ipl-logo

Their Eyes Were Watching God Character Analysis

2253 Words10 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Their eyer were watching god essays

This essay discusses two young women coming of age Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. In Their Eyes Were Watching God Janie struggles to grow up in three different marriages. On the other hand, Jane from Jane Eyre does a lot of developing and personal growth through her relationship with the one family. The focus will be on how these girls are similar and different. The reader will see how coming of age is different for every person. When Janie was a young girl she had romance on the brain. She had her first kiss underneath a blossoming pear tree. Her Nanny does not want to her be kissing any boys until she is married (Hurston 18-19). She does not want her grand daughter to be an easy girl. …show more content…

(Meaning she wants to make sweet passionate love). This helps Janie’s character to show imagery with plants and flowers. This helps Janie be looked at as a natural beauty that has a gentle nature and has a readiness attitude for romance. Janie’s belief that loves comes after marriage is a false belief that she learns pretty quickly in her first marriage to Logan Killicks. The reader doesn’t know too much about Logan except that he seems to be a one-dimensional character. What the reader does know is that Logan is portrayed as old and ugly, which is completely opposite of his beautiful and young wife, Janie. She seems him as a violation of her dream of true love. When the reader first meets Logan he speaks in the sweetest way to Janie, which gives Janie hope that this marriage is a good one and she is marrying a great man. Shortly after they are married realizes that Logan is somewhat of a liar because now he only speaks to her in anger and commands her to do things. Logan gets very …show more content…

John, a missionary, for the first time she is the little girl lost in the woods. St. John is very passionate about his work as a missionary in India, which is what he is home prepping for. Once the reader gets to know St. John he is a hard and cold man, who focuses on one thing and that is marrying a beautiful woman and taking her with him to be his missionary wife. This makes the reader and Jane ignore the fact that he is handsome, blonde, and blue-eyed. Now to focus on that Jane came into St. John’s life poor, starving and alone. St. John gets to know her fairly quickly and realizes that she is amazing and beautiful woman. This is why he gets her the job as the governess for Mr. Rochester’s adopted daughter Adele. Jane teaches Adele how to speak English, while at the same time falls madly in love with her father. Who at first glance is not an attractive man by any means. This is a big way that Jane proves herself as a strong and beautiful woman because she never judges a book by its cover. She falls in love with the man that she gets to know on the inside, not by what is on the outside. She falls in love with the man who speaks French to her and tries to spoil her any chance that he gets. Rochester said to Jane “My bride is here," he said, again drawing me to him, "because my equal is here, and my likeness. Jane, will you marry me?” (Bronte, 87). This is one of the sweetest ways for a man to ask a woman, in my

Show More
Related
428 Words | 2 Pages

A LIFE FULL OF BLISS Fitting in is what society is all about, it seems that following what others tell you is more valuable than being your true self. In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel “ Their Eyes Were Watching God” shows that living as who you are brings more joy to yourself. With the main character Janie, we know how living in a society of judgement affected her. From living in Eatonville and being married three times, Janie goes from living in unhappiness to fulfilling herself with what brings joy into her life.

Read More
880 Words | 4 Pages

When Janie first starts looking for love, she agrees to her grandmother's demands and gets married to Logan Killicks while she is only 16. To Janie's grandmother, Logan represents a stable, comfortable life because he is one of the few black men that owns the land. Before marrying Logan Killick, Janie used to wish "to be a pear tree-any tree in bloom!" With kissing bees singing. "

Read More
769 Words | 4 Pages

It is not confrontation that keeps Janie strong, but her retreat into silence that makes her strong. Through her hardships, Janie finds her true identity and the ability to control her voice. Janie uses speech as a vehicle for liberation through her marriages with Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and Vergible Woods.

Read More
543 Words | 3 Pages

(Hurston 24). Logan does not show any love for Janie. Janie’s unhappiness taught her that love can not be forced upon anyone. Joe prevails as the first man to show, Janie attention and affection. Both, Janie and Joe run off to Eatonville to start a life together.

Read More
920 Words | 4 Pages

After leaving Logan and marrying Joe, she was very happy and seemed to be in love but soon after becomes a “trophy wife” and was just going through the motions of marriage. “No matter what Jody did, she said nothing. She had learned how to talk some and leave some… She got nothing from Jody except what money could buy, and she was giving away what she didn’t value”(Huston, 76). At this point Janie had fully accepted the fact that she wasn’t going to have love in her marriage, and didn’t really care. At this point Janie’s character starts to develope into a more independent woman who cared less about what he husband wanted and more about what she wanted.

Read More
332 Words | 2 Pages

In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God love is one of the main themes that is recurrent throughout the novel. Janie struggles a lot since a young age with love and marriage. She goes through many marriages and only finds one man she truly loves and feels herself with. Her first husband Logan Killicks taught her how love is not simply made from marriage; she did not really love her second husband, Joe Starks, because he tended to belittle and isolate her. Both husbands made Janie feel that marriage and love did not correlate and that marriage is mainly for social status.

