Women In Their Eyes Were Watching God By Zora Neale Hurston

The marriage is unsatisfying and lonely for Janie. Janie “...knew things that nobody had ever told her...the words of the trees and the wind. She often spoke to falling seeds and said, ‘Ah hope you fall on soft ground,’” (25). She spoke and connected with nature because she was still searching for the kind of love she had witnessed when laying under the pear tree when she was younger. After a big fight with Logan, Janie meets a man named Jody Starks who is charming and charismatic. He is extremely intelligent and Janie leaves Logan for him because even though “he did not represent sun-up and pollen and blooming trees...he spoke for far horizon. He spoke for change and chance." (28). Janie has not been able to find herself in her marriage with Logan because there was no real connection, she hopes to find love resembling the pear tree with Jody. Unfortunately Janie’s dreams of finding love with Jody fall flat. Jody is controlling and restricts Janie from expressing herself and he further isolates her from society.

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston follows the main character Janie’s journey to find love on her own terms. The first man she married, she married to appease Nanny, her grandmother. The second man she marries is Jody Starks, who she marries because she failed to find love for her previous husband. After the oppressive Starks dies, Janie remarries Vergible “Tea Cake” Woods, the only man she has ever loved. They move to “the muck” where Janie feels more at home than ever before because she is with Tea Cake and because she can choose to indulge in her own relations without anyone telling her what to do or with whom to associate.

Janie recollects her image on love when she leaves with Joe which signifies that she values love over the stable life that she had already possessed.

Janie's prayer is answered with her next husband, Jody Starks. He is the man who fills the voids of loneliness and love, and continues her development as a woman. When they first met, Janie was convinced that Jody believed she was a very special person because of the compliments he gave her. For two weeks, before they married, they talked and Janie believed that Jody "spoke for change and chance" (28). The problem Janie had with Jody was that he did not treat her as equal. He would not let her speak in front of people, teach her to play checkers, or participate in other events. Janie notices the problem early in the relationship and confronts Jody about it when she says "it jus' looks lak it keeps us in some way we ain't natural wid one 'nother. You'se always off talkin' and fixin' things, and Ah feels lak Ah'm jus' markin time. Hope it soon gits over" (43). Janie realizes that she cannot be open with Jody and that he is not the same man she ran off with to marry. Jody has many of his own interests, and none of them are concerned with Janie. "She found out that she had a host of thoughts she had never expressed to him ... She was saving up feelings for some man that she had never seen" (68). Jody only gave material goods to Janie. She knew she

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.

Their Eyes Were Watching God was written in 1937 by Zora Neale Hurston. This story follows a young girl by the name of Janie Crawford. Janie Crawford lived with her grandmother in Eatonville, Florida. Janie was 16 Years old when her grandmother caught her kissing a boy out in the yard. After seeing this her grandmother told her she was old enough to get married, and tells her she has found her a husband by the name of Logan. Logan was a much, much older man. This book later follows Janie through two more marriages to Jody Starks, and Tea Cake. All three marriages extremely different from one another, along with Janie’s role in each marriage. Janie always had her own individual personality, her true self, but she also had an outer personality, the person she would pretend to be for each of her husbands. The Book took us through a journey of each of these marriages and through the journey of Janie finding herself.

Janie's attraction to Joe Starks' charisma quickly diminishes when his overdose of ambition and controlling personality get the best of him. Although he is a big voice in the town, Janie only sees him as a big voice. All his money and power have no effect on her when all he does is ridicule and control her. He makes it clear where Janie belongs: "Ah never married her for nothin' lak dat. She's uh woman and her place is in de home" (Hurston 43). This is ironic because when she is with Logan, she wants to be in the house doing her own thing, but Joe is making it sound like confinement. It's as if she has no choice in the matter and Joe intends to make his power over her known. People have different desires and sometimes when we get caught up in our success, we can end up hurting others. Joe's reply to Janie is a great example of the insensitivity that can form from the pride we can possibly inherit when we achieve success: "Ah told you in de first beginnin' dat Ah aimed tuh be uh big voice.

In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, a young woman travels through difficult life experiences in order to find herself. Hurston portrays the protagonist as an adventurous soul trapped in the binds of suppressing marriages. Janie experiences three different types of marriage learning from each one what she values most. From these marriages she learned she values love and respect, finally achieving them in her last marriage. Each new marriage brought something new to the table for Janie and no matter the situation or the outcome of the relationship Janie grew into her own independent individual because of it.

