"Jake Makes a Move"

One of the parts that stood out the most to me in our reading in Home to Harlem for Tuesday is chapter IX: “Jake Makes a Move.” In this section the narrator tells us that Rose, the woman Jake has been staying with, is not only cheating on him (as he has likely, though I believe not explicitly, been doing to her), she is also disappointed with him because “[s]he had wanted him to live the usual sweet way, to be brutal and beat her up a little, and take away her money from her” (113). It goes on to say that “[s]he confided to her friends that [Jake] was “good loving but” (making use of a contraction that common people employ) “a big Ah-Ah all the same” (114).

I confess I really don’t know what to make of this. Is it sarcasm? The narrator throughout the book seems to make use of a good deal of it, and this section is so over the top I almost think it must be. On the other hand, is it a portrait of desperation, of a woman who is self-destructive? Or is it something else entirely?