Sweat

The reader is introduced to the protagonist, Delia, as she is sorting clothes on a spring night in Florida at her home. She is a washerwoman and has a habit of working late Sunday night to get a start on her week after she's gone to church. She is singing a low song in "a mournful key" and wondering where her husband, Sykes is since he has her horse and working equipment. As she ponders his whereabouts, she feels something like a snake fall around her shoulders and screams, only to look up and see her husband standing over her with the bullwhip he uses to ride the horses. This is quite a striking image and already, the reader should be aware that this image is not coincidentalÐ'--her husband is an imposing and oppressive figure, indeed.

Delia is quite angry because her husband purposefully made it look like a snake and she scolds him. He does not seem concerned with her feelings and yells at her because she has white people's clothes in the house, something which he's told her he doesn't like. She tries to ignore him as he kicks the neat pile she'd made all over. He is bound and determined to fight with her and keeps trying to provoke her with his words. Suddenly, tired of his verbal abuse, she screams about how hard she's been working and picks up an iron skillet from the stove as if to strike him. He is taken aback by his wife's actions, especially since she usually just bottled up her anger. As the narrator states, "It cowed him and he did not strike her as he usually did." From this point, it is clear that he is also physically abusive toward her and this makes her rebellious action even more surprising.

Sykes finally leaves his wife alone to ponder her unhappy life and marriage. He is sleeping with another woman, Bertha, and he spends all of her hard-earned money buying her trite gifts. All that keeps her happy is the prospect of going to church and her well-maintained but small house. He comes back in around dawn and steals the covers before a new scene begins. It is clear that this is a troubled household and that Delia's patience with her abusive husband is going to have to have some kind of resolution. In an instance of foreshadowing, she thinking, "Oh well, whatever goes over the Devil's back, is got to come under his belly" which means that she knows eventually Skyes will get what's coming to him.

The previous scene is cut off and the reader sees that some time has gone by. Delia sets out to do her washing and passes by a group of men sitting at a store. The tone and focus change for a while as the men comment on how pretty Delia used to be and how it's such a shame that she's beaten so often and lost