The Relationship Between Tea Cake And Janie

After Joe’s death, Janie meets Tea Cake. Tea Cake is younger, but he is kind to Janie, unlike Joe. At first, Janie thinks he may be using her for her money, but this is proven false when he promises to be the sole wage earner and never touch her savings. Tea Cake and Janie’s relationship are drastically different from Janie’s past relationships. She is treated as an equal, rather than as a lesser human being. Even though Tea Cake treats Janie as an equal, there still is a slight power struggle in her relationship with him as she increasingly realizes her needs as an individual.Therefore it is still possible to see Tea Cake as having some degree of control over Janie until his death. There is one instance in which Janie is proven to be a vital

There was a suppressed murmur when she picked up a basket and went to work. She was already getting to be a special case on the muck. It was generally assumed that she thought herself too good to work like the rest of the women and that Tea Cake “pomped her up tuh dat.” But all day long the romping and playing they carried on behind the boss’s back made her popular right away. It got the whole field to playing off and on. Then Tea Cake would help get supper afterwards (Hurston).

This is an example of fighting against traditional gender roles. Janie, instead of staying home and taking care of the house, goes out and works the field with Tea Cake. Janie then becomes a valuable member of their team. Additionally, Tea Cake helps with supper, which destroys the typical gender roles of a man working and a woman cooking and cleaning. They are both responsible for both. “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” deeply explores traditional gender roles. It shows Janie on a journey of self-discovery. We see Janie go through drastically different relationships. One in which she is repressed, and another in which she is treated as an equal. Despite being treated as an equal, though, she is not truly herself until she loses Tea Cake. She is able to develop into her own self after her experiences with these relationships. She becomes a truly strong and confident woman. She is able to speak her mind and tell her

You need me, Christ! It is no roseate dream

That beckons me—this pretty futile seam,

It stifles me—God, must I sit and sew? I have to say, when I first read this poem, I could hardly make sense of it. This is because I have always struggled with poem analysis. I’m not sure why, but poems have always caused me a great deal of confusion. It took several reads for me to even begin to understand the message of this poem, and several more to develop a full analysis. But, now that I have that full analysis, I love this poem. I think it is an excellent example of women’s working-class writing. First and foremost, this poem is assumingly from the perspective of a female, who has a sewing job. She feels like the does nothing but sitting and sewing. She has obsessive circular thoughts, shown through the repetition of the line “I must sit and sew.” She is obsessed with the idea of no longer having to just sit and sew. She desires to go out into the world and help others that need it. But instead, she simply “must sit and