Janie Crawford In Taking Back Our Bodies, By Zora Neale Hurston

“Women are a colonized people” (qtd. in Grimstad and Rennie 33). In “Taking Back Our Bodies”, Robin Morgan concisely sums up the definition of women during her historic time period. Similarly, the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God further supports the quote of Morgan. Written by Zora Neale Hurston, the novel is about an African American woman who faces the challenges of her life and afterwards successfully learns from them. This African American woman, Janie Crawford, by the end of her life experiences three types of lives; in each one she not only becomes a little bit happier but also her hardships get tougher. During her second phase of life as a woman, Janie Crawford experiences a horrible relationship with a man named Joe Starks. Even

According to Starks, he believes that Janie is too good for the townspeople. He believes that she is the mayor’s wife, which means that she must act superior and reserved from them: “The wife of the Mayor was not just another woman as she had supposed. She slept with authority and so she was part of it in the town mind. She couldn’t get but so close to most of them in spirit” (Hurston 46). But this is the hardest command for her to listen. Janie, after her horrible life with Logan, desires to return back to the people. She has for a long time been isolated and alone. Now she wants to be free. But Joe is not allowing this wish to come true. Joe, on the other hand, is actually doing two things. First he tells Janie that she is the mayor’s wife so she must act like one. And second, Joe ridicules Janie and insults her in front of townspeople. In a way, Joe’s male supremacy is worse than Logan’s in that it plays with Janie

Now this issue may seem insignificant. It may even be seen as another example that Hurston is giving us about Joe’s male dominance over Janie. But even though this problem is very insignificant, the issue is very different from the other cases. Joe Starks does this to Janie for a reason. And it actually isn’t wrong. Joe Starks forces Janie to bind her hair up because he knows that his wife is in the eyes of most men in town: “And one night he caught Walter standing behind Janie and brushing the back of his hand back and forth across the loose end of her braid ever so lightly so as to enjoy the feel of it without Janie knowing what he was doing” (Hurston 55). So in this case, Joe’s male dominance was right over Janie. All he wanted to do is to protect her. But even though he wants to help her, Joe still ridicules Janie and this small act of kindness that even Janie did not find out about is nothing to all the insults and ridicules he put onto Janie with his male