Janie's Influence On Women

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).

She ended up living a life full of manipulation and mediocrity. While living with Joe, she had to tend to many different tasks as his wife.  She wasn't independent with him either.  She was Joe's tag-a-long.  'She went through many silent rebellions over things like that.  Such a waste of life and time.  But Joe kept saying that she could do it if she wanted to and he wanted her to use her privileges.  That was the rock she was battered against.' (Hurston, 51)  Janie always had to wear her hair a certain way, always up in a head rag, in order not to attract attention to other men and women. She was always in a state of loneliness with herself.  While married to Janie, he would not allow her to attend the people's gatherings believing that she does not belong to such a group of lower class people.  Joe was depriving Janie of her independence and sanity.  "Naw, Ah ain't no young gal no mo' but den Ah ain't no old woman either.  Ah reckon Ah looks mah age too.  But Ah'm us woman every inch of me, and Ah know it.  Dat's uh whole lot more'n you kin say.  You big-bellies round here and put out a lot of brag, but 'tain't nothin' to it but yo' big voice.  Humph!  Talkin' 'bout me lookin' old!  When you pull down yo' britches, you look lak de change uh life." (Hurston, 75)  This quote spoken by Janie proves that she was getting sick and tired of being pushed around by Joe and his stuck-up ways.  This was a slow

Hurston harnesses juxtaposition to distinguish between the situations of white folk and black folk experiences, as the differences between the two display Janie’s personal growth even more. After the failures between Logan and Janie’s marriage, Janie was ready to embark on new adventures independently. Janie now realizes she wants to find true love instead a forced love that follows how her grandmother’s outdated beliefs. When Janie was free of her abuser, the transition in her life was expressed by, “She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie's first dream was dead, so she became a woman,” indicating the mental development of maturity in Janie (25).

Joe constantly felt the need to make Janie feel horrible about herself. He would take control of everything she would do and Janie couldn’t do anything but feel sad. Hurston says, “The years took all the fight out of Janie’s face. For a while she thought it was gone from her soul. No matter what Jody did she said nothing” Saying nothing showed her husband that she let this mistreatment happen to her without speaking up for her rights. Being gone from her sole shows that Janie didn’t even know who she was anymore because she couldn’t even make simple choices for herself. This becomes a problem because Janie couldn’t even find happiness in her relationship, which is far from self-actualizing. These two quotes both show Janie’s passivity through silence and the feeling of worthlessness. This may be an example from Janie’s life, but this became a problem for many women whose husbands follow gender hierarchies to feel like they have more power over their wife. Society always views men to have more power and to be a more powerful figure than women which causes uncomfort in relationships. This strive of power stops people from reaching self-actualization because they are always looking for others to be better than instead of looking to reach their fullest potential. Reaching self-actualization is a big goal for many people because you

Janie’s Grandma plays an important outward influence from the very beginning. Her perspective on life was based off of her experience as a slave. “Ah was born back due in slavery so it wasn’t for me to fulfill my dreams of whut a woman oughta be and to do.” (16) She felt that financial security,

Throughout the whole novel, there was a plentiful number of scenes where the community and Janie are having fun. One scene that I thought of particularly, is when it was night time at the Muck and the Everglades were filled with wild energy and while the bars explodes with music and partying. Then Tea Cake’s house becomes a center of the community, a place where people can hang out and hear Tea Cake play his music. At first, Janie stays at home and cook’s meals, soon after Tea Cake gets lonely and begins cutting from work to see Janie at the house. Janie then decides to join him at work so they can be together the rest of the day. Working in her overalls and sitting on the cabin stoop with the other migrant workers, then Janie laughs to herself

It’s quite common for an individual to undergo an internal and external battle within ones self. Outwardly, many people plaster on a facade to conceal an unpleasant or discreditable reality, while inevitably suppressing those feelings inwardly. In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston uses symbolism and metaphors to convey the complexity of Janie’s experience.

This excerpt establishes the existence of the inferior status of women in this society, a status which Janie must somehow overcome in order to emerge a heroine. This societal constraint does not deter Janie from attaining her dream. "She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie's first dream was dead, so she became a woman" (Their Eyes 24).

