An Analysis Of Janie's Hair In Their Eyes Were Watching God By Hurston

While married Janie had to conform to what her husband wanted her to be like, look like, and act like. Janie’s hair is another powerful symbol in the novel. It symbolizes her power and freedom within society. It is what most of the men characters noticed about her right away. Her hair was so beautiful that while being married to Joe Starks, he made her wear it in a hair rag. He did not want the other men to see it; he considered it to be for his enjoyment only. By forcing Janie to wear hair rags, Joe tried taking her power and freedom away. Even the men wondered why she wore her wear tied up, “Whut make her keep her head tied up lak some ole ’oman round de store?” “Nobody couldn’t git me tuh tie no rag on mah head if Ah had hair lak dat” (Hurston

With Teacake, Janie had the freedom to have her beautiful hair down. He gave her more freedom then she ever had in her entire life. She tells Pheoby, “Ah jus’ loves dis freedom” (93). The outward conformity and the inward Janie was forced to tie up her long hair because her husband did not like the fact that other people were taking a liking to it around the store, “That night he ordered Janie to tie up her hair around the store” (Hurston 55). Jody wanted Janie to know that women were less than men and that they don’t think for themselves, he almost compares women to animals, “Somebody got to think for women and chillun and chickens and cows. I god, they sho don’t think none theirselves” (Hurston 180). Once he passed away, Janie took a more feminist stand in her life, she started doing more of what she wanted to do and how she wanted to do it. Letting her hair down is an important point in the novel because it shows strength, “Before she slept that night she burnt up every one of her head rags and went about the house next morning with her hair in one thick braid swinging below her waist” (Hurston

Women were to do what they were told and to marry when they were told to. But when Janie and Teacake moved, things were different. Janie felt a sense of freedom and power because Teacake was not as overbearing as Joe, her previous husband, or her grandmother. Geography is also significant because it started to change Teacake’s attitude towards life and Janie. Janie begins to have some complex questions about Teacake’s character. Their arrival in the Everglades is a moment of fulfillment for Janie as she finds herself surrounded by fertile nature. Overall, her experience is generally a fulfilling one but Teacake manipulates her in small ways, raising, once again, the specter of outside domination in her life. “Literary geography is typically about humans inhabiting spaces, and at the same time the spaces inhabiting humans” (Foster 165). Geography changes your perspective of a character and sometimes a character changes your perspective of the geography. Characters also affect the earth when there is a geological change in the novel, “Since the late 1700s, geologists, geographers, and others have begun to recognise that humans themselves are having a vast and significant influence on the Earth. (Steffen et al., 2011; Lewis and Maslin, 2015). There have even been numerous calls to recognise this influence by renaming the most geological epoch in humans’ honour”