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Comparing 'Their Eyes Were Watching God And The Story Of An Hour'

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The stories Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and “The Story of an Hour,” by Kate Chopin all center around three different women and their different life experiences. Each story also tells how the lives of these three women are affected by their husbands. The narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” along with Janie and Mrs. Mallard each have different relationships with their husbands, but they each feel they are being controlled or oppressed by them. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie’s story is told through her three marriages, all three with their own problems. Janie’s first husband, Logan Killicks, controlled and verbally abused her. He tells her, “You ain’t got no particular place. It’s wherever Ah need yuh…Don’t change too many words wid me dis mawnin…” (pg 31). Logan was not the perfect husband Janie had envisioned. He wanted her to obey his every command, causing her to leave him for Joe Starks. Although great at first, Joe turned out to be just as bad, if not worse, as Logan. He forced Janie to cover up her hair, prevented her from interacting with the townspeople, and hit her for talking back to him. Tea Cake, Janie’s third and final husband, …show more content…

Just as Joe isolated Janie from the other people in Eatonville, John isolates his wife from the outside world, believing it will help her get better. Her isolation causes her depression to develop into hallucinations and insomnia. She envisions a woman on her bedroom wallpaper that is trapped behind a set of bars, trying to get out. The trapped woman represents the speaker, whose husband locks her away from the rest of the world. Her husband also resorts to belittling her and treats her like a child in order to get her to obey him. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” a man trying to cure his wife’s mental illness actually causes her to become more

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Tea Cake asks Janie to work on the field. However, Tea Cake’s intentions differed from Janie’s previous husbands because he wanted Janie to work with him so that he can spend some more time with her. He always missed her when they were apart. 3. “Only here, she could listen and laugh and even talk some herself if she wanted to.

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779 Words | 4 Pages

For example, just like Jody, Tea Cake also physically abuses Janie to display his authority over her. What makes Janie 's relationship with Tea Cake different from her other relationships is that it is based on a love that runs much deeper than her motivation in staying in her other relationships. Janie married Logan in search of love. She married Jody in search of wealth and his ambition. When both of these relationships failed, she entered into her relationship with Tea Cake with low expectations.

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1253 Words | 6 Pages

The way Jody treats Janie shows that male is still like the master of the house and the wife is there to follow his demands. We see this controlling demand throughout the time Janie spends with Jody. Janie continues on with her life to eventually meet the love of her life Tea cake. This starting out raised questions on how her 3rd marriage was going to work out after how bad all the other ones have been for Janie. When Tea Cake hits Janie it seems as almost Janie could be going back towards another failed relationship.

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536 Words | 3 Pages

She’s uh woman and her place is in de home” (43). In other words, Janie is still under control of her significant other. Similar situations such as this continue to occur throughout Janie’s relationship with the Mayor. He orders her to wear certain clothes, doesn’t let her sit outside the store she runs, etcetera. The Mayor becomes increasingly toxic towards Janie, and he eventually dies of old age.

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799 Words | 4 Pages

Janie allows men to treat her poorly several times throughout the novel. After Janie and her husband Joe Starks argue in the store about their age, Joe Starks, “struck Janie with all his might and drove her from the store” (80). By not retaliating immediately after being beaten, Janie is not portraying a powerful role model for young readers. After Sop-de-Bottom tells Tea Cake how he’s lucky that he gets to beat Janie, Tea Cake responds with, “Ah didn’t whup Janie ‘cause she

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844 Words | 4 Pages

Joe treats her disrespectfully and represses her constantly. Part of the reason he does this is to show his dominance and power in the town. This is shown when she stands up for herself and embarrasses Jody in front of the town. The book explains, “Janie had robbed him of his illusion of irresistible maleness that all men cherish, which was terrible” (79). Jody’s repression was most common in the form of verbal abuse.

