ipl-logo

Gender Roles In Their Eyes Were Watching God By Hurston

1464 Words6 Pages

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. Janie should follow the stereotypical, traditional role women follow, where “men are encouraged… to place [themselves] at the center… while women are forced to center around and serve the needs” of others (Ellison 98). The main goal of women is to take care of the family and the home. Janie, including all other women around the world should be satisfied with her life as the less powerful sex. “A gulf of inequality between men and women… establishes men’s superiority and normative status” (Ellison 98). “The women actively participated in their part of the work, therefore, they complement the men’s part” (Gonzalez 32). This is seen when “the men hunt game and the women clean and dry the meat. The women are …show more content…

She also describes how some women, like Janie, are able to overcome the stereotypical roles. These stereotypical roles should not play a part in society. Women should not just rely on their husband, following the traditional roles of women, being satisfied with her life as the weaker sex. Women should be like Janie, searching for their inner strength to gain their happiness while overcoming these ancient viewpoints about women. So, how will this issue be buried in the years to come? Will women be able to conquer this stereotypical

Show More
Related
293 Words | 2 Pages

She expected to obey for her husband like others. “He ordered Janie to tie up her hair around the store” reveals that she did everything to his happiness not for her. Even though she is a wife of a mayor, she didn’t get any privilege rather she lost her social relationship with other people. She lived under the dominance of her husband

Read More
478 Words | 2 Pages

She does not care about what society or her grandmother wants her to do. She took a stand, not only for gender equality but also independence for herself. Janie is tired of being a servant, specifically to Joe, but also to society and her grandmother?s expectation. Janie wants equality, independence, and happiness. This response is the start of a ?new?

Read More
1030 Words | 5 Pages

In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, we follow our protagonist, Janie, through a journey of self-discovery. We watch Janie from when she was a child to her adulthood, slowly watching her ideals change while other dreams of hers unfortunately die. This is shown when Jane first formulates her idea of love, marriage, and intimacy by comparing it to a pear tree; erotic, beautiful, and full of life. After Janie gets married to her first spouse, Logan Killicks, she doesn’t see her love fantasy happening, but she waits because her Nanny tells her that love comes after marriage. Janie, thinking that Nanny is wise beyond her years, decides to wait.

Read More
997 Words | 4 Pages

Janie’s struggle to find love stems from the elder women in her life. Both her mother and her grandmother had horrific experience with men. This causes Janie’s grandmother to teach her to steer clear of love. Janie does not rule out the option of finding love, though. In fact, she does the opposite.

Read More
452 Words | 2 Pages

Foster develops the concept that an illness is never just an illness in How to Read Literature Like a Professor. This is evident in Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God through the symbolism of the illnesses that impact Janie’s life. Foster explains that a prime literary disease “should have strong symbolic or metaphorical possibilities” (Foster 224). Hurston utilizes this concept in her novel, the characters developing illnesses that represent Janie’s freedom and independence.

Read More
827 Words | 4 Pages

Throughout Janie’s life, she searched for real love, which she first envisioned under a pear tree at sixteen. Her kiss with Johnny Taylor started her journey of finding that love. It was then followed by her marriage with Logan Killicks, then Jody Starks, and finally Tea Cake Woods. Through her journey, she makes many sacrifices which are all worth it when she achieves her dream with Tea Cake. Although Tea Cake dies, Janie is at peace because she accomplished what she had dreamed of finding her entire life with him.

Read More
633 Words | 3 Pages

The United States Constitution states that the country values liberty, life, and happiness for all of its citizens. These three values shape the ideal American experience. Most view it as living freely, where all men, women, and races are created equal, and where oppression of genders and races does not exist. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, however, Zora Neale Hurston challenges the traditional view of this experience by illustrating how gender roles and racism change it, manifesting that it is not close to what the average citizen goes through, especially if he or she is black.

