Neither a Mule nor a Queen

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).

In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie has allowed us to better understand the restraints that women in society had to deal with in a male dominated society. Her marriage with Logan Killicks consisted of dull, daily routines.  Wedding herself to Joe Starks brought her closer to others, than to herself.  In her final marriage to Vergible Woods, also known as Tea Cake, she finally learned how to live her life on her own.  In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie suffered through many difficult situations that eventually enabled her to grow into an independent person.

Janie's marriage to Logan Killicks was the first stage in her growth as a woman. She hoped that her obligatory marriage with Logan would

After seeing Janie kiss Johnny Taylor under a romantic pear tree, Janie’s Nanny insists on her to wed an old man named Logan. This is where the battle begins. Should Janie be submissive to Nanny and marry Logan, or should she let her self-reliance win and stay away from marriage? She definitely shows signs of wanting her self-reliance to win by stating, “Naw, Nanny… Ah ain’t no real ‘oman yet” (Hurston 12). With all her might, Janie is trying to refuse Nanny’s offer by pleading that she is not matured enough yet, displaying how she desires to be self-reliant. However, Nanny counters this by replying, “T’aint Logan Killicks Ah wants you to have, baby, it’s protection” (Hurston 15). As a child, Nanny instills this idea that Janie, without a doubt, needs a man by her side to give her safety and stability. In other words, Nanny wants Janie to be submissive to men because her time is almost up. Janie ends up following her dear Nanny and marries Logan, even though she was previously reluctant to do so. Submissiveness wins this first round of this battle. With Logan, Janie finds out that marriage does not necessarily equate to love. She tries her hardest bowing down to every command of Logan in hopes that doing so will make them love one another, but it simply is not possible; although it is true that Janie is granted a stable lifestyle with Logan, she is also

To begin with, Janie’s first marriage is to Logan Killicks. She meets him through her grandmother and is basically forced to marry him. In the novel, Janie complains to her grandmother “Cause you [Grandmother] told me Ah mus gointer love him,and, and Ah don’t” (Their Eyes were Watching God 23). This quote demonstrates how Janie feels throughout her marriage to Logan. He treats her like a labor mule and complains that she is too lazy to do anything. From her first marriage, she learns that she has to be with a man she

Janie, like Esperanza of House on Mango Street, matures through her journey through the novel. However, unlike Esperanza, matured more mentally and emotionally than she did physically. Janie’s most important lessons that she learned was the ones involved with love. When she was on the brink of feeling sexual desires, she started kissing a young man at the end of her gate, but her Grandmother (who raised her) resented the idea of her granddaughter would marry a statusless man with no wealth. Consequently, she demanded that Janie would marry a wealthy farm/land owner named Logan Killucks. Janie was repulsed when confronted with this idea because Logan was an older man and was simply unattractive, but she eventually bought the myth that marriage would lead to love between the two of them. This couldn’t be farther from the truth, and she ended up resenting him even more once they were married due to his unhygienic nature, his desire of her working on his land with him, and lack of affection. Her experience taught the first lesson on her life journey and “She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman” (Hurston Ch. 3). In addition, her marriage to Mr. Killucks influenced her to run of with a charming man named

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).

Another factor which strongly affects Janie and Delia’s search for independence is their gender. With her first marriage, Janie is forced into the submissive, passive role in their union. Because of her gender, she does not get to choose her husband. Rather, he chooses her and Nanny encourages her to go along with his desires. She feels no love in their marriage, but partly because she is a woman she does not have much control to change her situation. “She knew that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman” (Hurston 25). If Janie were a man, her options for marriage would be greater and therefore more likely to lead to a relationship that would fulfill her dream of finding love. This dream is ultimately what leads her to run away with Jody, who eventually begins to assert dominance over Janie, justifying his actions by saying, “Somebody got to think for women and chillun and chickens and cows. I god, they sho don’t think none themselves” (71). Jody lumps Janie in with kids and animals because of her gender, using this as an excuse to oppress her, which therefore leads to her being kept from reaching independence. It is impossible to be independent when another adult is treating you as if you were a child. Both of her first husbands do this to Janie, as Jennifer Jordan discusses in her article, “Feminist Fantasies: Zora Neale Hurston 's Their Eyes Were Watching

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.

