Their Eyes Were Watching God Relationships

Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is a novel written in 1937 that showed what it was like to be a woman at the time, as well as leave commentary on womanhood and marriage in general. Throughout the novel, the main character Janie goes on a journey of self-growth, experiencing several important relationships in her life that affect how she views the world and how she interacts with others. One of the most influential relationships that Janie has is the one with her Grandmother, Nanny. It is this relationship that affects Janie deeply, and Nanny’s influence on her can be seen in how Janie responds to things in her life. The author uses this relationship to show that what young woman are taught from a young age is carried

Janie begins her first marriage with Logan Killicks questioning what love is, and convincing herself that she will love Logan eventually. She tells herself, “Nanny and the old folks had said it, so it must be so” (21). Janie has another important conversation with her grandmother not long into her marriage. Janie expresses her concerns about not loving her husband, but what she gets in response changes her. Nanny tells Janie, “If you don’t want him, you sho oughta” (23). She also tells her that all love does is make one sweat and work, as well as “wait a while, baby, Yo’ mind will change” (24). All Janie wants is someone she can love, and “things sweet wid mah marriage” (24), yet she is told that she cannot have that. The end of paragraph three the line “Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman” (25), shows that Janie internalizes what she has heard. After Janie meets Joe “Jody” Starks, the man she would marry next, she still does not act for a while, “the memory of Nanny was still powerful and strong” (29). Jody to Janie “spoke for far horizon” (29) and “spoke for a change and a chance” (29). The horizon is something that symbolizes a better life, a connection with herself and nature that she longs for. In leaving Logan for Joe, Janie is hoping that from now on things would be different for her. Unfortunately, things would not be that way. Jody as shown in

It is not until Jody dies that Janie finally realizes the impact that Nanny had on her. As Janie reflects by herself in her room, she realizes she had hidden her true feelings about her grandmother and that she hates her for what she did. Nanny had taken her horizon, and rather than let Janie free to find it, and tied it “about her granddaughter’s neck tight enough to choke her” (89). Janie describes it as if she “had found a jewel inside down inside herself” (90) and rather than let it shine, she was “set in the market-place to sell” (90). These thoughts show significant growth in Janie’s character, as before she had just gone with what her grandmother said, and did not let herself truly feel. Once she is free from Joe Starks, Janie is able to accept things about her life and move on. Although she realized things about her grandmother, and claims later that “Ah done lived Grandma’s way, now Ah means tuh live mine” (114), the lasting effects that Nanny and her marriages had on her can still be felt in her relationship with Tea Cake. Tea Cake’s and Janie’s relationship starts with Janie being insecure in Tea Cake’s motivations with her. Janie was hurt in her previous relationships, and so is not confident in her feelings towards him, even trying to resist the thoughts. Despite this, Janie marries him and is able to do things that she could not do before in her previous relationships, and