Read More
853 Words | 4 Pages

From a younger age, Janie is immediately pressured into a relationship, specifically with somebody who has plenty of money by Nanny’s standards. However, as much as the grandma could be blamed for this, she also enabled herself to fall into the trap of desperation. The first occurrence seems to be on page 28, when “She saw 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! She had been summoned to behold a revelation.

Read More
1015 Words | 5 Pages

In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie Crawford, a woman who is in search of her authentic self and for real love goes through a journey where she survives and triumphs through three different marriages. Janie's meaning of love is defined during the pear tree vision she experiences. Hurston exposes Janie to the erotic feeling of pleasure of a relationship at the age of sixteen. As Janie "saw a dust bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom" (Hurston 11), Janie’s women hood started beyond this point as she came to a revelation “so this was a marriage” (Hurston 11), she translated the feeling of pleasure she felt from the pear tree into what a relationship of marriage is and meant to her. Hurston takes us

Read More
1443 Words | 6 Pages

She soon meets a man that she falls in love with, Edward Rochester. The situations that she must endure while living at Thornfield are a testament to Jane’s now unwavering faith. She faces much hardship and temptation, but one of the hardest fights she faces is when she finds that the man she is going to marry is already married. The depth of hurt she feels and the prodding that Rochester does to try to get her to stay with him pound at her like the waves of the sea.

Read More
846 Words | 4 Pages

St. John thinks that Jane is “suitable for labor”, which is the only reason he wants to marry her—not because he loves her. He doesn’t see it fit to actually love the person he is going to marry, rather he wants the marriage to be convenient and serve a purpose—there need not be any love involved. In Jane’s case, St. John says that “God and nature intended you for a missionary’s wife.” This speaks strongly to the fact that St. John will only marry Jane because he thinks she is fit to be a missionary’s wife, and he is a missionary. He doesn’t actually love her; the marriage is just convenient for

Read More
903 Words | 4 Pages

To simply the question, does she choose the Prince, who is saintly, and on a mission to help others, or does she choose the Beast who hold so much passion, that it is hard to contain? When meeting a stranger you immediately take in their appearance and features, just as Jane does after coming face to face with Mr. Rochester for the first time, noting that he had a “dark face, with stern features and a heavy brow; his eyes and gathered eyebrows looked ireful and thwarted” (Bronte Ch.12). During this encounter it becomes obvious that Rochester is more than a little rough around the edges, being rude and abrupt, while openly judging Jane. Shortly after her encounter with Rochester, Jane realized that the craggy faced man is the wealthy owner of Thornfield Hall.

Read More
1691 Words | 7 Pages

Both characters, venturing out of their gender roles, find ways to compliment and figure out who the other person really is, and, in the end, a burgeoning love fully blooms. When examining the gender roles of Mr. Rochester and Jane, both are a blend of each and life seems better when conventional gender roles are forgotten. In Rochester and Jane’s first meeting, the two begin to show their blended gender roles immediately. Rochester is first described as having a “dark face” with “stern features”, with a complexion that seems, “ireful and thwarted” (146).

Read More
1378 Words | 6 Pages

In The Awakening, Kate Chopin’s protagonist Edna Pontellier possesses “that outward existence which conforms, the inward life that questions.” Similarly, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and its titular character obeys social norms of the time period, while questioning those social norms as she grows up in a middle to upperclassmen-like society in 1830’s England. Jane Eyre conforms and adapts to society while inwardly questioning it in the many periods in her life, including her childhood with the Reeds, her education at Lowood, and her relationship with Rochester at Thornfield, teaching her important values in life as she progresses and grows in the novel. In the beginning of the novel, readers are shown that Jane Eyre has a very critical viewpoint

Read More
933 Words | 4 Pages

Charlotte Brontë´s novel Jane Eyre is considered one of Britain´s most classical literary work. The story consists of a hybrid of three genres, the Gothic novel, the Romance novel and the Bildungsroman and many critics have praised the novel. Though, the novel got a great deal of good criticism in contemporary time, its immediate reception was controversial. The story plays out during the Victorian period in Britain where the social norms were strict and there was a big gap of equality between the genders. This essay will analyse how the gender roles are portrayed and if they are modern or traditional.

Read More
805 Words | 4 Pages

Topic: Marriage in “Jane Eyre” In “Jane Eyre” Charlotte Brontë rejects the traditional role of women subdued by social conceptions and masculine authority by generating an identity to her female character. Thesis: Jane´s personality will bring into being a new kind of marriage based on equality, meanwhile her choice for romantic fulfilment will depend solely on her autonomy and self-government. Introduction Charlotte Brontë´s “Jane Eyre” stands as a model of genuine literature due to the fact that it breaks all conventions and stereotypes and goes beyond the boundaries of common romance in order to obtain love, identity and equality. 1.

Read More

More about Their Eyes Were Watching God Character Analysis

Related Topics

Open Document