More handpicked essays just for you.
Research in african american literature
Essay on african american literature
Gender roles in their eyes were watching god
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie starts off as a young woman just embarking on her journey into adulthood. She quickly discovers her sexuality and her desire for affection while lying under a blossoming pear tree. When she acts upon her curiosity and is caught kissing a young man in the yard by her conservative Grandmother, Nanny, she is hastily married off. Nanny teaches Janie that black women are “de mule uh de world” (Hurston 14) and that being married off will save her from a troubled life. As the story continues Janie enters and escapes multiple marriages that lead her to discover her independence and her desire to be free and loved. Through her subservient relationships and marriages, Janie faces …show more content…
Arranged by Nanny because of his sixty acres of land, Janie knows that she does not love Logan. She eventually convinces herself however that she will learn to love him in time saying, “yes, she would love Logan after they were married. She could see no way for it to come about, but Nanny and the old folks had said it, so it must be so” (21). Nanny convinces Janie that she would fall in love with her husband and Janie waits patiently for the time to come, but it never does. Janie becomes lonely and isolated in their home and eventually realizes that she will never love Logan. Logan also has a certain view of what a wife should be which greatly differs from that of Janie’s. He orders her to chop and carry wood and do other manual labor, all while claiming that Janie, “done been spoilt rotten” (26). Logan continues to order Janie around and seems to ignore her as well so she begins to yearn for real love and excitement and determines, “that marriage did not make love… so she became a woman” (25). Throught the loneliness that she feels in her marriage to Logan, Janie abandons blindly following the advice of her Grandmother and her desire for love and adventure consumes her thoughts. When she is given the opportunity to attain her desires she takes it, though she still feels the pressure from her Grandmother to become a subservient housewife, in the back of her …show more content…
She is able to wear her hair as she pleases, a true sign of her new-found freedom, and feels liberated as a single, wealthy woman. She knows that she does not need a man to support her. However, she does still desire the company of an adventurous man that truly loves her. Soon enough, a man comes along that does just that. Vergible Woods, or Tea Cake as he is affectionately known, enters the town store in Eatonville and invites Janie to join him in a game of checkers. What may seem like a meaningless game actually carries great significance for Janie. She is enthralled to know that a man respects her enough to ask her to play a game that requires thinking and strategy. She finds herself, “glowing inside” because, “somebody wanted her to play. Somebody thought it natural for her to play” (96). Never before has Janie been treated with such respect or been treated as an equal in a relationship. The checkers game and its meaning is a microcosm for Janie and Tea Cake’s entire relationship. As they move around Florida and eventually wed, he continues to treat her with the respect and love that has been left to be desired in each of her previous marriages. It seems that Janie has finally found happiness in a relationship that is very different than what her Grandmother wants for her. Even when Tea
What is one’s idea of the perfect marriage? In Zora Neal Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie has a total of three marriages and her best marriage was to Tea Cake. Janie’s worst and longest marriage was to Joe Starks where she lost her dream and was never happy. The key to a strong marriage is equality between each other because in Janie’s marriage to Joe she was not treated equally, lost apart of herself and was emotionally abused, but her and Tea Cake's marriage was based on equality and she was able to fully be herself.
In the beginning years of Janie’s life, there were two people who she is dependent on. Her grandmother is Nanny, and her first husband is named Logan Killicks. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, “Janie, an attractive woman with long hair, born without benefit of clergy, is her heroine” (Forrest). Janie’s grandmother felt that Janie needs someone to depend on before she dies and Janie could no longer depend on her. In the beginning, Janie is very against the marriage. Nanny replied with, “’Tain’t Logan Killicks Ah wants you to have, baby, its protection. ...He done spared me...a few days longer till Ah see you safe in life” (Hurston 18). Nanny is sure to remind Janie that she needs a man in her life for safety, thus making Janie go through life with that thought process.
As Janie is growing up she has to learn to accept her Nanny’s belief of how a woman is supposed to live in society. Nanny grew up in slavery so she believes that the role of men is to support his wife financially. Nanny thinks Janie should marry a man according to how successful he is and Janie should keep up the household responsibilities. Janie’s grandmother said, “Ah been waitin’ a long time, Janie, but nothin’ Ah I
Her marriage to Logan was partially arranged by her grandmother, Nanny. Nanny felt the need to find someone for Janie to depend on before she died, knowing that Janie would no longer be able to depend on her. This is the only time that Janie is relying
These beliefs include how women should act in society and in marriage. Nanny and her daughter, Janie's mother, were both raped and left with bastard children, this experience is the catalyst for Nanny’s desire to see Janie be married to a well-to-do gentleman. She desires to see Janie married to a well-to-do gentleman because she wants to see that Janie is well cared for throughout her life. As a result of Nanny’s desire to see Janie married to wealth, she forces Janie to marry Logan Killocks, an older black farmer who owns 60 acres and a mule. Janie does not love Logan but because Nanny pushes her into the marriage she believes love will follow marriage, but Nanny quickly says “You come head wid yo’ mouf full uh foolishness on uh busy day.
