How Does Janie Change In Their Eyes Were Watching God

Joe Starks, though widely disliked for obvious personality flaws, was key to Janie's development in that he acted as a parental figure. Due to differing desires and expectations, the couple encountered conflict, which ultimately was left unresolved at the time of Joe's death. From this, Janie learned that she can never be happy if she chooses to settle. By applying this lesson to her relationship with Tea Cake, she is able to reflect on her life happily and be at

He thought the only thing she could do was work at home. Tea Cake has a very different idea about women. He thinks that Janie can do anything she wants to do, that she is just as smart as a man and has the capacity to learn and do many more things than what Joe would allow her to do. Throughout their marriage, Janie seems to have taken Joe’s ideas to heart and believes them herself. Tea Cake rejects these ideas and helps Janie begin to feel confident in herself and forget what Joe made her

     As two different people, Janie and Tea Cake are allowed to live their lives as equals. When living with Joe, Janie is never allowed to do things such as speaking her mind, playing games, or doing anything which is not completely ladylike. Tea Cake encourages her to do things which were previously not open to her, such as playing chess, speaking openly about her feelings, and hunting. He teaches Janie to shoot and hunt wild game.

She was perched by the gate “when the pollen glided the sun and sifted down on the world [... she expected] things” (25) to happen but then she learns another perspective in which the seeds were communicating with one another as they passed. This was “Janie’s first dream [dead and] became a woman”

Near the beginning of the book, Janie develops an idealistic view of love whilst lying underneath a pear tree. She is young and naïve, enthralled with the beauty of spring. She comes to the conclusion that marriage is the ultimate expression of love and finds herself pondering why she does not have a partner. In the rashness of her hormone clouded brain, she is drawn to Johnny Taylor, who is nearly a stranger. This is her first experience formulating ideas about

Even before Joe’s death, Janie “was saving up feelings for some man she had never seen. She had an inside and an outside now and suddenly she knew not how to mix them.”(75) Joe’s influences controlled Janie to the point where she lost her independence and hope. She no longer knew how to adapt to the change brought upon her. When she finally settles and begins to gain back that independence, the outward existence of society came back into play. “Uh woman by herself is uh pitiful thing. Dey needs aid and assistance.”(90) Except this time Janie acted upon her own judgment and fell for someone out of the ordinary. Tea Cake was a refreshing change for Janie, despite the society’s disapproval. “Janie looked down on him and felt a self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from its hiding place.”(128) This was what she had always dreamt of. When she was with Tea Cake, she no longer questioned inwardly, she simply rejected society’s opinions and acted upon her own desires.

Their Eyes Were Watching God is a story about a black woman in the 1930s, Janie’s, quest for real and fulfilling love and freedom. The story begins when her grandmother, Nanny, catches her kissing a boy she doesn’t approve of. Nanny is a former slave who is raising Janie as her own daughter, Janie’s mother, was raped at seventeen, began drinking, and ran away. Countless hardships were faced by Nanny and she was denied opportunities, like marriage, in order to care for Janie and her mother. Therefore, she pressures Janie to marry Logan Killicks before she dies of old age. Despite not wanting to take part in it, Janie obeys, and learns that marriage doesn’t create love as she had thought.

Tea Cake performs the old courtship rituals, indulges in shooting and razor fighting, and plays the dozens and the blues. Compared with Killicks and Starks, former husbands of Janie, Tea Cake prefers interaction and people to ‘things’: “So us goin’ off somewhere and start all in Tea Cake’s way. Dis ain’t no business proposition, and no race after property and titles. Dis is uh love game” (134). In this pastoral setting, Janie regains her voice to tell narratives. Janie feels free to join the notorious ‘lying’ and tale-telling sessions whenever she wants to: “She got so, she could tell big stories herself from listening to the rest” (158). Yet, even with Tea Cake, she has to face intermittent crises and physical aggression. S. Jay Walker has

In The Novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie does find herself at the end of the novel. Zora Neale Hurston displays this perfectly, with all the conflicts and struggles going on she finds her way to her true voice. All the husbands she has gone through, and what she has experienced. Hurston effectively shows Janie’s victory over oppression throughout the book. She has allowed to use her language as power, and use that power to grow into what she is at the end of the book. This movement allows her the opportunity to explore and form her ideas and voice in solitude. These external variables cause her to look inward and not depend on others as a source of survival. When she finally comes to terms with her influence, she stops fleeing. She

Tea Cake was Janie's third husband.  He was a simple person who returned kindness for kindness.  He saw women as equal human beings and told them that.  He was very passive in thought, but smart in his own ways.  His desire in life was to love and be loved.

Janie's quest is for self-discovery and self-definition, but she encounters many obstacles while trying to win this quest.

The story ‘their eyes were watching god’ is about Janie Crawford and her search for love in a world where women were denied everything including love and their voice. She is portrayed as a heroine, who undergoes through many disappointments in search of unconditional and fulfilling love. Moreover, she is a heroine following her desire to gain autonomy in a gender biased society. The novel also talks about the different types of love that Janie has experienced and how this has shaped her life as an independent woman. A lot of literary devices, including symbolism, the view of the narrator, and imagery are used to create a picture of Janie and her circumstances. Analysis of the book provides a picture of how women today struggle in search of true love amidst a distrustful society and the delicate balance between

One of the things Janie learns during this relationship is that she is just as important to society as everyone else. While she was married to Joe (Jody) she wasn’t allowed to participate in public events or have conversations with the guys at the store. This changed when she developed a relationship with Tea Cake. He taught her all the things Jody wouldn’t allow her to do like checkers and how to shoot a gun. “ … He set it [checkers] up and began to show her and she found herself glowing inside.” (Hurston, 95-96). Janie was not only allowed but encouraged to participate in conversations with everybody. Tea Cake listened to her views

This possible because Tea Cake did not seem to have any predetermined views about gender roles between a man and his wife, and he even encouraged Janie to try new things. In this chapter, Janie assumed the roles of both the male and female gender. Tea Cake did not control her gender roles and appreciated what she did for him through whatever roles she played. This dual gender role playing by Janie could clearly be seen as stated in this chapter, “Sometimes she’d straighten out the two-room house and take the rifle and have fried rabbit for supper when Tea Cake got home. She didn’t leave him itching and scratching in his clothes, either” (132). Janie was allowed to hunt, a role traditionally played by the male, and she still cleaned his clothes and had dinner ready for him after his work, which were activities traditionally done by women. Janie even went to do manual labor out in the fields with her husband, because he told her that he missed her. This was in contrast to her earlier preconception of what she thought her gender roles ought to be, as can be seen in her failed marriage with Logan Killicks in the preceding chapters. Tea Cake sometimes even played the female gender role by helping with dinner as can be seen by

In the story “Their Eyes were watching God” Janie establishes her own independence of the death of Joe, as she decides to takes off her head rags and burn them all as she wore her long thick braid. Nevertheless, Janie fines herself interested in Tea Cake because she feels she can talk and laugh with him and enjoy life . What Tea Cake had to offer Janie was her freedom to be herself and to have her own identity. However, people in town begin to gossip because they were upset and thought it was too soon after Joe’s death for the mayor’s wife to spend her time hanging out with Tea Cake. Furthermore, the significance of the statement “So us is goin off somewhere and start all over in Tea Cake way”. “Dis ain't no business proposition, and no race