Gender Roles In Their Eyes Were Watching God

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston in 1937 was written during the time of the Harlem Renaissance, also known as the New Negro Movement. The New Negro Movement came about as a rejection of the racial segregation between blacks and whites. The black women felt this effect of racism more acutely than the black man. For centuries, Black women have been called the “mule of the world” and had been giving the status of inferior to white and the black man. Their Eyes Were Watching God encloses many elements of both racism and sexism. It is a story set in central and southern Florida. It follows the novels protagonist Janie in her search for self-awareness as she goes through three marriages. Elizabeth A. Meese has argued that one of

During the 1900’s, women, specifically black women, were considered to be property of men in the United States, especially down south, in states such as Florida and Georgia. Legally, women had no voice. For example, if a woman was abused by her husband, the court system would not acknowledge it even if it did really happen. In the article “Sexism in the Early 1900’s”, Becca Woltemath states that “…a woman’s job is to take care of the house and to bear children. She’s no good for anything else. She’s just a simple thinker.” Women were forced into submission and there was nothing they could do about it. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston shows the

Despite cultural pressures, individuals will instead follow their own moral compass. Their Eyes were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, follows Janie’s path of self-discovery. When she in a relationship with her second husband, she is given the label of a “skank”, someone who goes around to several men instead of settling down. The novel took place in the late 1930’s in the South, the time was a male-dominated society and stereotypes of women limited the options of a female’s future. Janie has been placed under the category of being a bad person because the community, her husband, and family’s ethics clash with her own morals. Janie reflects to her friend Phoebe on how her grandmother restricted her future by forcing her first marriage: “...had

Zora Neale Hurston is considered one of the most unsurpassed writers of twentieth-century African-American literature. Published in 1937, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God depicts the life of Janie Crawford, an African-American woman, who is in search of true love and ultimately her true self. In the novel, Janie shows us that love comes in all shapes and forms, and love is different with each person you choose to love. In the opening of the novel, Hurston uses a metaphor to say that, while men can never reach for their dreams, women can direct their wills and chase their dreams. Hurston uses this metaphor to make a distinction of men and women gender roles, and Janie went against the norms that were expected of her.

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.

In Zora Neale Hurston’s romantic novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the heroine Janie, a beautiful mixed white and black woman, is on a journey to find someone who will make her feel love to find her own identity and freedom, away from her spouses. Janie’s marriages and quest for love impede her individual search for freedom, but in doing this she has discovered what exactly she wants for herself. Janie’s search for her identity and freedom is very much evident. Being abused and controlled during her marriages has made it clear how she wants to be treated and how she wants to live her life; as an individual who does not have to listen to anyone. The story opens with Janie’s return to town. Janie tells Phoebe Watson the story of her

Susan B. Anthony once said there is not a women born who desires to eat the bread of dependence. In the novel Their eyes were watching god by Zora Neal Hurston, Janie Crawford depicts the life of a young African women who struggles with male dominance. As well for Mrs. Mallard in The story of an hour by Kate Chopin. Both of these women become independent, share experiences with male dominance and share an appealing perspective toward nature. They also have distinctive outcomes in their lives. Janie and Mrs. Mallard share similarities in their lives and distinctions as well.

In Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), Janie has three total husbands-- Joe, Logan, and Tea Cake. Janie is searching for a marriage filled with love, not a just marriage arranged in order to please her grandmother. She desires independence and to be equal to her partner, and Tea Cake, her last husband, shows her that the most out of all of them. Although she experiences a higher respect and equality with Tea Cake, he is still the lesser of the evils, so to say. The novel is impacted as whole by Tea Cake’s character, and reveals the deep rooted misogyny in society at the time.

In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, a young woman travels through difficult life experiences in order to find herself. Hurston portrays the protagonist as an adventurous soul trapped in the binds of suppressing marriages. Janie experiences three different types of marriage learning from each one what she values most. From these marriages she learned she values love and respect, finally achieving them in her last marriage. Each new marriage brought something new to the table for Janie and no matter the situation or the outcome of the relationship Janie grew into her own independent individual because of it.

In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, she sets the protagonist, Janie Mae Crawford as a woman who wants to find true love and who is struggling to find her identity. To find her identity and true love it takes her three marriages to go through. While being married to three different men who each have different philosophies, Janie comes to understand that she is developed into a strong woman. Hurston makes each idea through each man’s view of Janie, and their relationship with the society. The lifestyle with little hope of or reason to hope for improvement. He holds a sizeable amount of land, but the couple's life involves little interaction with anyone else.

In the book Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Tea Cake is killed by Janie, which shows, at the end of the book, that Janie is a strong, independent woman who can make the choice to choose herself over a damaged Tea Cake, despite her love for him. Also, during the trial, which wouldn’t have been possible if he had died from natural causes, Janie is accepted by white people, which is an instance of irony with regard to racism. Additionally, Hurston appears to be very pro-women, and allowing Janie to kill Tea Cake is her way of showing sexism does not dictate her anymore. The author chose Tea Cake’s fate to show Janie has arrived at a place where her own self expression and independence can coexist, and ultimately, be put above love in a novel where a primary theme revolves around her attempting to find her independence.

Throughout a fair part of Zora Neal Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie’s low class create problems when it comes to men. She lives with men she does not love because they give her the financial stability she cannot have yet on her own. Janie marries Logan Killicks at a young age even though she does not want to

Their Eyes Were Watching God was a book that presented the world with a new look on writing novels. Zora Neale Hurston’s experience in what she has seen through research was embodies in this novel. She demonstrates what data she has collected and intertwined it into the culture within the novel. While being a folklorist/anthropologist, and inspired by her life experiences, she developed a character who dealt with the issues that were not yet uncovered, female empowerment was one of them. Zora Neale Hurston defined this topic of female empowerment throughout the character Janie in Their Eyes Were Watching God.

“Their eyes were watching god” a novel that looked how societies view on women, written by Zora Neale Hurston, portrays a society where “nigger women” are considered a “mule”. Throughout the novel, the protagonist, Janie Crawford, strives to find her own voice but struggle to find it because of the expectation in the African American community. Each one of her husbands play a big role in her life long search for independence and her own voice.

This paper is discusses on the novel Zora Neale Hurston in the light of Patriarchy. The protagonist of the novel, Janie is taken for analysis. This paper also involves in delineating characteristics traits of the male characters in the novels. Further, the paper studies the treatment that is meted out to the protagonist at the hands of men in the selected novel. The paper studies the novel in terms of the violence, subjugation and oppression that the male characters pose to the protagonist in the novel. The paper discusses on the various levels of suppression that Janie undergoes at the hands of the people who are highly patriarchal in mind set. Further, this paper details on how the protagonist stands as a model to shun suppression at the