Janie is a black woman who asserts herself beyond expectation.  She has a persistence that characterizes her search for the love that she dreamed of since she was a girl.  Janie understands the societal status that her life has handed her, yet she is determined to overcome this, and she is resentful toward anyone or anything that interferes with her quest for happiness. "So de white man throw down de load and tell de nigger man tuh pick it up. He pick it up because he have to, but he don't tote it. He hand it to his womenfolks. De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see, "(Page 14)  laments Janie's grandmother as she tried to justify the marriage that she has arranged for her granddaughter with Logan Killicks. This paragraph establishes the existence of the inferior status of women in Janie's society, a status which Janie must somehow overcome in order to emerge a heroine in the end of the novel.

Hurston used imagery to characterize and distinguish between men and women in. She compares the dreams of men to ships. She says "Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time." She then goes on to say “Now, women forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly. She believes men and women dream differently. Men set their sights on things they will most likely never accomplish. If they fail, they pack their bags and forget about it, they don't keep striving to achieve it. Women on the other hand have their sights set on dreams that are realistic and they don't just wait for their ship to dock, they "act and do things accordingly". This idea is represented with all three relationships Janie has in the novel. First she marries Logan, with the hope that her dreams of love and prosperity can be fulfilled. Unfortunately this did not work. Then Janine marries Joe Starks, but feels no real love for him. Then Janne meets Tea Cake. He fulfills her dream of love, and is the only person that makes that dream come true for her.

Janie was always viewed as a trophy by Joe, one to be polished and placed on a pedestal and never to be touched by others’ grubby hands. His treatment of her left Janie isolated and bored. While Janie doesn’t directly criticize people of the upper classes, she hated being idle herself and wants to be of some use, implying that high class idleness is essentially a waste. Since none of those educated ladies probably know what they’re sitting around for either, the upper-class women must not be utilizing themselves in any productive

6. Janie diverge from the assumptions that underlie men’s attitude towards women as she is not fully submissive towards her husbands. When Logan becomes infuriated with her, she does not give in and work to please him. Instead, she breaks from what is expected from her and “hurried out the front gate and turns south” (32), leaving him. She tells her Nanny “Ah wants to want him sometimes.

He profusely apologizes to her and to show that he would never do it again, he saves her from being bit by a rabid dog. In the process the dog bit him and he fell ill. Many weeks had passed and symptoms started to show. Janie would confront him about this but he would brush it off so that she wouldn't worry and feel guilty. But because of this, the injury had gotten so bad that he was deteriorating mentally and that would slowly start to scare Janie. He felt more paranoid and because of this he started sleeping with a rifle, and accusing Janie of things she promised she would never do, like committing adultery. Because of this, he tried to kill her but she got the willpower to save her own life and shoot him instead. In that moment, she truly

In the past, women have been sentenced to a life of silence and obedience, but resilient in their efforts to find equality. Once they saw how unequal they were to their male counterparts, they were so unwavering in their attempts that everyone had no choice but to acknowledge women’s mistreatment. Janie Crawford, from Zora Hurston’s Their Eyes were Watching God, is a prime example of how women actively began to start seeing themselves as independent and changing the way society sees them. Janie is brought up to view women and herself to be lesser than men but when she grows older and is able to decide things for herself, she sees how unfair and wrong that is. It may take her a while before she able able to fully free herself, but she knows

Referring to our characters we can point Nanny, when she was born she did it into slavery and all she wanted to have was a good and protected life, and she wanted the same thing for Janie, but as humans we make mistakes and hers was being so strict with Janie that by being it she didn’t realize that she was taking her freedom away. We can find this in the following quote “She slapped the girl’s face violently and forced her head back so that their eyes met in struggle. With her hand uplifted for the second blow, she saw the huge tear that had welled up from Janie’s heart and stood in each eye”. I chose this quote because it shows how Janie’s grandmother was trying to “educate” or maybe “punish” Jane to make her stronger in the type of society of that time.