Early years in the United States were hard times for women and people of color. Throughout Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, you can see the effects on a woman’s life, while being in multiple different situations with men at that time. When viewing this novel through the gender-feminist lense you can tell the time period without being told it. These three relationships in which the main character, Janie finds herself in, shape her and make her grow into a self loving strong woman. This change did not come easily though.
The first time she kissed a boy, her grandmother, who she referred to as Nanny, immediately had a talk with her. This first kiss was her step into womanhood. As a young girl in this time period, she was put into a marriage. Nanny did this out of concern, for she had raised Janie from birth. Both Nanny and Janie’s birth mom were raped by white men. Nanny couldn’t bare to see Janie go through that as well. Her only thought was to put Janie into a relationship whether she liked it or not, to keep her from the horrors that she and her mother had gone through.
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Though they knew very little about each other and felt no initial connection, she silently hoped that eventually they would feel love for eachother. Rather than a feeling of love, she felt nothing. At this point in the novel the hopeful but helpless woman in the relationship just looking to be loved. It seems as if the man is in the power, since nothing is being