Janie's Life As A Slave Analysis

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 longed] to be a pear tree - any tree in bloom! With kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world! She had glossy leaves and bursting buds and she... [was] waiting for the world to be made" (11). Janie, feeling herself opening like the petals of a flower, yearns to delve into the unfamiliar - to find the sweet marriage represented by the bees and blossoms.

(Hurston 11). Janie’s grandmother, Nanny, disliked Janie’s new thoughts. So, Nanny found Janie a husband, she believed would keep Janie safe. The husband to be was an older man that went by the name of Logan Killicks. Shortly after the marriage, Nanny starts to become ill.

Nanny tried to live the life she initially craved through Janie, conversely, this caused Janie to hate her. Nanny and her daughter were both raped by their masters, so she is determined to ensure that does not happen to her granddaughter as well. When Nanny talks to Janie about her birth, she says “Ah said thank God, Ah got another chance” (Hurston 16). She thanks God as though Janie is simply her gift to have an another chance for raising a daughter. The view of Janie as a second chance causes her to be controlling. She wishes for everything to be right for Janie and does not want to mess up again, comparable to when she unable to prevent her daughter from being raped by her master. When Nanny finds Janie kissing a boy in the yard, she demands that Janie is now a woman and must get married. Nanny forces her to marry Logan Killicks, although she does not love him. Nanny insists “’Tain’t Logan Killicks Ah wants you to have, baby, it’s protection” (15). This demonstrates Nanny’s protective instincts towards Janie as well as her controlling nature. Although Janie clearly does not love Logan, Nanny forces her to marry him, simply because it is what she [Nanny] wants. Marriage should be something desirable for both people, however in Janie’s case, it is simply due to Nanny’s dominance over Janie. In addition, Nanny also states that she wished to preach her

Nanny controls Janie’s love life, her first marriage with Logan at least, because of her experiences with slavery in the past. Her purpose is to have readers acknowledge Janie’s background and take that into consideration when the setting fades into the town in Florida with Joe as the mayor. Janie does show minimal resistance against the marriage between her and Logan because she does not yet have the experience of what love is supposed to be like and “asked inside of [herself] and out” (25). By not just superficially contemplating the idea if “marriage [ended] the cosmic loneliness of the unmated” or if “marriage compel love like the sun the day”, the concept of love and marriage is something that deeply troubles Janie. The pear tree symbolizes sexuality and it functions as a catalyst for Janie’s curiosity regarding what love is. With the imagery of the pear tree and the bee, it shows that love to Janie is interpersonal for the most part. However, this interpretation Janie has from seeing the pear tree and the bee changes as the novel progresses. At this point in the novel with Nanny attempting to inflict her own values and mentality onto Janie, Janie is viewed as the mule at the moment because Nanny is brought up in the slavery time period with patriarchal system to run their society and the ideas of women being independent and having their own voice are just

At the same time, however, Janie begins to confuse this desire with romance. Despite the fact that nature’s “love embrace” leaves her feeling “limp and languid,” she pursues the first thing she sees that appears to satisfy her desire: a young man named Johnny Taylor (Hurston 11). Leaning over the gate’s threshold to kiss Johnny, Janie takes the first step toward her newfound horizon. Nanny sees this kiss and declares Janie’s womanhood. She wants Janie to marry Logan Killicks, a financially secure and well-respected farmer who can protect her from corruption. The marriage of convenience that Nanny suggests is “desecrating … [Janie’s] pear tree” because it contradicts her ideal vision of love (Hurston 14). Because she did not have the strength to fight people in her youth, Janie’s grandmother believes that Janie needs to rely on a husband in order to stay safe and reach liberation. Ironically, Janie’s adherence to Nanny’s last request suppresses her even more because it causes her to leave behind her own horizon.

     The plan for Janie’s future begins with her lack of having real parents. Hurston builds up a foundation for Janie that is bound to fall like a Roman Empire. Janie’s grandmother, whom she refers to as “Nanny” takes the position as Janie’s guardian. The problem begins here for Janie because her Nanny not only spoils her, but also makes life choices for her. Nanny is old, and she only wants the best for her grandchild, for she knows that the world is a cruel place. Nanny makes the mistake of not allowing Janie to learn anything on her own. When Janie was sixteen years old, Nanny wanted to see her get married. Although Janie argued at first, Nanny insisted that Janie get married. “’Yeah, Janie, youse got yo’ womanhood on yuh… Ah wants to see you married right away.’” (Page 12). Janie was not given a choice in this decision. Her Nanny even had a suitor picked out for her. Janie told herself that she would try to make the best of the situation and attempt to find love in her marriage to Logan Killicks. But, as time went by, Janie realized that she still did not have any feelings of what she had considered to be love in her husband.

