Their Eyes Were Watching god, by Zora Neale Hurston

Contemporary novels have imposed upon the love tribulations of women, throughout the exploration of genre and the romantic quest. Zora Neale Hurston’s Their eyes were watching God (1978) and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (2000) interplay on the various tribulations of women, throughout the conventions of the romantic quest and the search for identity. The protagonists of both texts are women and experience tribulations of their own, however, unique from the conventional romantic novels of their predecessors. Such tribulations include the submission of women and the male desire for dominance when they explore the romantic quest and furthermore, the inner struggles of women. Both texts display graphic imagery of the women’s inner experiences through confronting and engaging literary techniques, which enhance the audiences’ reading experience. Hurston’s reconstructions of the genre are demonstrated through a Southern context, which is the exploration of womanhood and innocence. Whilst Woolf’s interpretation of the romantic quest is shown through modernity and an intimate connection with the persona Clarissa Dalloway, within a patriarchal society.

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,

Janie is beginning to realize who she truly is and has been awakened through the scenic vision of the nature around her, presenting her womanhood in front of her eyes.

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 the late nineteenth century, the New Woman time period emerged after World War I. Women began to cast away the domestic stereotypes and they became “independent [women] who [sought] achievement and self-fulfillment beyond the realm of marriage and family” (Miller 1). Straying away from the typical image of women staying and maintaining the home, women started attending universities, receiving professional jobs, and becoming involved in politics (1). The transition of women from the domestic sphere to the public sphere is a notion Zora Neale Hurston uses in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Hurston’s use of dominant characters in society reveals her theme that experiences and relationships are the roots of finding independence and identity despite the obscurity caused by sexism.

Janie shows the issues African Americans faced during this period and the their newfound confidence but also shows differences from the beliefs of this era. Hurston uses these departures and similarities to allow the reader to further understand the novel and the time period in which it takes

Janie’s discovery of the person she is through each of her separate life experiences, has brought her to the comprehension of the different levels of herself. Although it takes her the complete book to comprehend her sexual awakening from the beginning where the blossoming pear tree starts her on this journey to go through untainted love, she goes through this experience as the sun sets and rises past the many moments in her budding life;

Early in the text of Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston employs imagery and syntax to show Janie uncovering the growth and power she has over her own life. This sort of revelation comes to Janie as Hurston describes that “It had called her to come and gaze on a mystery. From barren brown seems to glistening leaf-buds; from the leaf-buds to snowy

In 1937, Zora Neale Hurston spent seven weeks in Haiti writing what would become her most well-known and acknowledged piece of work. Their Eyes Were Watching God was born on September 18th, 1937, in New York. The novel told a hopeful tale of a woman finding a secure sense of independence and identity in the 1920s. Janie Mae Crawford is the protagonist of the novel. She knows family only in the form of her grandmother, who she refers to as Nanny. Each relationship that Janie is involved in blooms and withers away like the pear tree that symbolizes Janie's life.

     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.

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.

One way Hurston portrays dramatic irony is throughout the conversation Janie and Pheoby have about her leaving town with a Tea Cake. Janie tells Pheoby that “tain’t so big uh chance as it seem lak, Pheoby… if people thinks de same they can make it all right. So in the beginnin’ new thoughts had tuh be thought and new words said. After ah got used tuh dat, we gits ‘long jus’ fine” (Hurston 109). Hurston displays dramatic irony throughout the conversation with Pheoby about running off with Tea Cake. The audience knows that the two do not stay together due to Janie’s return in the beginning of the story. Therefore, when Janie is trying to reassure Pheoby that she’s not taking a chance with him the author includes dramatic irony. The audience knows she is taking a chance, but characters are unaware that Janie will soon be returning home without Tea Cake. The few sentences that Hurston includes shortly after display a small hint of how she is changing for him. She modifies her thought process to make the relationship work, which is not really what Janie has been looking for. In the end, Janie returns home with Tea Cake nowhere in sight.

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

In Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston uses the changes in Janie’s to show that there is always good to be found, even in a negative situation. Janie walked into the town like nothing happened. After she lost her third husband she went back at the start of her second marriage “Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with th things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone.” (8) Be a person means that not everything going to go perfect in life. Janie lived it an knew that sometimes just needs to appreciate the small things, because there is seasons when the trees are dormant but the same the same year they will start to bloom as life.

Their Eyes Were Watching God was a book that presented the world with a new look on writing novels. Zora Neale Hurston’s experience in what she has seen through research was embodies in this novel. She demonstrates what data she has collected and intertwined it into the culture within the novel. While being a folklorist/anthropologist, and inspired by her life experiences, she developed a character who dealt with the issues that were not yet uncovered, female empowerment was one of them. Zora Neale Hurston defined this topic of female empowerment throughout the character Janie in Their Eyes Were Watching God.