it's a sin" and that one day "Ah'm gointuh drop dead from some of yo' foolishness" (1022). He describes her as "aggravatin'" (1022) and criticizes her for bringing the clothes of her white clients into the house.
Delia ignores his criticism, instead continuing to work. She goes outside to fetch a galvanized tub, but when she returns she finds that Sykes has messed up the piles of clothes that she has painstakingly sorted. She sees that he is looking for a fight, but she ignores him and goes to re-sort the clothes. When Sykes tells her that next time he will dump the clothes outside, Delia does not look at him, but "her thin, stooped shoulders" (1022) droop even more. Sykes accuses her of being a hypocritical Christian because she is working on the Sabbath. Their argument escalates, and Sykes threatens a beating. Instead of responding with her "habitual meekness" (1023), Delia gets to her feet and tells Sykes defiantly, "You done gone too fur. Ah been married to you fur fifteen years, and Ah been takin' in washin' fur fifteen years. Sweat, sweat, sweat! Work and sweat, cry and sweat, pray and sweat" (1023).
Sykes responds insolently, but Delia reminds him that her work has kept him fed more often than his own work has, as well as paying for their house. She grabs and lifts an iron skillet in a defensive pose. Delia's defiant behavior is a great surprise to Sykes, who backs off. Delia tells him that she will stay in this home until she dies. Sykes tells her that occasion will be sooner than she expects if she continues to aggravate him, and goes to stay with his mistress Bertha.
Laying awake that night, Delia reflects on her and Sykes' relationship. Once upon a time they were in love, but the happy memories have long since been outweighed by all the unhappy ones. Not long after their wedding, Sykes began to beat her, and to take trips to Orlando where he would spend all of his wages. Where once she had been "young and soft," she became "knotty" and "muscled" with "harsh knuckly hands" (1023).
She recognizes that there is no more hope for them. Even if Sykes were not with Bertha, it would simply be another woman. All she has to rely on is her house, which she has bought and decorated with great care for her elderly years. She reflects that sooner or later Sykes' reckoning will have to come. She falls asleep and sleeps until she is woken by Sykes in the bed, rudely pulling on the covers. Delia displays a "triumphant indifference" (1024) to him and all that he does to her.
Analysis
The first few paragraphs of "Sweat" do a lot of work to set up the themes and plot of the story. In fact, almost everything that happens is foreshadowed in some way in these first passages. At our first introduction to Delia, she is working past her usual bedtime sorting laundry, as she always does on Sundays. This plants the impression, later confirmed, of Delia as a hardworking person who despite the heaviness of her labor is never less than reliable.
The second paragraph is remarkable because it accomplishes a lot of character description in very few words. Delia squats in the kitchen "beside the great pile of clothes... humming a song in a mournful key, but wondering through it all where Sykes, her husband, had gone with her horse and buckboard" (1022). We will later learn that Delia lives a very punishing life, that she derives a lot of comfort from her Christian faith and specifically singing the songs she hears at church, and this is foreshadowed by her humming here in a "mournful key." The fact that Delia is wondering while she works where her husband is also introduces a plot point that will be central. In this scene as in their life together, Sykes is continually absent, and even an obstruction to her work: he has taken her horse and buckboard (a kind of wagon), presumably to spend time with his mistress Bertha.
When Sykes returns and plays his mean prank on Delia by tricking her into thinking that his bull whip is a snake, this is also a meaningful instance of foreshadowing, irony, and symbolism. Delia is deathly afraid of snakes, which is very significant throughout the story. Especially in Christianity, the snake has long symbolized the Devil, stemming back to the episode at the beginning of the Bible when Satan appeared to Eve in the Garden of Eden as a snake and tempted her into eating the forbidden fruit, resulting in the expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise.
In this sense, Sykes' prank foreshadows his capturing later in the story of a real rattlesnake. These double instances of bringing snakes or snake-like objects into the house can be said to symbolize the way in which he brings evil into the house that represents Delia's proudest achievement, the fruit of the very punishing but also upright and virtuous lifestyle that she lives. Lastly, it is ironic that Delia says to Sykes that "Some day Ah'm gointuh drop dead from some of yo' foolishness" (1022), because ultimately it is, of course, Sykes who actually drops dead from the consequences of his own behavior.
We are also introduced in this section to the story's use of African-American vernacular speech (AAVE) for characters' speech: "you knows how skeered Ah is of snakes," Delia tells Sykes. Hurston transcribes the way characters like Delia and Sykes may have spoken literally instead of converting it into the kind of standard American English in which she writes the rest of the story. It was an important part of the project of Fire!!, the literary magazine of the Harlem Renaissance that "Sweat" was first published in, to provide a realistic picture of African-American life at that time. This was a controversial project as certain community leaders, including those of the Talented Tenth, felt that this was detrimental to improving the status of African-Americans. You can read more about this in the section on the publication history of "Sweat."
