Society persists in restraining what someone can be, when they can be it, how they can be it, and where they can be it, a precedent set to continue throughout generations. In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, men hold control over women to perpetuate the existence of gender roles that are stipulated in women their whole lives. Womanhood is viewed as a service to men rather than an experience of life with women being equated to the men in their lives. Women are always perceived through the lens of how society believes they should be. Throughout Hurston’s, Their Eyes Were Watching God, the progression of an individual’s womanhood is on a pedestal in front of everybody for the sake of belittling and impeding women’s lives without …show more content…
So then, this instilled in Janie that what was expected of her in life was to be a wife first and a human second. The stark degrading of Janie done by all of Janie’s romantic partners portrays the lengths they will go to push their insecurities onto her. Often, this degrading was the result of jealousy, “That night he ordered Janie to tie up her hair around the store. That was all for now. She was there in the store for him to look at, not those others” (31). Joe conveys his insecurity about his security in his relationship with Janie, using possessiveness to control how she lives. After all, he knows that Janie is considered very beautiful and sees her as an item he owns. Janie’s grandmother, Nanny, forces Janie to marry Logan for a good, stable life. Nanny’s motive for her actions was to ensure that Janie does not have a life like hers, her intentions are out of love. While her intentions were pure, forcing Janie to marry Logan and not somebody she loved created an unhealthy relationship with her view of being a woman and being in love. This distorted view is expressed in the novel: “Janie's first dream was dead, so she became a woman.”