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616 Words | 3 Pages

The voiceless, beautiful, store keeper pales in comparison to the smart, talented identity Janie’s thoughts demonstrate her to be. After twenty years of a growing tension, Janie’s thick rope snaps and she tells Jody how she feels Which ultimately kills him. Once again, Janie conforms to the mold of a mourning widow, dressed in black. Contrary to most people 's knowledge, she is overjoyed in the new found freedom she now possesses, but still cannot express. The idea of having to conform outwardly hurt Janie.

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1134 Words | 5 Pages

Janie doesn’t conform to what she has been told to do after this sudden change in her life. This is also exemplified when Janie gets back from the muck and talks to Phoebe about what happened to her. Janie states, “De Grand Lodge, de big convention of livin’ is just where Ah been dis year and half y’all ain’t seen me” ( Their Eyes Were Watching God 6). This further presents the idea of Janie finding her own freedom by overcoming her past. Janie was muted by others but she has found herself with Tea Cake even when everyone in Eatonville judged her without knowing who or what she really was.

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543 Words | 3 Pages

Nanny arranges this marriage for protection and not for love. As a result of her past, she forced Janie into being with Logan. In this marriage, Janie shows that she does not love him. She states, "Ah wants things sweet wid mah marriage lak when you sit under a pear tree and think. Ah..."

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920 Words | 4 Pages

Janie Crawford Killiks Starks Woods is the main character in the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, where she learns what's it's like to go from marriage to marriage looking for love. In the novel, Hurston utilizes the pivotal moment when Janie realizes that marriage doesn’t always mean love to show Janie's coming of age and psychological development which is used to show that love doesn't always come first. Logan Killicks was Janie's first marriage, which was brought about after Nanny (her grandmother) decided that she need to be married after she caught Janie and a young boy kissing when she was 16. After that Janie finds herself being thrown into some random marriage with some man she barely knew, and for a reason

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822 Words | 4 Pages

However, Janie is an African-American woman that has an overprotective grandmother, who insists that her granddaughter gets married pronto. Nonetheless, in the long run, she realizes that love she can turn and change when it is compared to the start of each of her relationships. Noticeably, when she is with Jody, a mayor of Eatonville, instead of providing her with protection after being married for nearly twenty years, he violently assaults her. Additionally, after she gets remarried to Tea Cakes, she is faced with the fact that he got rabies and has become paranoiac as he thinks that Janie is unfaithful, causing him to threaten her existence with a gun, eventually making her to kill her to save her own life.

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1428 Words | 6 Pages

Toni Morrison’s A Mercy portrays a young slave, Florens, struggles with her past as well as her life as a slave. Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God shows a woman, Janie, who struggles through various relationships in her life, but in the end, they help her find her freedom and individualism. Both stories have different story lines, but upon a closer look, it is easy to see that Florens and Janie have common factors in their lives; which includes, both characters are isolated by others, both characters want to love someone, both character’s guardians make decisions for them that they do not understand which causes conflict, and finally, both characters commit difficult actions which ends up changing their lives.

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530 Words | 3 Pages

Janie reacts in different ways to people in her life trying to control her, and this can be seen with Grannie, Jody, and Tea Cake. Grannie forces her to marry Logan, but Janie stands up for herself when she decides to leave him after Grannie dies. Throughout the novel Janie is looking for love, and she

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894 Words | 4 Pages

She couldn’t even think straight it 's was that bad. In conclusion “The Story of an Hour” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” are some of many great short stories written in the 1800’s. In “The Story of an Hour” the wife simply fight the fact that her husband died, and when she really found

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1248 Words | 5 Pages

In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator is suffering from postpartum depression. The narrator 's husband John, who also happens to be her physician, prescribes the rest cure to help lift his wife of her depressive state and ultimately heal her depression. However, the rest cure does not allow the narrator to experience any mental stimulation. Therefore, to manage her boredom the narrator begins obsessing over the pattern of the yellow wallpaper. After analyzing the pattern for awhile, the narrator witnesses a woman trapped behind bars.

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