Their Eyes Were Watching God By Zora Neale Hurston

When Joe “Jody” Starks appears out of nowhere, Janie feels like her dreams have finally come true. But after a while, the marriage turns out to be little more than the stint with Killicks. Starks, like Killicks, treats her as property and not as someone he actually loves. One example is how Jody makes Janie put her hair up in a wrap while working in the store, rather than leave it down. Another is when he publicly criticizes her appearance, saying she is starting to show her age, when he is clearly at least ten years older: “’ You ain’t no young courtin’ gal. You’se uh old woman, nearly fourty’” (Hurston 79). Joe feels the need to tear down Janie, in order to make himself feel more important, which was an important part of being a man during this time.

Throughout life, everybody makes sacrifices that may become more beneficial to him or in ways they could not foresee. A sacrifice may be simply giving up an object or giving up something deeper in meaning. Their Eyes Were Watching God is a prime example of a book that reflects this theme. In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, the main character, Janie, struggles to figure out her identity and what she desires in life. As she matures in her relationships and in life, she learns to make sacrifices in order to seek what she really needs. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston illuminates Janie’s values and the text’s emphasis on self-actualization is demonstrated through Janie leaving stability with Logan to marry Joe,

The author uses negative diction when describing circumstances relating to gender inequality, racism, or the right to marry the person you love, indicating that the author believes these are important issues that need to be fixed. This negative diction is evident in lines such as, “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. The business of the headrag irked her endlessly. [...] but he didn’t want Janie to notice it because he saw that she was sullen and resented that. She had no right to be, the way he thought thing out. [...] He ought to box her jaws!” and “You better sense her intuh things then ‘cause Tea Cake can’t do nothin’ but help her spend whut she got. Ah reckon dat’s whut he’s after. Throwin’ away whut Joe Starks worked hard tuh git tuhgether.” However, when Janie talks about Tea Cake and their love, Zora Hurston switches to positive diction, showing that she supports a happy, equal, and loving marriage. This switch in the diction is clearly shown in the lines, “He drifted off into sleep and Janie looked down on him and felt a self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from its hiding place.” and “Anyway Tea Cake wouldn’t hurt

Feminism and gender equality is one of the most important issues of society today, and the debate dates back much farther than Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. To analyze Janie’s existence as a feminist or anti-feminist character requires a potential critic to look at her relationships and her reactions to those relationships throughout the novel. Trudier Harris claims that Janie is “questing after a kind of worship.” This statement is accurate only up until a certain point in her life, until Janie’s “quest” becomes her seeking equality with her partner. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie’s main goal pertaining to her romantic relationships undergoes multiple changes from her original goal of a type of worship to a goal to maintain an equal relationship with her husband.

     In Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, the reader is given a particular glimpse into Janie's life with reference to the men she has known.  Janie's three men are all very different, yet they were all Janie's husband at one point in her life.  Although they all behaved differently, in lifestyle as well as their relationship with Janie, they all shared certain similarities.

Persistence is a firm continuance of action in spite of past obstacles and opposition. This is what women like Janie Crawford in Zora Neale Hurston’s novel had to have, to get through traumatic events such as domestic violence and oppression from other men. In Their Eyes Were Watching God the main character Janie Crawford faced oppression and domestic violence, but instead of this holding her back it made a stronger woman by the end of the novel.

When Janie was about sixteen, she spent a spring afternoon under a blossoming tree in Nanny?s yard. Here she comes to the realization that something is missing in her life? sexual ecstasy. The blooms, the new leaves and the virgin- like spring came to life all around her. She wondered when and where she might find such an ecstasy herself. According to Hurston, Nanny finds Janie kissing a boy named Johnny Taylor and her ?head and face looked like the standing roots of some old tree that had been torn away by storm? (12) . Nanny can think of no better way to protect Janie than by marrying her to a middle-aged black farmer whose prosperity makes it unnecessary for him to use her as a ?mule? (Bush 1036).