Read More
118 Words | 1 Pages

In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, she uses her characters to challenge the gender roles of that time. In her book, women are the submissive and weaker gender. They cannot gain power without a influential or wealthy man backing her up which is usually connected by marriage. Considering since women have no powers in society, in marriages they also don’t have much power, therefore the husband suppresses their wives and doesn’t give them any freedom. Because the females are scared of the males, they don't fight back and just keep it in.

Read More
1537 Words | 7 Pages

In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God By Zora Neale Hurston, Hurston reveals a lot about gender inequality, woman sexuality and abjection toward

Read More
197 Words | 1 Pages

Like other Southern women authors of the early twentieth century, Hurston does not categorically reject the association of women and nature, but reconstructs that bond as empowering and active in contrast to the passive identification with the tamed nature of the pastoral garden. In Their Eyes , one important way that Hurston counters the pastoral ideal of the middle landscape is by incorporating elements of Afro-Caribbean Voodoo that undermine the initial separation of humans and nature on which the pastoral myth depends. Replacing the polarized categories of culture/nature, male/female, and subject/object with a more fluid, relative, and interdependent model, Hurston envisions a more egalitarian society of communal values free from the ideology of dominance that characterizes the masculine gaze on a feminized landscape of the male pastoral tradition. She also suggests in her best-known novel that the acquisitive values of white-dominated society fosters an alienating conception of nature as something distinctly “other” estranging people from a natural world regarded as little more than an amalgamation of commodities.

Read More
620 Words | 3 Pages

A strong-willed woman refuses to be manipulated no matter the role she plays. In the novel, “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston and the short story, “Hills like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway, there is a common theme of independence blooming from judgment. While Hurston focuses on true development, including puberty and relationships, Hemingway highlights reproductive rights and the role of women during this time. Hurston portrays Janie as a minority, illustrating her with flawless mixed skin and beautiful long hair that symbolizes her freedom throughout the novel. Mrs. Turner says Janie is “a heaven of straight haired, thin-lipped, high-nose-bone white seraphs…

Read More
978 Words | 4 Pages

In Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston develops a contrast between the male and female genders of the time period of the story, and the male and female gender of today. Hurston wrote this novel in or about a time when women were considered simple-minded , women were disempowered by the empowered man in the relationship, and women can only gain power through marriage. But when Janie kisses Johnny Taylor, her view of men changes after seeing “a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was a marriage!

Read More
697 Words | 3 Pages

Women are confined to single roles and are expected to be submissive and respectful. When Joe married Janie, he forced her into a role of subservience. Hurston indicates that Joe attempted to mold Janie into what white women do on a daily basis which is to “sit on their high stools on the porches of their house and relax.” Doing this, Joe believes he is granting his wife all the wishes she ever wanted while neglecting the fact that Janie takes pleasure in the simple things in life like chatting, laughing, fishing and dancing. “Janie [especially] loved the conversation[s]” that took place on the porch and sometimes “she thought up good stories on the mule, but Joe had forbidden her to indulge” because he didn’t want her to talk after those “trashy people” (Page 104).

Read More
634 Words | 3 Pages

Hurston establishes this early on in the novel, so that Janie's personal growth and development as a woman is evident throughout her journey. In the 1930s, it was believed that women should do the tasks required of them. Wom-en could have been compared to mules. This is shown when readers see how much influence Janie’s husband Joe has on what she is permitted to do, such as tasks and conversations. “Janie loved the conversation

Read More
873 Words | 4 Pages

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston uses lots of characterization and figurative language to give the reader an inside on Janie’s feelings and surroundings. In chapter the way the men focus of Janie’s physical features, and women criticize Janie’s hygiene and looks allows the reader to make an image of how Janie looks. The men were “saving with the mind what they lost with the eye,” and the women “took the faded shirt and muddy overalls and laid them away for remembrance,” this also shows how the women were going to keep that image of Janie in their head to hold over her (Hurston 2). Janie has a love for nature, the figurative language and metaphors allows the reader to understand Janie and her connections with nature. Hurston uses the pear tree in the backyard to show how Janie felt free and

Read More

More about Gender Roles In Their Eyes Were Watching God By Hurston

Open Document