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Examples Of Race Gender And Social Norms In Their Eyes Were Watching God

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Race, Gender, and Social Norms In the book Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston it focused on a woman named Janie who was on the quest of finding true love. Hurston made sure she included the realities of the era in which the book was written which is the 1900’s. Hurston made sure to include issues like race, gender, and social norms into Janie’s life and everything and everyone that was around her. Janie was born a mulatto meaning she is of the black and white race, she was very different from everyone else because of her physical traits, and she received jealousy from the women, and lust and desire from the men. Although Janie was beautiful, she was also a woman so therefore she was taken advantage of by the men she was with. …show more content…

White people went against the true description of Jesus that was written in the bible, they used this to their advantage because Africans were naïve to the evil doings of the whites. The Europeans took advantage of this their cluelessness because they saw that they were starting to have a great influence on them. Some of the Africans who accepted Jesus started to see white people as the superior because of the out of the world being they began to worship. White supremacy continued even after white people had shipped millions of Africans to other parts of the world. In cities like Belgium, Barcelona, Poland, and New York City white people put black into human zoos where they can be fetish over black people (Schofield “Human Zoos: When real people were exhibits”). Exhibits that displayed a black woman with curves and elongated labia were fantasized over by white men. There were Negro villages in France that dehumanized blacks and compared then to other animals like …show more content…

There were many organizations that were working for women’s rights but it was only for white women. After years of struggling it was not until 1920 that all women of different skin tones were able to vote in America (Tolnay 17). During the 1900’s black women were starting to take charge of their lives, many of them moved away from the rural south to urban cities where they can find better jobs. Some African American women were very involved during the women’s suffrage times. A group of black women created organizations like the Alpha Suffrage club of Chicago, there were also suffrage marches organized by Alice Paul’s congressional union in a segregated manner (Tolnay 20). African American women began to take more control of their lives, more activists were formed hair dressers, founders of various colleges, musicians, poets, sororitiesand many

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Being a woman of color in the 1920’s was no easy task. Gender and racial inequalities have made progress throughout history, however during the time of this novel, and even in our modern day world they are still present and causing conflict. This is an issue that should be focused on and taken more seriously. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie does a fantastic job overcoming several of these inequalities in order to pursue her own happiness, overall depicting her as an extremely powerful role model for young

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The novel tells readers that she was teased for her clothes, hair and skin complexion in school. It says that Janie thought she was white until she

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In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston acknowledges the idea of sexism when she addresses that Janie Starks, the protagonist, never got to fulfill her dreams. Janie’s grandmother, Nanny, wanted the best for her granddaughter so she married her off to a man named Logan Killicks, a man who had a small farm and good wealth “Janie and Logan got married in Nanny’s parlor of a Saturday evening with three cakes and big platters of fried rabbit and chicken,” (Hurston 3). Years has passed within the marriage and Janie never found love for Logan. Logan comparing her to his ex-wife, discriminated Janie’s place of position, “Mah fust wife never bothered me ‘bout choppin’ no wood nohow. She’d grab dat ax and sling chips lak

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During the 1920s, there was a period that was called the Harlem Renaissance, during which African Americans got the opportunity to be creative and express themselves through music and art. Langston Hughes and Louis Armstrong were a few of the famous people who came from this period in the 1920s. Another famous person that came out of the Harlem Renaissance was Zora Neale Hurston, a multi-talented African American woman who wrote stories that described the life and struggles of the 1920s through the stories she wrote. Hurston was an American writer, who was able to connect to the hearts of most people from all kinds of different races and religions during the period. Even today, her readers still feel the connection Hurston was trying to make

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Over time, women have slowly gained more and more rights. They have become more prominent in society, making more decisions that influence their lives, as well as the lives of other people. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston highlights how the gender roles of men and women differ including women being less powerful than men, how Janie had the strength and determination to gain her own happiness, and how stereotypical roles should not play a part in society. Some people view Janie as a woman who should be dependent on her husband, following the traditional roles of women, being satisfied with her life as the less powerful sex.

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The women’s rights movement finally began around the mid 1800s. This was also around the time black people were slaves. Eventually, after the civil war was over and slavery was made illegal, the Fourteenth Amendment was passed, which gave all men the right to vote. Many women were angered by this. Shortly after

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Their Eyes Were Watching God is full of many topics that would still be considered controversial today. One of the most important that Hurston decides to expand upon is the gender inequality/feminism portrayed in the novel. Gender inequality, and just gender in general, is a very important theme in Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, and through this theme Janie has the internal conflict of whether she should be a free and independent woman or if she should stick to the traditional womanly roles that were expected at the time. Throughout the novel Janie breaks stereotypical feminine roles by marrying three times, to men who were very different from each other. During her first marriage to Logan, Janie not only had to struggle to

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Culture defines us and how we are as we get older, it plays a big role growing up. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, the main character Janie goes through many different challenges to find herself and others. No matter how difficult things got, she always had a positive attitude, or stood up for herself. That's how she was raised. The people around her too, had positive outlooks.

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Allison E. Koehle Mrs. Horgas AP Literature 06 February 2023 The Female Identity Women are constantly told who they are supposed to be, today and even more in the past. As a woman in the 21st century, I am still suffocated by old-fashioned societal expectations, especially inferiority to and dependence on men. The novel Their Eyes Were Watching God was written by Zora Neale Hurston in the 1930s when women had far less independence than they do now. In this novel, the main character, Janie, fights back against the external forces trying to control her, as many women do today.

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Differences are what make people interesting. Different religions, cultures, and beliefs affect everyone and are interesting to see. However, sometimes these differences cause people to be persecuted. Prejudices threaten the cultural diversity that make the world such an interesting place. In Zora Neal Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, the main character, Janie is ostracized from her community because of the color of her skin.

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Patriarchal societies silence women by reinforcing structural violence against women through projecting discriminatory gender roles that often place limitations on how far they can go. Zora Neile Hurston, an African American author, Maxine Hong Kingston, an Asian American author, and Louise Elriche, an author with Native American heritage speak up against the struggles that women of color encounter on a regular basis by exploring themes of Sexual assault and rape. In “Their Eyes Are Watching God '' by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie, a female protagonist, grew up in a society that discriminated against women of color by their gender and race. In the memoir “The Women Warrior” by Maxine Kingston, Kingston, the narrator, three books portray the devastating

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During Progressive Era, there were many reforms that occurred, such as Child Labor Reform or Pure Food and Drug Act. Women Suffrage Movement was the last remarkable reform, and it was fighting about the right of women to vote, which was basically about women’s right movement. Many great leaders – Elizabeth Cad Stanton and Susan B. Anthony - formed the National American Women Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Although those influential leaders faced hardship during this movement, they never gave up and kept trying their best. This movement was occurred in New York that has a huge impact on the whole United States.

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The life of Women in the late 1800s. Life for women in the 1800s began to change as they pushed for more rights and equality. Still, men were seen as better than women, this way of thinking pushed women to break out from the limitations imposed on their sex. In the early 1800s women had virtually no rights and ultimately were not seen as people but they rather seen as items of possession, it wasn’t until the late 1800s that women started to gain more rights. The Civil War actually opened opportunities for women to gain more rights, because with many of the men gone to war women were left with the responsibilities that men usually fulfilled during that time period.

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Zora Neale Hurston’s writing in Their Eyes Were Watching God, reflects the Harlem Renaissance through Janie 's individuality, and departs from the Harlem Renaissance with the common recurrence of black woman empowerment. In the novel, Hurston reflects the ideas of the Harlem renaissance with the ways in which Janie rebels and goes against norms for women.

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