 It is Janie’s relationship with Nanny that first suppresses her self-growth.  Janie has an immense level of respect towards Nanny, who has raised Janie since her mother ran off.  The respect Janie has for her grandmother is deeper than the respect demanded by tradition, from a child toward his caretaker, probably because

Nanny’s idea of a marriage is “a haven from indiscriminate sexual exploitation and as a shelter from financial instability” (Jordan). Janie’s marriage to her first husband, Logan Killicks, is an unexpected grief and he disgusts her sexually. She tries to love him but their relationship lacks intimacy, romance, and fun. Throughout the novel, Janie is on a mission and she soon finds out “that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman” (24). Killicks think Janie is spoiled and “counts Janie among the livestock on his farm, estimating her value by her ability to produce greater surplus value” (Ha 33). It is when Janie realizes Killicks plans to put her to work on a mule because she does not bore him any heir that she runs off with Joe Starks.

Logan simply amplifies the negative effect Nanny has on Janie. Rather than showing affection or love towards Janie, as a husband should, Logan is constantly passing judgment on Janie, and mistreating her. He accuses Janie of having an entitled attitude, and says to Janie, “You think youse white folks by de way you act…Ah’m too honest and hard-workin’ for anybody in yo’ family.” (Hurston 32) Not only does Logan insult Janie and her family, but he provides no compassion towards Janie, nor encouragement for her to try to become a better person. In her relationship with Logan Killicks, Janie is constantly unappreciated and looked down upon. Rather than being offered constructive criticism, she is constantly surrounded by negativity and recognition of her faults rather than her strong points, thus preventing her from developing into a better person or finding happiness.

Nanny makes Janie believe that marriage makes love and forces her to wed a much older man, Logan Killicks. Jones believes that Janie?s first efforts at marriage show her as an ?enslaved and semi-literate? figure restrained to Nanny?s traditional beliefs about money, happiness and love (372). Unfortunately Janie?s dream of escasty does not involve Killicks. Her first dream is dead. Janie utters, ?Ah wants things sweet wid mah marriage lak when you sit under a pear tree and think? (Hurston 23). Logan began to slap Janie for control over

In the novel, Janie is faced with many obstacles and trials, the greatest of which are her marriages to Logan and Jody. Janie’s grandmother, Nanny, is on her own journey to make sure that she sees her granddaughter married.

While Janie yearns for “idyllic union” and emotional fulfillment, Nanny maintains the “prevailing sexual and racial milieu” by arranging her marriage with wealthy landowner Logan Killicks (Meese 264). Hurston purposefully compares Janie’s progressive ideals to those of feminists who were coined as “New Women” who sought marriages based on equality. She directly relates this contrast in beliefs to feminist’s dreams of and efforts towards success and equality through female autonomy rather than material wealth and security under a man’s control. Furthermore, as Janie settles in her second marriage with Jody Starks, she becomes increasingly dissatisfied. Janie’s feelings of confinement and entrapment steadily rise as Jody orders her to remain introverted and shuttle between the general store and home (Moss and Wilson 3). He forces Janie to play the role of a beautiful and submissive wife and “does not allow her to articulate her feelings or ideas [although she] longs to participate in everyday town life” (Moss and Wilson 3). Accordingly, Hurston scorns Jody for believing “She’s uh woman and her place is in de home” (43) and utilizes his chauvinistic outlook to promote women to establish importance outside of homemaking and caregiving. Hurston’s proposal directly reflects and supports Catharine Beecher’s influential efforts to “reconcile women to the limitations of the domestic sphere” (Cott 40) and expand women’s ability to excel in a multitude of different

Janie's grandmother was one of the most important influences in her life, raising her since from an infant and passing on her dreams to Janie. Janie's mother ran away from home soon after Janie was born. With her father also gone, the task of raising Janie fell to her grandmother, Nanny. Nanny tells Janie "Fact uh de matter, Ah loves yuh a whole heap more'n Ah do yo' mama, de one Ah did birth" (Hurston 31). Nanny's dream is for Janie to attain a position of security in society, "high ground" as she puts it (32). As the person who raised her, Nanny feels that it is both her right and obligation to impose her dreams and her ideas of what is important in life on Janie. The strong relationship between mother and child is important in the African-American community, and the conflict between Janie's idyllic view of marriage and Nanny's wish for her to marry for stability and position is a good illustration of just how deep the respect and trust runs. Janie has a very romantic notion of what marriage should be. "She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace . . . so this was a marriage," is how the narrator describes it (24). Nanny's idea of a good marriage is someone who has some standing in the community, someone who will get Janie to that higher ground. Nanny wants Janie to marry Logan Killicks, but according to her "he look like some ole

When Janie is young, she looks for nothing more than love in a relationship. Janie’s grandmother, Nanny, catches her kissing Johnny Taylor across the gatepost. The kiss outrages Nanny and she then arranges a marriage between Janie and Logan Killicks. Janie expresses her grief and Nanny responds with, “Better leave things de way dey is. Youse young yet. No tellin’ whut mout happen befo’ you die. Wait awhile, baby. Yo’ mind will change” (Hurston 24). Janie wants love more than anything in a marriage, Nanny claims that it is best to marry for security and love will come later. It is because of Nanny’s influence that led Janie to marry Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and