Examples Of Sexism In Their Eyes Were Watching God

When Janie is about sixteen her grandmother finds her in the act of kissing a boy, and afraid for Janie, she arranges for Janie to be married to Logan Killicks, who is an older man with vast property to his name. Nanny, as Janie calls her, is unable to wrap her mind around the idea of marrying for love and mocks Janie saying, "So you don't want to marry off decent like, do yuh? You just wants to hug and kiss and feel around with first one man and then another, huh?" (Their Eyes Are Watching God, 13). Her grandmothers’ gift of life is different from the life that Janie wants to live. She tells Janie, “De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see.'” (Their Eyes Are Watching God, 11). Nanny doesn’t believe that trying to find love and make a better life for you will succeed, she tells Janie that marrying and older man with land to his name will bring security, and she shouldn’t want more than that. Because of this Janie agrees and goes along with the plan. She is depicted as very compliant and rarely speaks her mind, even saying “But Ah hates disagreement and confusion, so Ah better not talk. It makes it hard tuh git along” (Their Eyes Were Watching God, 90).

When Joe “Jody” Starks appears out of nowhere, Janie feels like her dreams have finally come true. But after a while, the marriage turns out to be little more than the stint with Killicks. Starks, like Killicks, treats her as property and not as someone he actually loves. One example is how Jody makes Janie put her hair up in a wrap while working in the store, rather than leave it down. Another is when he publicly criticizes her appearance, saying she is starting to show her age, when he is clearly at least ten years older: “’ You ain’t no young courtin’ gal. You’se uh old woman, nearly fourty’” (Hurston 79). Joe feels the need to tear down Janie, in order to make himself feel more important, which was an important part of being a man during this time.

Throughout the film Their Eyes Were Watching God there were many different themes in including the young African American woman’s quest for self-discovery beyond the values and expectations set on her by the society that allows neither women nor African Americans to exist without limitations. Any observer of the film can focus on the degradation and strict gender roles that all of the female characters, including the main character Janie were placed in. Women were not only considered weak as a whole but also are completely defined by their relationship to men in their lives. This reason in itself is why marriage plays a large role considering women can only gain a through marriage to powerful or ambitious men.

Janie's prayer is answered with her next husband, Jody Starks. He is the man who fills the voids of loneliness and love, and continues her development as a woman. When they first met, Janie was convinced that Jody believed she was a very special person because of the compliments he gave her. For two weeks, before they married, they talked and Janie believed that Jody "spoke for change and chance" (28). The problem Janie had with Jody was that he did not treat her as equal. He would not let her speak in front of people, teach her to play checkers, or participate in other events. Janie notices the problem early in the relationship and confronts Jody about it when she says "it jus' looks lak it keeps us in some way we ain't natural wid one 'nother. You'se always off talkin' and fixin' things, and Ah feels lak Ah'm jus' markin time. Hope it soon gits over" (43). Janie realizes that she cannot be open with Jody and that he is not the same man she ran off with to marry. Jody has many of his own interests, and none of them are concerned with Janie. "She found out that she had a host of thoughts she had never expressed to him ... She was saving up feelings for some man that she had never seen" (68). Jody only gave material goods to Janie. She knew she

Therefore, both Joe and Janie are looked up to by the townspeople. To some extent, this could be considered a form of equality. Unfortunately, this is about where the equality stops. While Joe gains prominence through his own actions and words, Janie gains some prominence by doing what she is told to do. She is not permitted to voice her own opinions or join in the lighthearted gossiping which occurs outside of their store. Janie is expected to be the dutiful wife. If she makes a mistake, then she should have known better and therefore should accept her punishment quietly. Joe holds the obvious upper hand in the relationship until his death whereupon Janie inherits a large amount of money and learns to enjoy the freedom of living as her own person.

“Their Eyes Were Watching God” had Janie face several conflicts throughout the book, conflicts that relate to the real world and real world human rights issues. “Their Eyes Were Watching God” covers human rights issues such as gender inequality, the right to marry the person you love, the right to be an equal within a marriage, and racism. The novel’s ending, where Janie returns back to Eatonville after having to kill Tea Cake, is surprising, to say the least, and creates a sense of shock and slight confusion within the reader. The resolution of the novel shows that the author intended to show each of the aforementioned human rights issues, and how none of the issues are guaranteed to have a happy ending. Zora Neale Hurston also seems to imply,