At first, Janie thought that loving someone meant you were married to them. Janie believed that she would love Logan because they were married as that was what Nanny had told her. In the few days before she would be with Killicks, Janie thought “Yes, she would love Logan after they were married… Husbands and wives always loved each other” (Hurston 21). Since Nanny had always told her that a marriage would make her happy, that’s what Janie thought. She had no feelings towards Logan, yet she held on to the hope that they appear once they were husband and wife.

Love may blind some but for others it opens eyes. In the book Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Kneale Hurston, the main character Janie, lives an arduous life of trying to find what love really is. Throughout her three marriages, Janie develops into a strong woman due to her own ignorance, being submissive, and love.

Janie's immaturity is displayed in her relationship with Logan Killicks. She primarily believes that marriage breeds love not vice-versa. “Husbands and wives always loved each other, and that was what marriage meant” (20). Janie was not exposed to a functional marriage as a child. Because she lacks a secondhand account of love, she is left with childish perceptions.

Janie does not find the love she longs for in her arranged marriage to the farmer, Logan Killicks, and is treated poorly as the relationship progresses. Initially, she clings to the hope that she will eventually love Logan, and confronts her Nanny when she realizes she does not have the feelings she longed for. Although her relationship with Logan does not fit Janie’s idea of romance, her initial complaints about the marriage are a bit shallow—mostly concerned with Logan’s age and appearance. Eventually, Logan’s weak attempts at romance and validation of Janie wear off: “Long before the year was up, Janie noticed that her husband had stopped talking in rhymes to her. He had ceased to wonder at her long black hair and finger it. Six months back he had told her, ‘[...]You done been spoilt rotten’” (26). At this point in her marriage with Logan, Janie is expected to work alongside him. Logan expresses his frustration at Janie’s inability to pull her own weight in their marriage. Moreover, Logan no longer compliments Janie, and her physical beauty ceases to captivate him in the same way it did before. From

Her first experience of marriage was with a man named Logan, this marriage was forced upon her by her grandma. Before they were about to get married Janie tried to convince herself that she will love Logan after she gets married to him and would end her loneliness because that was what people told her. When they arrived at Logan’s house Janie was wishing for it to glorious but ended up feeling the complete opposite. “But anyway Janie went on inside to wait for love to begin.” (Hurston 38) Two months later Janie is getting worried and frustrated because she isn’t falling in love with Logan. When she went to her Nannies one evening she had brought up that she wasn’t happy with Logan and asked if there was a way she could fall in love with him. Janie’s Nannie views marriage a different way as Janie does, as Janie views marriage as paradise, her nannie views it as having property, protection, and having a status as a married women. So, her nannie told her she should be lucky to have a husband that “Got a house bought and paid for and sixty acres uh land right on de big road……Dat’s de very prong all us black women gets hung on. Dis love!”(Hurston 28). Janie left with the same mindset of marriage coming in. “She knew

The main character, Janie Woods, is unlike any other character throughout the novel, being 75% white and 25% black. For this she was not only looked up to but also looked down upon. She was an outsider within her own community while from the male perspective, she was a prized possession to anyone that could gain her affection. It is important that Hurston told the story about how Janie reached her full potential because it clearly demonstrates how anyone can gain happiness if they simply try. The women on the porch who judge her have hopes and dreams like anyone else. However, Janie is different than them by the way she risks everything she has to chase after her dreams. She encountered many difficulties with this approach at first, involving her marriages with Logan and Joe. Although, she overcame such challenges stronger than ever. Her ending may seem melancholy with the death of Tea Cake, but it is actually tragically perfect. Everything Janie dreamed of as a child was true love and this is exactly what she ended up with. She gained a voice in her life which was masked in her previous relationships. At the end of the novel, Janie is quite content with where her life stands and it is clear to the reader that the problems she endured were actually quite necessary. Although it was sorrowful to see Janie grappling for her dreams, Hurston uses each obstacle to