Zora Neale Hurston

In the early 1900s, Janie struggles to find her self worth. In the book Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, expands on the story of a girl who goes through many different relationships before finding herself. Janie faces emotional abuse, insecurities, and a variety of men. Her grandmother taught her many life lessons and engraved in her head that she needed to find a man to take care of her for the rest of her life. Janie grows through each relationship and soon comes to the conclusion that she is able to care for herself. Nanny’s greatest goal in life is for Janie to find a good man to take care of her when she passes away. As a result of Nanny’s life of working in a white family’s home, she only wants her granddaughter

She is interested in asking Hezekiah about him but knows she should still be mourning. Janie is so wrapped in the idea of her needing a relationship because of Nanny engraving it in her head, that the first guy she found attractive, she is interested. Janie seemed to have a trend of picking random boys and never truly focused on whether she is compatible with them or not. Although Janie is ready to move on from Joe, the emotional abuse is still with her. She is scared to open up to a new man or trust anyone new. Last time she did that, she was abused emotionally and physically. Janie and Tea Cake begin talking and eventually leave town together. Tea Cake is determined to show Janie she can trust him. It takes Janie a long time to finally trust that Tea Cake won’t ever leave her. “Tea Cake must be hunting all over the city for that fish. She kept the thought in front of her in order not to think too much. When she heard the twelve o’clock whistle she decided to get up and dress. That was when she found her two hundred dollars was gone” (Hurston 118). Janie had so quickly fallen for Tea Cake and because of her past with Joe, being abused, trusting that Tea Cake would return and have her money was difficult for her to wrap her brain around. In Janie’s past relationships, the men would not let her do any of the normal labor built for a man. She is to stay in the house and do what women were expected to do, clean and cook. Janie is eager to help outside and Tea Cake is the first guy to let her do so. “So the very next morning Janie got ready to pick beans along with Tea Cake” (Hurston 133). In this day in age, it is rare for a women to work along side a man, they were expected to stay in the house. Janie is infatuated by the idea of a man finally giving her a sense of freedom because her whole life she has been trapped in a world where the guy is the only person in charge and