In Hurston's short story, "Sweat," the main character is Delia. She suffers different types of abuse throughout the story. As a washer woman, she works very hard to support herself and her husband, Sykes. At one point in the story, she talks about how much she sweats--both literally and figuratively--when she works in order to pay for the house and their needs. She gets little support (financially or emotionally) from her husband and is essentially doing everything herself.
The idea of sweat also symbolizes the tears Delia has shed at the amount of abuse Sykes has done to her. He torments her constantly and is very mean to her. He parades around town with his mistress and brings a live snake (the thing Delia fears most) into her house just to make her miserable. Sweat, then, is both the perspiration and the tears that Delia makes because of her hard life and the abuse she suffers.
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