Zora Neale Hurston is a talented author who captures the true beauty and power of women in her book, Their Eyes Were Watching God. During Hurston’s life span, black women were only weights that needed to be supported by their husbands. Women of all colors were treated with the least amount of respect and not loved for their character (Hemenway 232). The African American and Feminist movements used Hurston’s work as a reminder for all women to keep fighting for the self-reliance (Sickels 61). In Their Eyes were Watching God, a special woman is used to show Hurston’s concern and support for all women. Janie Mae Crawford is the main character in Their Eyes Were Watching God, who experiences being cast down and having no voice. Janie goes through …show more content…
Throughout the marriages, Janie encounters emotional and mental changes. Janie Mae Crawford is initially a soft spoken and reticent woman, but due to a man’s rough and arrogant attitude, Janie finds the courage within her to stand up for herself and discovers her voice. Initially, Janie is a compassionate individual who is obedient and respectful. From the very beginning, Janie learns that being a woman and being black would change how society views her (Bloom 14). As Janie starts her journey of relationships, her marriages spark issues that occur because of her reticent and submissive attitude. Logan Killicks is Janie’s first husband whom she is forced to marry by her grandmother. To Janie, Logan is boring and unhappy (Jones, Discus). Being an older man, Logan makes Janie work outdoors alongside him. Janie obeys Logan but wants more from their relationship. Logan decides to buy Janie a mule to increase production: “Ah aims tuh run two plows, and dis man Ah’m talkin’ bout is got uh mule all gentled up so even uh women kin handle ‘im” (Hurston 27). Because Logan …show more content…
Janie has evolved internally and externally. Her internal conflict was finding her voice and strength. The external conflict was finding her true love. Throughout her relationships, “Janie feels trapped with Logan Killicks, since she was never in love; with Jody Starks, she feels stilled, silence, and unappreciated; with Tea Cake, Janie feels happy and fulfilled, but the relationship ends in tragedy” (Jones 187). Janie has developed from a quiet and submissive woman into a confident and strong woman who has a voice. Because Janie was out of touch with the world and did not understand what a woman truly deserves out of life, she was not able to break the cycle of being treated badly. Janie’s journey proves “when not a part of the organic process of birth, growth, and death, one is out rhythm with the universe. This is represented in the novel by Janie’s dissociation of sensibility before she grows to consciousness” (Hemenway 234). At birth and adolescence, Janie was naïve and always obedient. Janie began to grow and change during her relationship with Joe Stark who pushed her to speak up. Then Janie got back into rhythm with the universe when she experiences the death of her true love. Janie realizes the importance of her journey was to become strong and find her
Throughout the book Janie struggles to find the true definition of love and how to make herself happy with her relationships. She goes through several different ideas of love before finding that it is mutual compassion, understanding, and respect that makes her the most happy.
Throughout her marriages Janie has grown and become a mature woman. When she married Logan Killicks she was a young girl with no idea of the harsh world. She learned that she does not want to be with Logan. “Ah wants to want him sometimes” (Hurston; 3, 26). He does not treat her like wife should be treated, he treats her like a worker. She realizes that this horrible marriage to Logan is not what she dreamed about under the pear tree. When Janie meets Joe Starks he speaks to her in rhymes and promises her the world. Her dreams of a beautiful marriage are alive once again. Joe and Janie move to Eatonville, Florida, an all-black town where Joe becomes mayor. As time progresses and Joe gains more power and respect Janie feels lonely. Joe is so focused with his position that he unknowingly pushes Janie into loneliness and sadness. Joe had taken all the fun and life
Zora Neale Hurston's “Their Eyes Were Watching God” follows Jamie Crawford who consecutively becomes involved in three marriages with distinct men that she eventually leaves, but not without finding a semblance of her identity through them. Janie’s ability to seek out her dreams and her persistence towards discovering not only love, but herself through relationships portrays her as a peculiar individual who defies the social norm of the time period where a woman, especially black women, should not have a voice. The confounding qualities Janie emits prompts for an in-depth study on how Hurston develops the growth of a black woman’s personal autonomy in a highly oppressive setting.
