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The main character Janie of the book Their eyes were watching God, is facing the conflict of a loveless and abusive marriage. Through the chapters, five and the first part of chapter seven Janie is submissive to her husband’s words and does what he says. However, at the end of chapter seven Janie talks back to Joe while working in the store and humiliates him in front of the townspeople. In result of Janie’s actions Joe makes it clear to Janie and the customers in the store Joe is still the dominant figure in the relationship, to show his dominance Joe smacked Janie in the face. Although Joe hit Janie it was not the first time, and Janie knew the first time Joe had hit her that the love she has longed for is not in this marriage.
How does a woman living in the 20th century achieve independence and freedom despite living in a patriarchal society? In her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston gives us an answer to this question. Janie Crawford was born in Florida and raised by her grandmother, who was formerly enslaved. When Janie becomes a teenager, she is forced to marry Logan Killicks for financial security. After a number of months, Jannie decides to leave him for a man named Joe Starks, who promises better treatment.
In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, the protagonist Janie, is influenced by others to change her ideals. Hurston vividly portrays Janie’s outward struggle while emphasising her inward struggle by expressing Janie’s thoughts and emotions. In Kate Chopin’s The Awakening the protagonist is concisely characterized as having “that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions,” as Janie does. Janie conforms outwardly to her life but questions inwardly to her marriages with Logan Killicks, her first husband, and Joe Starks, her second husband; Janie also questions her grandmother's influence on what love and marriage is.
In the first two chapters of the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, the readers are introduced to the main character, Janie Mae Crawford. Janie is a beautiful black woman who plays a major role in the early plot. One of the several categories of character types that Janie falls into is the round character category. In the first two chapter alone, the reader is given an in depth look into Janie’s childhood, “‘Ah was wid dem white chillun so much till Ah didn’t know Ah wuzn’t white till Ah was round six years old’” (Hurston 18).
Her first marriage was arranged by her Nanny, hoping to give Janie the stability that she could never have as a slave. She arranges for her to marry an older farmer, Logan Killicks, in hopes of
In their eyes were watching god just before marrying Logan Janie claims that “husbands and wives always loved each other, and that was what marriage meant. ”(21) however Janie never fell in love with Logan and her false reality of what these titles meant fell apart. This theme stays consistent throughout Both Novels Sing Unburied Sing and Their Eyes Were Watching God which both display that titles such as parent and spouse don’t always determine who is right for the role. Janie's relationships with her first two husbands respectively show that love does not come out of marriage. Before Janie's first marriage, she was naive to what marriage was and how it would work.
In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston uses speech as a tool to show the progression of the story. Janie Crawford, the main character of the novel, finds her true identity and ability to control her voice through many hardships. When Janie’s grandmother dies she is married off, to be taken care of. In each marriage that follows, she learns what it is to be a woman with a will and a voice. Throughout the book, Janie finds herself struggling against intimidating men who attempt to victimize her into a powerless role.
In Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie suffers from hardship in two relationships before she can find her true love. Janie explains to her best friend, Pheoby, how she searches for love. Therefore Pheoby wants to hear the true story, rather than listening to the porch sitters. Throughout the book Janie experiences different types of love with three different men; Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and Vergible "Tea Cake" Woods. At 16 Janie marries Logan Killicks.
In The Eyes are Watching God, the author Zora Neale Hurston expresses the struggles of women and black societies of the time period. When Hurston published the book, communities were segregated and black communities were full of stereotypes from the outside world. Janie, who represents the main protagonist and hero, explores these communities on her journey in the novel. Janie shows the ideals of feminism, love, and heroism in her rough life in The Eyes. Janie, as the hero of the novel, shows the heroic qualities of determination, empathy, and bravery.
After leaving Logan and marrying Joe, she was very happy and seemed to be in love but soon after becomes a “trophy wife” and was just going through the motions of marriage. “No matter what Jody did, she said nothing. She had learned how to talk some and leave some… She got nothing from Jody except what money could buy, and she was giving away what she didn’t value”(Huston, 76). At this point Janie had fully accepted the fact that she wasn’t going to have love in her marriage, and didn’t really care. At this point Janie’s character starts to develope into a more independent woman who cared less about what he husband wanted and more about what she wanted.
In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston reveals that being silenced results in a loss of power. Janie’s first husband, Logan, tells her to be quiet, limiting her power in the relationship. Janie and Logan discuss their relationship in bed together. When Janie suggests that she could leave him, Logan doesn’t even address the idea.
Her purpose was to sensitize and show the audience the emotional effects of gender inequality. Love, society, freedom, dreams, goals, compassion, gender, and marriage are the main themes in the novel. All these together form the story of an innocent and dreamer woman named Janie Crawford that tries to find love in her three marriages. Throughout the novel, she creates meaning to the dependence of marriage to gender roles, and emphasizes how this can shape relationships in a social way. Therefore, women and men play a role that affects positively and negatively marriages in order to represent a particular social group.
In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie merely wants to love someone, but that choice is ripped out of her hands when Nanny makes her marry someone she does not love. This marriage as well as another one does not work out because she never learns to love them. Finally, she meets Tea Cake, and falls madly in love with him even though he is a lot younger than she is. He is someone that she can truly love while still being able to be herself. They go through their struggles as well and sadly, he dies by the end of the novel.
Their Eyes were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, begins by showing what is occurring in the present of the main character’s life. Janie, the main character of this story, is returning to Eatonville, Florida the town she once called home. Upon her return the townspeople gossip about her and make speculations about where she has been. They also wonder what happened to Tea Cake, the young man with whom she ran off. Of all the townspeople, only one person stood up for Janie and did not give in to the gossip.
The gender roles that Janie experiences ultimately prove to be the downfall of her first two marriages. Her relationships become rocky as she begins to chafe under the pressure of satisfying the men’s expectations. Unfortunately, these two marriages were likely not the only ones to perish during the same time period for the same reasons.