Janie growing up was given everything she needed, forming an identity of being dependent of others and the thought of being on her own was nowhere near her future. Soon after Janie came into adulthood, she was forced into a marriage in which evidently sparked her need of independence. The marriage between Janie and Logan was more or less a safe net marriage that consisted of one another benefiting
When thinking about the novels that are read in high school, To Kill A Mockingbird and The Great Gatsby come to mind for most people. The novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston usually is not thought of. Throughout the years, critics believed Hurston’s novel to be just fiction and that it pose no meaning. In spite of the novel not having much politics, it does contain many social issues from the past that are still somewhat relevant today. Above all, Their Eyes Were Watching God deals with the way people are unequally treated in society based on their gender, race, or anything that makes them diverse from others. It is probable that Hurston brings up the controversial issues of her time era in the hope to cause a transformation in the world.
Zora Neale Hurston once said, “Happiness is nothing but everyday living seen through a veil.” In post-slavery African American society, this statement was unusual, as society was focused on materialistic values. The “veil” Hurston mentions is a lens used to sift through one’s beliefs; to help one understand that what they have is more important than what they don’t. Hurston alludes the veil in her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, in the form of a fish-net, saying “She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it in from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulders" (193). Just like the veil, the “fish-net” allows one to sift through one’s beliefs, deciding what is important and what is not. Essentially, Hurston
Written in seven weeks, Zora Neale Hurston wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God post-Harlem Renaissance in the Caribbean. Although sternly critiqued by the male African American in the literary community, Alice Walker who is a prominent female figure in the literary scene, shed light on the novel reviving and revealing the richness of themes the book holds. The setting takes place in Eatonville, Florida which was the first all-black community in the United States, and also where Hurston grew up. (citation) In the midst of a hostile, externally and internally racist, and sexist environment Janie Crawford is put in, Hurston portrays a female character who is fiercely independent and bold in her ideology of love, marriage, and sexuality. Throughout the novel, the reader is brought through Janie’s journey of self-identity. In this, Hurston expresses her views on how society looks at women, specifically African-American women, without explicitly stating it. Hurston cleverly creates Janie to be the unideal women of society during that time to able
In Zora Hurston’s, Their Eyes Were Watching God Janie Crawford was an attractive, confident, middle-aged black woman. Janie defied gender stereotypes and realized others cruelty toward her throughout the novel. Behind her defiance was curiosity and confidence that drove her to experience the world and become conscious of her relation to it. Janie’s idealized definition of love stemmed from her experience under a pear tree, an experience that was highly romanticized and glamorized in her sixteen year old eyes. Janie’s ability to free herself from the confining, understood, stereotypical roles enforced upon her allowed her to not only find true love but define true love as well.
In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie Crawford, the protagonist, constantly faces the inner conflicts she has against herself. Throughout a lot of her life, Janie is controlled, whether it be by her Nanny or by her husbands, Logan Killicks and Joe Starks. Her outspoken attitude is quickly silenced and soon she becomes nothing more than a trophy, only meant to help her second husband, Joe Starks, achieve power. With time, she no longer attempts to stand up to Joe and make her own decisions. Janie changes a lot from the young girl laying underneath a cotton tree at the beginning of her story. Not only is she not herself, she finds herself aging and unhappy with her life. Joe’s death become the turning point it takes to lead to the resolution of her story which illustrates that others cannot determine who you are, it takes finding your own voice and gaining independence to become yourself and find those who accept you.
Imagine living in the life of a girl who would try to look for what she wants in life and seems to can’t find what she’s looking for. In the book “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie is a strong woman who has been through a lot and some things didn’t turn out to be what she wants it to be. This book usually tells how Janie has been searching for love throughout her whole life and she would be involved with sexuality. Sometimes she doesn’t think before she makes her decisions. Also, this book consists of morality which deaths seem to occur one after another. The author used some themes to help us understand more about what Janie is going through and what she’s looking for in life. The themes that the author used are love,
The first two people Janie depended on were her Grandmother, whom she called Nanny, and Logan Killicks. Janie’s marriage to Logan Killicks was partially arranged by Nanny. Nanny had felt the need to find someone for Janie to depend on before she died and Janie could no longer depend on her. At first, Janie was very opposed to the marriage. Nanny responded with, “’Tain’t Logan Killicks Ah wants you to have, baby, it’s protection. ...He (God) done spared me...a few days longer till Ah see you safe in life.”(p.14) Nanny instilled the sense of needing a man for safety on Janie that Janie keeps with her throughout her life. After Nanny’s death, Janie continued to stay with Logan despite her dislike for him. She would have left immediately, however, if she did not need to depend on him.
Through her use of southern black language Zora Neale Hurston illustrates how to live and learn from life’s experiences. Janie, the main character in Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, is a woman who defies what people expect of her and lives her life searching to become a better person. Not easily satisfied with material gain, Janie quickly jumps into a search to find true happiness and love in life. She finally achieves what she has searched for with her third marriage.
Janie’s first marriage to Logan Killicks is arranged by her Nanny while Janie is still young. Her grandmother says that, “de though uh you bein’ kicked around from pillar tuh post is uh hurtin’ thing,” and wants Janie to abandon her mother’s legacy(15). Janie marries to please Nanny with the hope that “she would love Logan after they were