Janie is married to two men, before she finds Tea Cake, that both suppress her individuality in their own ways. Janie's first husband, Logan Killicks, suppresses her by keeping her in a marriage that she can't fully, or at all, love the man she's married to. "Cause you told me Ah wuz gointer love him, and, and Ah don’t. Maybe if somebody was to tell me how, Ah could do it." Janie says she needs to be told how to feel about Logan in order for her to be able to love feel anything towards him at all. Janie is a mixture of the people around her because they're telling her to live and how to think. Janie can't bring herself to figure out how to do these things on her own so she ends up looking for the answers in the man she married, her grandmother, and her society. Joe Starks, Janie's second husband, keeps her from showing who she really wants to be by
Although she hails from a seemingly completely disconnected culture, Janie experiences in her Southern life stifling, patriarchal pressures similar to those which Edna felt some thirty years earlier in Victorian-era New Orleans. While still in her teenage years, Janie is forced into a loveless marriage in the name of protecting her in ways she would not be able to independently. Like Edna who stays with Mr. Pontellier despite her hesitations about their relationship and her insincere reasons for marrying him, Janie lingers with her husband Logan for over a year trying to find the love she senses is missing. " 'You told me Ah mus gointer love him,'" Janie laments to her grandmother, "'and Ah don't'" (Hurston 23).
Janie went on a long journey to obtain womanhood. Janie grew up living with her grandma, who always wanted her to get married at a young age. Janie eventually did marry Logan Killicks when she was 18 years old. However, she hated living with him. He was described as a shallow, unlovable human being. This was when Janie became a woman because she realized that marriage does not assure love. Janie then married Jody Starks. At first, he seemed like a good person because he offered her a new life, but over time grew worse. Jody would constantly restrict what Janie could do, and would beat her for simple errors. It was not until late in their marriage that Janie finally spoke out to Jody of the way he treated her. Jody would soon die, and Janie
Throughout Wu’s article, Wu address Janie’s marriages and the representation with the imagery regarding the mule. One of Wu’s stronger arguments is the first marriage Janie has with Logan Killicks. Wu argues that the marriage between Logan and Janie is an “obvious surrender to Nanny’s concept of black women, which defines them as the mule of the world” (Wu 1054). In the beginning of their marriage, Logan treated
Janie’s first husband is Logan Killicks, an old, unattractive man whom Janie marries while trying to appease her grandmother. Logan is a farmer with 60 acres of land and a comfortable house. Nanny believes in marrying for financial stability, not for love: “Tain’t Logan Killicks Ah wants you to have, baby, it’s protection” (Hurston 15). Instead of following her heart and insisting on not marrying someone she doesn’t love, Janie consents due to the pressure and marries Logan. He wants to keep her firmly under his control so he forces her to work in the field with him and clean the house. In addition to physically oppressing Janie, Logan also mentally oppresses her by showing Janie no affection during their marriage. Due to
Zora Neale Hurston had an intriguing life, from surviving a hurricane in the Bahamas to having an affair with a man twenty years her junior. She used these experiences to write a bildungsroman novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, about the colorful life of Janie Mae Crawford. Though the book is guised as a quest for love, the dialogues between the characters demonstrate that it is actually about Janie’s journey to learn how to not adhere to societal expectation.
All through the novel Janie travels through valuable life experiences allowing her to grow as a woman. Janie at first has a difficult time understanding her needs rather than wants, but as she continues to experience new situations she realizes she values respect. Janie’s first two marriages turned out to be tragic mistakes, but with each marriage Janie gained something valuable. When Janie is disrespected in her second marriage with Joe Starks, he publicly humiliates her, disrespecting her as a wife and woman. This experience forced Janie to come out of her comfort zone and stand up for herself.
“’…but she don’t seem to mind at all. Reckon dey understand one ‘nother.’” A woman’s search for her own free will to escape the chains of other people in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.
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.
Janie's quest is for self-discovery and self-definition, but she encounters many obstacles while trying to win this quest.
Another example, where Janie struggles to find her voice is with her second husband Jody Starts, a man who starves for power and the mayor of Eatonville. Jody rarely allows Janie to speak her mind, participate in social
In the society and world we live in we all want to be accepted and feel like we belong. Zora Neale Hurston goes through trials and tribulations as being a twenty-century African American such as slavery and feeling like she belongs. Imagine every time you think you are finally happy with whom you are and it turns out that wasn’t the case. In Their Eyes Were Watching God Janie embarks on journey in search for her own identity where each of her three husbands plays an important role in her discovery of who she is.