In order for an individual to effectively rebel against an established society, he or she must maintain some degree of power. If leaders or majority groups intend to revolt against an aspect of society, they simply speak or act against their issue. A member of marginalized group does not have the liberty of rebelling so directly, as he or she would be immediately isolated. In addition, taking a stand through an unappreciated aspect of one’s status in society would be futile. Therefore, an individual must find his or her value to society and utilize it as their method for rebellion. This is exemplified in both Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, as women rebel against society without using their voices. The main characters, Janie and Hester, defy gender roles through external appearances, maintaining silence, and accepting sexuality. Both Hawthorne and Hurston reveal society’s value of women’s external persona through female characters’ nonverbal rebellion.

Traditional view of women in society leads to the male domination. In her book Their eyes were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston discusses the idea of gender identity where society had power over women that lead to oppression of females. Although the use of a third person narration shows the power over Janie, however Hurston's use of symbolism and diction actually empowers her.

Nanny urges Janie to adhere to the requirements of a woman with the role of a family maker including cooking, cleaning, and bearing children. Hurston bluntly states Nanny’s views upon the role of women in her simile of a mule. There black women are below everyone else on the totem pole including black men and whites.

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

    It's not chance that the three main characters besides Janie are men. Hurston was writing in a society where men were still dominant in the literary field. The struggle Janie emerged from to find her inner self needed men as a catalyst. The male/female relationship cannot be duplicated with a female/female one. Logan Killick's ownership of her being could not have happened with a woman counterpart. After marrying Killicks for protection rather than love, Janie realizes that she is living Nanny's dreams rather than her own. She also realizes that with protection comes obligation--Killicks feels he deserves to slap her around. With that discovery, she makes the choice to escape with Jody and his ambitious ideas. Joe seems closer to her ideal, closer to the dream of marriage that she has nourished despite opposition.

In Janie’s first marriage, Logan attempts to force her to be more like his first wife, who would “grab dat axe and sling chips lak a man” (Hurston, 26). He believes that he has been spoiling her because she spends all day in the house doing the housework and cooking. He takes Janie’s agency away from her by forcing her to do a “man’s” work against her will. Her Nanny raised her with very traditional gender roles, and to break these so suddenly and in this specific manner is very disconcerting for her at this moment. In this part of the novel, she empowers herself through the gender roles that are being used to oppress her: the paradoxical nature of this is an undertone through the rest of the novel also.

Hurston shows gender oppression by showing Janie being abused by previous husbands. In the story, Their Eyes Were Watching God, the main character, Janie, goes through several marriages that would seemingly make her happy. However, this wasn’t the case when her previous husbands would abuse or take advantage of her. Within Janie’s second marriage with Joe “Jody” Starks, he would degrade Janie and hit her. One day Janie was making food for Jody, but he complained about her skill and threw it upon himself to beat her. Hurston says, “So when the bread didn’t rise and the rice was scorched, he slapped Janie until she had a ringing sound in her ears and told her about her brains before he stalked on back to the store” (Hurston 72). In this context, Janie was unprepared and didn’t have enough time to cook before her husband came home. When he arrived early and ate the food

The ideas of love and marriage provoke excitement within the minds of many teenage girls. Yet as one grows older, they discover their previous expectations of love demolishes through experiences of heartache which correspond with the inevitable reality of love and relationships in the real world. Through her novel, “Their Eyes were Watching God,” Zora Neale Hurston displays a theme of love and marriage by describing Janie Crawford’s quest of finding unconditional love. While endeavoring challenges and hardship throughout her three marriages, Janie accumulates unique qualities which defines her truest self. Although beginning as a young and naive girl, Janie later blossoms into a strong and independent women. Janie eliminates all previous expectations of love as she experiences the reality of relationships. She discovers that love cannot be acquired through being married, yet is achieved through an equality within a marriage. After many troublesome relationships, Janie is able to acquire a meaningful relationship with her latest husband, which at last fulfills her horizon.