Theme Of Masculinity In Their Eyes Were Watching God

Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God reveals the role of masculinity as well as femininity in one’s life. Janie’s various relationships develop her sense of femininity, as the different men who she becomes involved with all possess different masculine traits. The progression from Logan to Jody to Tea Cake allows Janie to find her own feminine identity due to the different hardships she endures throughout her relationship with the three men. The vast difference in characteristics of the three men emphasizes the role that masculinity plays in a consensual, reciprocal relationship, and what ideal reciprocity looks like. While men typically exude power through control and influence, women tend to find strength through inner voice

Tea Cake functions under a loving, gentle personality and proves this personality through his treatment of Janie. Following years of abuse and disrespect, Janie is presented with the opportunity to spend time with a man who listens to her, treats her like a lady, and provides her with compliments often. Tea Cake expresses his masculinity through compassion and kindness rather than through authority and suppression. Tea Cake is the exception to the three men that Janie involves herself with, as he is the only man with whom she can connect with on an emotional level. Both Logan and Jody could not understand Janie as a woman and as a person and relied on her for either physical satisfaction or labor. Tea Cake considers himself as a man as he is always there for Janie and is willing to perform all sorts of gallantries for her as he says, “You don’t have tuh say, if it wuzn’t fuh me, baby, cause Ah’m heah, and then Ah want yuh tuh know it’s uh man heah” (Hurston 109). Tea Cake’s character challenges the preconceived notion of masculinity and how a man behaves as he is nothing like the brutish, powerful men who Janie was with before him. Tea Cake exhibits an unconventional sense of masculinity through his gentle and compassionate nature which contrasts with the typical male characteristics of power and

Nanny plays an integral role in the development of Janie because she becomes Janie’s guardian and mother. Nanny also balances the role of Janie’s caregiver and source of wisdom. Nanny, in turn, provides Janie with a source of reason careful intuition, especially with regards to men. This reasoning helps Janie to be more careful about putting herself out there for all to see and allows her to be analytical. Consequently, Nanny embraces her belief that a woman needs to be careful with the men she meets and seek a more stable relationship in life. Janie even marries Logan Killicks, a man of stability, much to her grandmother’s own arrangement. With Janie newly married to Logan, the reader can even see that Janie values stability and a man that will take care of her. Much of this value Janie places in a steady marriage stems from her grandmother’s belief that it is better to marry a man who will treat a woman with some decency than purely off of what one believes is love. Janie’s marriage to Logan even brings Janie to a realization that she does not truly love Logan. Hurston writes, “She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman” (Hurston 25). Janie now realizes that she never really loved Logan but only felt artificial attraction because the values her grandmother instilled in Janie were