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
Gender Roles in Janie’s Marriages and Gender’s Role in Their Eyes Were Watching God Over the course of the novel, Janie is married three times to three drastically different people. First is Logan Killicks, whom she has no choice but to marry; soon Janie discovers that she could never have loved Logan because he treats her as less than him. She leaves Logan for Joe “Jody” Starks because initially, she believes that she loves him. However, after he gains power in their community and his true opinion of Janie as less valuable than any man is revealed, Janie begins to hate him and she isn’t affected much when he eventually dies. After Jody’s death, Janie falls in love with Tea Cake, who treats her better than either of her previous husbands. He makes Janie feel valued and practically equal to him and other men for almost the first time in her life. Each marriage brings Janie closer to realizing her role and identity in society. In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston explores each of Janie’s three husbands’ different opinions on gender roles in society and relationships to construct the idea that, in life, it is absolutely necessary to find your role in the world -- especially as a woman.
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.
In both Zora Neale Hurston’s short story “Sweat” and novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the focus is on women who want better lives but face difficult struggles before gaining them. The difficulties involving men which Janie and Delia incur result from or are exacerbated by the intersection of their class, race, and gender, which restrict each woman for a large part of her life from gaining her independence.
Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter.” Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God is a novel that follows Janie in her quest to find both her voice and herself through different experiences and relationships. Janie, a female protagonist, struggles to assert both her voice and her independence. Joe Starks, her second husband, is a sophisticated and authoritative man who demands the majority of the attention in both their marriage and society. Joe and Janie reside in Eatonville where Joe is mayor and a prominent figure in society. Janie struggles to discover her voice and often uses it irrationally. Tea Cake, Janie’s last husband, is a regular man who treats Janie
Topic 2: Compare/contrast Janie in Hurston 's Their Eyes Were Watching God & Edna in Chopin 's The Awakening in terms of conformity within a male-dominated society. (four page minimum) Overtime, no matter what kind of circumstance set up towards the term superiority, the
Jefrey Zavala Mr.Amoroso Ap Literature Period:3 Their Eyes were Watching God:LAP #4 4.Analyze the Janie 's relationships with her spouses.  Love can be perceived as the feeling one feels under the sweetness of a blossoming pear tree, but through an unexpected path, such loving feelings are demolished.When an individual wants the perfect
Many people believe in marrying for love and they spend most of their life searching for it. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Nora Zeal Hurston, Janie Crawford goes through three marriages, and as a result, she learns who she wants to be and how to
“She was seeking confirmation of the voice and vision, and everywhere she found and acknowledged answers. A personal answer for all other creations except herself. She felt an answer seeking her, but where? When? How?” (Hurston 11). This quote exemplifies Janie’s desire for answers throughout her three relationships, displaying what she is longingly seeking for in life. Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, follows the life of protagonist Janie Crawford, a confident, middle-aged black woman who goes throughout life discovering her quest for spiritual enlightenment and self-discovery. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston explains the hardships as ideas of maturity, sexism, and social class.
Hurston, Zora. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Harper & Row, 1937. Print. In Zora Neale Hurston’s famous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston explores the life of a southern black woman, Janie Crawford, whose three marriages of domineering control of men make her acknowledge her independence and self-satisfaction as an African-American woman. Set in the early 1900s, Hurston reveals the dominant role of men in southern society and one woman’s journey toward finding herself and God.
In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their eyes were watching God the main character Janie is on a quest for self-fulfillment. Of Janie’s three marriages, Logan and Joe provide her with a sense of security and status. However, only her union with Teacake flourishes into true love.
In Catholic doctrine, the seven cardinal sins are the basis from which all the “sins” of humanity stem. In this system, any moral infraction a person may commit would be categorized under one of these seven sins (also known colloquially as the “seven deadly sins”). This system has been widely adapted throughout culture over the centuries, and is a common tool utilized to examine the actions of humans. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the main character, Janie, enters into three marriages, two of which fail based on the failings of her husbands, and the third of which succeeds in spite of the failings of her husband. Each of these husbands, in fact, displays traits which fall under the cardinal sins, and the sin of pride in particular; even the third husband, Tea Cake, displays the very same sin, leading to the downfall of their marriage.
As a young woman, Janie wanted love, true love. In the beginning of the novel and Janie 's journey, she is under a blossoming pear tree where she spends most of her days. She is watching the bees fly to the blossoms, when she has an epiphany. “So this was a marriage! She had been summoned to behold a revelation. Then
Tea Cake comes into the store in Eatonville where Janie worked at, and she is automatically interested his charm: “She was in favor of the story that was making him laugh before she even heard it” (Hurston 90). They quickly fall in love with each other as Tea Cake treats her like a real woman. Tea Cake respected her and made her feel better about herself, something Logan and Jody had never done: ”... she found herself glowing inside. Somebody wanted her to play… she looked over and got little thrills from every one of his good points” (Hurston 92). Tea Cake lets her play checkers and didn’t treat her as an object or lesser than himself. Soon enough, Tea Cake and Janie fall in love, move to Jacksonville then to the Everglades. Tea Cake gives Janie everything she’s ever wanted. He teaches her to shoot a gun, and doesn’t care Janie has a better shot; he does not care for the power over Janie that Jody did. Tea Cake drives Janie to find security in herself and find her own independence. Janie is finally herself with Tea Cake; however, the novel quickly proves the critical lens when a rabid dog bites Tea Cake. Tea Cake was trying to save Janie from drowning a river after a hurricane hit the Everglades. He had to fight away a mad dog, and he was bitten in the face. His health quickly declines within a mouth. He begins going mad and accuses Janie of not loving him and cheating on him. Before
Janie Crawford: The Woman Whose Clothing Conveys Her Relationships In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, the protagonist, Janie, endures two marriages before finding true love. In each of Janie’s marriages, a particular article of clothing is used to symbolically reflect, not only her attitude at different phases in her life, but how she is treated in each relationship.