Women In Their Eyes Were Watching God

Throughout the film Their Eyes Were Watching God there were many different themes in including the young African American woman’s quest for self-discovery beyond the values and expectations set on her by the society that allows neither women nor African Americans to exist without limitations. Any observer of the film can focus on the degradation and strict gender roles that all of the female characters, including the main character Janie were placed in. Women were not only considered weak as a whole but also are completely defined by their relationship to men in their lives. This reason in itself is why marriage plays a large role considering women can only gain a through marriage to powerful or ambitious men.

Folklorist, anthropologist, playwright, and novelist, Zora Neale Hurston 's career took off after publishing, what is, today, her most famous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Unlike any other work at the time, the dialect in her novels portrayed how African-Americans speak in the deep south. Set in Southern Florida, the heroine Janie, is thought to have been modeled after Hurston, herself, if she had chose to stay in her hometown of Eatonville instead of going to college. In the novel, Janie is unable to develop a life as a New Woman through much of her adulthood due to the geographical area she lived in, basic education, financial state, grandmother 's values, history of slavery, and her marriage to Joe Sparks. Hurston, on the other hand, was able to develop her life as a New Woman due to her access to higher education, financial state, and support from her mother.

In Zora Neale Hurston’s romantic novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the heroine Janie, a beautiful mixed white and black woman, is on a journey to find someone who will make her feel love to find her own identity and freedom, away from her spouses. Janie’s marriages and quest for love impede her individual search for freedom, but in doing this she has discovered what exactly she wants for herself. Janie’s search for her identity and freedom is very much evident. Being abused and controlled during her marriages has made it clear how she wants to be treated and how she wants to live her life; as an individual who does not have to listen to anyone. The story opens with Janie’s return to town. Janie tells Phoebe Watson the story of her

Published in 1937 by author Zora Neale Hurston, the novel ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’ chronicles an African American woman's journey to find true love in the Deep South. On one hand, an equal balance of power in a relationship leads to equality, fulfilment, and happiness for both partners - as observed in Janie’s relationship with Vergible Woods (Tea Cake). On the other hand, an unequal distribution of power in a marriage with a dominant partner leads to an overall sense of discontent and unhappiness in the relationship, as observed in Janie’s first two marriages to Logan Killicks and Joe Starks respectively. Thus, an equal balance of power in a relationship built on mutual respect and desire is a vital to a stable and healthy relationship.

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.

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 relationship such desires are forsaken by their way of life.Many individuals want to reach the "Horizon" where is not completely seen by the human eye but exists.In the novel "Their eyes were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston", protagonist Janie Crawford seeks for that "horizon" through her relationship with logan, Joe and tea cake.Just like the "horizon" love wasn 't attained during her relationship with logan and joe but that love existed in her relationship with Tea cake.

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)

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 become that woman. Janie has her idealized view of marriage that depicts that you marry for love, and everything is like a fairytale. Through Janie’s three marriages, she learns what she truly desires in life and finds herself along the way. As each marriage comes to a close, Janie becomes stronger and surer of herself.

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.

In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, she sets the protagonist, Janie Mae Crawford as a woman who wants to find true love and who is struggling to find her identity. To find her identity and true love it takes her three marriages to go through. While being married to three different men who each have different philosophies, Janie comes to understand that she is developed into a strong woman. Hurston makes each idea through each man’s view of Janie, and their relationship with the society. The lifestyle with little hope of or reason to hope for improvement. He holds a sizeable amount of land, but the couple's life involves little interaction with anyone else.

On December 6, 1894 the short story “The Story of An Hour” was published in the weekly newspaper Vogue. The story features the protagonist, Louise Mallard who discovers her husband is dead. The story was instantly regarded as highly controversial because it went against the standards of the 1890’s and features a female protagonist that feels liberated by the news of her husband's death. Although the idea that women were able to survive without men was a foreign concept at the time, the story resonated with many women. In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie the female protagonist also experiences liberation through the death of her husband and faces the stereotype of women needing men in order to survive. This stereotype along with many other gender roles/stereotypes are present in Their Eyes Were Watching God and requires Janie and the many other characters to either adhere or break free of the gender roles/stereotypes they come across. Some of these gender roles/sterotypes is that women need to be married in order to be seen as decent and woman should remain quiet and not be outspoken or attract attention. Jaine breaks free of the respective gender roles by her unwillingness to conform to man in her relationships and succeeding in breaking many of the conventional gender roles. Other characters like Jody, Logan, and Janie’s grandmother adhere to the gender roles/ stereotypes and enforce them.

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.

In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God written by Zora Neale Hurston, the author starts chapter three with Janie Mae questioning whether or not marriage brings love; she questions because she does not love Logan Killicks, her husband. After three months of marriage, Janie results to going to Nanny for advice. Janie confesses that she does not like Logan’s unromantic personality and his ugly appearance. When she starts to cry, Nanny sends her away, telling her to wait a while longer for love to come. Within a month, Nanny passes away, and after a year, Janie has learned that marriage does not bring love. At the end of the chapter, Janie’s dream of love has died, causing her to become a woman.

Throughout a fair part of Zora Neal Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie’s low class create problems when it comes to men. She lives with men she does not love because they give her the financial stability she cannot have yet on her own. Janie marries Logan Killicks at a young age even though she does not want to

This paper is discusses on the novel Zora Neale Hurston in the light of Patriarchy. The protagonist of the novel, Janie is taken for analysis. This paper also involves in delineating characteristics traits of the male characters in the novels. Further, the paper studies the treatment that is meted out to the protagonist at the hands of men in the selected novel. The paper studies the novel in terms of the violence, subjugation and oppression that the male characters pose to the protagonist in the novel. The paper discusses on the various levels of suppression that Janie undergoes at the hands of the people who are highly patriarchal in mind set. Further, this paper details on how the protagonist stands as a model to shun suppression at the