Instead of treating Janie like the beautiful woman that she is, he uses her as an object. Joe was a man who “treasured [Janie] as a posession” (Berridge). Joe’s demanding nature suppresses Janie’s urge to grow and develop, thus causing her journey to self-realization to take steps backward rather than forward. In Janie’s opinion, “he needs to “have [his] way all [his] life, trample and mash down and then die ruther than tuh let [him]self heah 'bout it” (Hurston 122). It is almost as if Janie loses sense of her own self-consciousness due to the fact that she becomes like a puppy being told what to do by her master. The death of Jody is actually a positive thing. Joe’s controlling nature stifles Janie’s inner voice. While married to Jody, Janie became closer to others, however, she did not become closer to herself. Being on her own again gave her another chance to embark on her journey and realize who Janie Crawford really is.

In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Lora Neale Hurston, the main character engages in three marriages that lead her towards a development of self. Through each endeavor, Janie learns the truths of life, love, and the path to finding her identity. Though suppressed because of her race and gender, Janie has a strong will to live her life the way she wills. But throughout her life, she encounters many people who attempt to change the way that she is and her beliefs. Each marriage that she undertakes, she finds a new realization and is on a never-ending quest to find her identity and true love. Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and Tea Cake each help Janie progress to womanhood and find her identity.

     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.

Janie was not at all interested in this marriage, but being young and naïve, accepts this. Logan shows very little interest in Janie soon after she starts living with him. He complains she doesn’t do enough work on the farm and that she doesn’t appreciate a hardworking man like him. Logan orders Janie around and expects her to act as a proper wife. When Janie threatens to leave Logan, Logan is not sure how to put his fear into words. Instead he brushes off Janie’s threat and believes she will still be there in the morning when he wakes up. Realizing that this isn’t the kind of love she wants or life she wants to lead, Janie leaves Logan for Joe Starks.

In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie embarks on a journey in search of her independence and freedom where each of her three husbands plays an important role to discover who she truly is. She longs for the true meaning and fulfillment of love, the kind between a bee and a blossom on a pear tree. Janie experiences different types of love being with Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and Tea Cake Woods. In each marriage, she learns valuable lessons, how a relationship should work, then realizes how she should live her life. She receives secure love from Logan and possessive love from Joe. While Tea Cake gave her the love a bee gives to a blossom. Throughout the novel, she attains her independence and freedom along with the love

Logan is old and he ruins the image of the blooming pear tree that Janie has dreamed about. She realizes that marriage does not necessarily equal love. After the lesson from that marriage she matures and runs off with Joe Starks. After getting married to Joe Starks, Janie learns about integrity. Joe and Janie go to Eatonville to buy land so Joe can start a new business in a city run by blacks. Joe does not represent the marriage that Janie wants, the kind that feels like what it 's like to be under a pear tree, but he does represent a change in lifestyle: “Janie pulled back a long time because he did not represent sun-up and pollen and blooming trees, but he spoke for far horizon. He spoke for change and chance" (29). Joe becomes the mayor of Eatonville, changing Janie’s life style. A couple of the town members wonder about the way Joe treats Janie because they notice that she does not talk very much, and that Joe makes her wear her hair all tied up and hidden. Joe does not want anyone looking at Janie. He also wants her to look better than the other women in town. He spends a lot of money on her, but that doesn 't make her happy. Janie feels like Joe is holding her down “She was a rut in the road. Plenty of life beneath the surface but it was kept beaten down by the wheels” (76). She silently agrees to Jody’s arrogant personality and does her duties while ignoring her emotions. She considers running away but doubts that she can find refuge anywhere, feeling that

Even when Joe is sick and dying, he still has power and control over Janie. He doesn’t want her to take care of him. Instead he consults with a doctor. He refuses to see Janie and prohibits her from coming into his room, in which he moved into after the fight they had. Maybe he is treating her this way because he wants her to feel guilty for defending herself in front of the townspeople. On his deathbed, Janie stands up for herself again. That was the second and last time she has ever done that in their twenty years of marriage. She claims that Joe isn’t the person she ran off with. He never gave her a chance to speak her thoughts and opinions; to see herself for who she is and accept that. For years, Janie obeyed Joe. He was more of a master