First Impressions Of Women In Their Eyes Were Watching God

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

Janie went on a long journey to obtain womanhood. Janie grew up living with her grandma, who always wanted her to get married at a young age. Janie eventually did marry Logan Killicks when she was 18 years old. However, she hated living with him. He was described as a shallow, unlovable human being. This was when Janie became a woman because she realized that marriage does not assure love. Janie then married Jody Starks. At first, he seemed like a good person because he offered her a new life, but over time grew worse. Jody would constantly restrict what Janie could do, and would beat her for simple errors. It was not until late in their marriage that Janie finally spoke out to Jody of the way he treated her. Jody would soon die, and Janie

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.

In conclusion, In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston, the audience watches Janie enter a period of self-discovery. When Janie gains this power of freedom, she realizes she craves something different from what society had told her she would want; What we feel inwardly to be true, society seeks to take that truth away. With this experience an internal and external

While she thought Joe Starks would lead her into the life of adventure she so craved, she turned out to have judged Joe’s intentions wrongly. Once Joe established Eatonville, he set Janie to work in the general store like a princess locked inside a tower. Janie wanted to be seen and heard, to speak and be spoken to, but she instead found herself trapped selling groceries. Janie has found herself, and with that, realized that she was more than a wife made to obey Joe’s every word, hence the “jewel” she found within herself. I think it is important in life to re-evaluate our needs and wants like Janie does at this point in the story. We all sometimes find ourselves unhappy with our current situation in life; what’s important is that we identify these emotions and work to improve our lot in

Janie remains relatively demure in her relationship with Killicks until Jody Starks appears. A wealthy, well-dressed man on his way to a small black town he heard about, a little of Janie’s previous naïveté emerges again because of him. She mistakes his spending and kindness for the love she had been seeking, but eventually realizes that he loves her as a reflection of his wealth. Of Janie’s three husbands, he is the one with the most negative effect on her. He defines all the boundaries of her life and expects her to submit to everything he commands. When she defies him and insults him in public, he reacts by shunning her and attempting to hurt her, and because of this she was not free of his “rules” even after his death. “She lived between her hat and her heels, with her emotional disturbances like shade patterns in the woods-- come and gone with the sun. She got nothing from Jody except what money could buy, and she was giving away what she didn’t value”(72).

astray.Through her marriage with Joe Starks Janie gains social standing, with the sacrfice of her

When she runs off with him, he promises to make her feel loved and that she will sit above everyone else. They run off to a run down town called Eatonville. Janie likes it there until Joe starts to abuse her physically and mentally. He keeps Janie away from everyone and won’t let her participate in anything around town except for working at the store because he wants to keep her for himself. He admits that Janie is an amazing cook, but when the food doesn’t get done to his preference Joe, “Slapped Janie until she had a ringing sound in her ears and told her about her brains before he stalked on back to the store” (72).

In the book Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie marries Jody “Joe” Starks. They moved to Eatonville where Joe becomes mayor. As mayor, Joe starts to show Janie off like a trophy to the public but in their personal lives together, Joe tries to prove his dominance over Janie. To the townspeople, Janie was seen higher up the social pyramid, as indicated by a townsperson exclaiming she was “noble,” merely because she's the mayor’s wife.

Janie’s past is what causes her to be oppressed by men who expect her to be submissive; this is shown when Joe doesn’t allow Janie to speak, when Joe orders Janie to do whatever he wants, and when Tea Cake slaps her to be in control. In Janie’s past she has always been able to speak her thoughts, but Joe doesn’t let her speak out of turn because of gender roles. His friends are talking in the store when Janie interrupts them, causing Joe to fire back at Janie, “Janie did what she had never done before, that is, thrust herself into the conversation,‘You gettin’ too moufy, Janie’ Starks told her ‘Go fetch me de checker and de checkers” (Hurston 75).

Janie disregarding the “social standards” of society gives readers a better understanding as to Janie's independence and strength as a woman. Janie's independence and strength didn't come effortlessly for her, it was the encounters along her path through life that in the long run gave her strength. She was hunting down a more profound self satisfaction and flexibility. Along this excursion, she is swept off of her feet by Joe Sparks and abandons her at that point spouse, Logan, to take after Joe and his enormous dreams. Not long after they subside into Eatonville, Joe is soon the

He acted upon these initial feelings and started to communicate with her. Janie Also acted upon her feelings and agreed to start a relationship with this man, even though it might not be filled with “pollen and blooming trees, he spoke for far horizon” (C.4 p. 29). Janie felt as if Joe could satisfy her every need eventually. It just needed time to flourish. Joe started the relationship off by expressing to Janie that she was meant to be almost worshipped and that “she never knowed what it was to be treated like a lady” and he was here to show her what she's been missing out on. This later turns into irony. Joe is elected mayor of a town and becomes this powerful character with too much ego to bare. He starts to ask Janie to run the store that he put up for the people of his town, even though he claimed that a “ pretty doll-baby leak her is made to sit on de front porch and and rock and fan herself and eat p’taters dat other folks plant just for her” (C.4 p.29) so the guy that Janie thought was supposed to be her knight and shining armor, turned out to be her previous love in all the disguise of power and

The novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, explores a young woman’s quest to analyze her relationships by looking deeper than the surface. Characteristics such as wealth and status no longer hold a strong value for Janie by the end of the novel, because the challenges she faces show how these frivolous attributes can strain relationships between people. In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie Crawford embarks on a journey in which she becomes aware that trivial characteristics are temporary and do not justify love, whereas the ability to rely on oneself can withstand even the most intense struggles.

Gender roles, race, and social class are integral parts of the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. Gender roles within the book define the relationships between the male and female characters, while social class and race separate the black characters from the white. The concept that gender roles, social class, and race come together to create power is evident throughout the book. Hurston simulates reality with the idea that gender, social class and race play significant roles in how power is distributed within the book. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston, power over inferior races and social classes, is created through the interplay between the concepts

But soon, Janie begins to find herself shoved into the background by her husband. He is cruel in his criticism and orders her around like a child, and Janie, not wanting to create a fuss or cause a scene, bites her tongue and keeps to herself. For example, when she is offered to make a speech, seeing as she is the new mayor’s wife, Joe interrupts before she can speak and says, “Thank yuh fuh yo’ compliments, but mah wife don't know nothin’ ‘bout no speech makin’...she's uh woman and her place is in de home.” (Chapter 5, page 43) This makes Janie feel uncomfortable, but she forces herself to laugh it off anyway because she couldn't understand why she was feeling so