How Does Janie Show The Power Of Women In Their Eyes Were Watching God

The Black Woman and The Divine: How Their Eyes Were Watching God Deconstructs Systems of Power

The structure to power is an illusion constructed by people to subjugate people. Their Eyes Were Watching God serves to explore this, by following Janie, a mixed black woman in the 1930s, through her three marriages and the events that occur throughout them. In the beginning of the novel, she is naive, isolated, and unable to escape the abuse of her first husband, Logan Killicks. Her elopement with Jody Starks is no better, with him positioning her as a trophy wife and denying her connection and agency in Eatonville, the all-black town he is mayor of. Following his death, she marries Tea Cake, a young man who refuses to follow social norms. She finds

Through the disbelief of societal values, Janie escapes the internalized hatred of those who believe in such rhetoric. After running away with Tea Cake, Janie meets several figures in the book, most notably Mrs. Turner, a self-hating black woman. During Janie's interactions with her, Hurston writes, “Through indiscriminate suffering, men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion...Half gods are worshiped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood…Mrs. Turner, like all other believers, had built an altar to the unattainable—Caucasian characteristics for all…”(153). Mrs. Turner believes in and enforces a system of power that is ultimately fruitless, as she is unable to assimilate to the whiteness that she so desperately desires. Even so, she chooses this ‘worship’ through the belief that this

In the beginning of the novel, Janie lives with her grandmother, who tells her that black women are “...de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see”(59). Black women during this time were perceived as the lowliest position in society. This is reinforced within Janie through generations of trauma and the unfortunate reality of oppression within this time period of America. Her grandmother, a black woman herself, equates black women to ‘mules, as they are continuously dehumanized by both white society and their own men, having no power over other humans. However Janie’s grandmother chooses to say that they are mules of the world, rather than simply mules, implying that she acknowledges that this discrimination is a result of perceived reality, rather than truth. Janie gradually forsakes this message, Hurston writing at the end of the novel, “ Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes!”(243). Janie “pulls in” the horizon, showing an agency within the world she previously did not have. And through this agency, she learns to appreciate life for what it is, and experience the world through the joy of it being her own. Throughout the novel, this agency was continuously denied from her, through the