Their Eyes Were Watching God is sometimes classified as a feminist novel, but that is not so. Feminism is often associated with men and women being equal without a doubt. This passage establishes a fundamental difference between genders. Chapter six is a prime example of these gender differences. Chapter six shows Joe’s need for control. During an argument between Janie and Joe, Joe states, “Somebody got to think for women and chillun and chickens and cows. I god, they sho don’t think none theirselves” (71). Hurston’s statement here suggests that men during that time period needed to feel superior to

Feminism and gender equality is one of the most important issues of society today, and the debate dates back much farther than Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. To analyze Janie’s existence as a feminist or anti-feminist character requires a potential critic to look at her relationships and her reactions to those relationships throughout the novel. Trudier Harris claims that Janie is “questing after a kind of worship.” This statement is accurate only up until a certain point in her life, until Janie’s “quest” becomes her seeking equality with her partner. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie’s main goal pertaining to her romantic relationships undergoes multiple changes from her original goal of a type of worship to a goal to maintain an equal relationship with her husband.

The book, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is about Janie Crawford and her quest for self-independence and real love. She finds herself in three marriages, one she escapes from, and the other two end tragically. And throughout her journey, she learns a lot about love, and herself. Janie’s three marriages were all different, each one brought her in for a different reason, and each one had something different to teach her, she was forced into marrying Logan Killicks and hated it. So, she left him for Joe Starks who promised to treat her the way a lady should be treated, but he also made her the way he thought a lady should be. After Joe died she found Tea Cake, a romantic man who loved Janie the way she was, and worked hard

All through the novel Janie travels through valuable life experiences allowing her to grow as a woman. Janie at first has a difficult time understanding her needs rather than wants, but as she continues to experience new situations she realizes she values respect. Janie’s first two marriages turned out to be tragic mistakes, but with each marriage Janie gained something valuable. When Janie is disrespected in her second marriage with Joe Starks, he publicly humiliates her, disrespecting her as a wife and woman. This experience forced Janie to come out of her comfort zone and stand up for herself.

Instead of treating Janie like the beautiful woman that she is, he uses her as an object. Joe was a man who “treasured [Janie] as a posession” (Berridge). Joe’s demanding nature suppresses Janie’s urge to grow and develop, thus causing her journey to self-realization to take steps backward rather than forward. In Janie’s opinion, “he needs to “have [his] way all [his] life, trample and mash down and then die ruther than tuh let [him]self heah 'bout it” (Hurston 122). It is almost as if Janie loses sense of her own self-consciousness due to the fact that she becomes like a puppy being told what to do by her master. The death of Jody is actually a positive thing. Joe’s controlling nature stifles Janie’s inner voice. While married to Jody, Janie became closer to others, however, she did not become closer to herself. Being on her own again gave her another chance to embark on her journey and realize who Janie Crawford really is.

In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Lora Neale Hurston, the main character engages in three marriages that lead her towards a development of self. Through each endeavor, Janie learns the truths of life, love, and the path to finding her identity. Though suppressed because of her race and gender, Janie has a strong will to live her life the way she wills. But throughout her life, she encounters many people who attempt to change the way that she is and her beliefs. Each marriage that she undertakes, she finds a new realization and is on a never-ending quest to find her identity and true love. Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and Tea Cake each help Janie progress to womanhood and find her identity.

On December 6, 1894 the short story “The Story of An Hour” was published in the weekly newspaper Vogue. The story features the protagonist, Louise Mallard who discovers her husband is dead. The story was instantly regarded as highly controversial because it went against the standards of the 1890’s and features a female protagonist that feels liberated by the news of her husband's death. Although the idea that women were able to survive without men was a foreign concept at the time, the story resonated with many women. In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie the female protagonist also experiences liberation through the death of her husband and faces the stereotype of women needing men in order to survive. This stereotype along with many other gender roles/stereotypes are present in Their Eyes Were Watching God and requires Janie and the many other characters to either adhere or break free of the gender roles/stereotypes they come across. Some of these gender roles/sterotypes is that women need to be married in order to be seen as decent and woman should remain quiet and not be outspoken or attract attention. Jaine breaks free of the respective gender roles by her unwillingness to conform to man in her relationships and succeeding in breaking many of the conventional gender roles. Other characters like Jody, Logan, and Janie’s grandmother adhere to the gender roles/ stereotypes and enforce them.

Janie, again, finds herself in a loveless marriage. Unlike her first, however, the lack of affection is reciprocal. “Again with Jody [as with Logan], Janie has money and respectability, but Jody's objectification - of her and his demand for her submission stifles any desire

Janie refuses to let this societal constraint deter her from  her dream. "She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie's first dream was dead, so she became a woman" (Page 24).  Janie has acknowledged that at that point in time, her dream was