An Analysis Of Janie Crawford In Their Eyes Were Watching God By Zora Hurston

In Zora Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God” the protagonist Janie Crawford experiences the tension of outward conformity while she questioning inwardly, until she finds herself through love meeting her third husband Tea Cake. In other words, Janie goes through a transformation throughout the novel from what others want her to be, to the person she really is, overcoming the pressures of her husbands, as well as the expectations of society. Throughout the book, she grows from a vibrant, but voiceless, teenage girl into a woman who has control of her own destiny. As a young girl, Janie is sitting under a pear tree and looks up, “She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight.” which is where she realizes what love and sexuality is and this is where her quest for love begins. However, when she is fifteen, her grandmother expects Janie to marry young to ensure

The weight, the length, the glory was there.” (86) symbolizing how she doesn’t need to conform, and only question inwardly anymore, but speak her own mind and become her own person. She meets Tea Cake, a younger man, and stops caring about the community’s expectations, as they gossip about what she’s doing. Tea Cake teaches her to play games men play, hunt, and they even work together to spend even more time together. He treats her with respect, as an equal, and ecourages her to be what she wants to be. She realizes she’s found love, what she’s been searching for her whole life and becomes happy. She’s in love, happy, and has stopped just conforming to others ideals, and has not only inwardly questioned, but now speaks these ideas she has. With Tea Cake, she pulls away from conforming to others ideas, and begins to find