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Women's role in the nineteenth century
Women's role in the nineteenth century
Their eyes were watching god gender essay
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Throughout Southern literature of the 19th and early 20th centuries, husbands were often depicted as the keepers of their wives. These men were the heads of their households and often dictated the behavior, responsibilities, and social experiences of their female counterparts. It was assumed that this dominance would bring them wealth and success while promulgating an image of a model family that would win them friends and a high reputation. This expectation of male dominance occurs in the novels The Awakening and Their Eyes Were Watching God as both Leonce Pontellier and Jody Starks endeavor to exert some control over their wayward wives in order to better achieve their goals. However, rather than enforcing this facet of masculinity both …show more content…
In the early months of their marriage, Jody is able to transform Janie into a wife representative of his newly acquired wealth and rank as he instructs her to wear her finest dress for the opening of the store (Hurston, p. 41). Her submission to this request allows Jody to believe that Janie can be made in to an obedient wife who will bolster his reputation and connections within their community. Therefore, as their marriage progresses Jody’s attempts at dominance increase. For example, when Jody is elected mayor of Eatonville Janie is asked to give a speech in celebration of his accomplishment and Jody answers for her saying she will not speak because “She’s uh woman” (Hurston, p. 43). Here, in particular, control is intertwined with language and speech because allowing Janie to speak would be allowing her to assert her identity in her own words. Janie is taken aback by her husband’s decision but does not speak against him instead she “made her face laugh after a short pause, but it wasn’t too easy” (Hurston, p. 43). Her reluctance to speak against him and her forced laugh are significant because they indicate once again that Janie is willing to submit to her husband in order to share in his
In this quote, Jody stifles Janie’s speech and prevents her from speaking and having a mind of her own. In this quote, we can see Jody’s interruption with the dash Hurston uses to represent him preventing Janie from talking and being an active part of the conversation. To Jody, Janie is his possession and does not need to hear her opinion. Jody also treats Janie like his employee. In this passage the reader can infer from her diction that Janie does not want to work at the store when Jody is not around. As a result, when Jody leaves the store, Janie feels helpless. Janie’s hatred of him stems from this suppression of her individuality. Tea Cake, on the other hand, engages her speech, conversing with her and putting himself on equal terms with her. Janie’s diction changes when she is with Tea Cake, she is no longer interrupted or stutters. This use of diction is intended to show that Janie feels helpless in her current marriage and is
People are constantly searching for their voices. A voice gives someone independence and the ability to make her own decision. The First Amendment ensures that all United States citizens possess the freedom of speech; however, not all people are given the ability or opportunity to exercise that right. When a person has no voice they rely on others to make their decisions. Throughout Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Are Watching God, Janie constantly struggles to find her voice. Her marriage to Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and Tea Cake help her discover and utilize her voice in different ways. During Janie’s first marriage to Logan she has no voice, Joe silences Janie’s tiniest whisper and controls her similar to a slave; in contrast to Logan and Joe, Tea Cake encourages Janie to use her voice and make her own decisions. Janie cannot express her voice until she discovers happiness and independence through her final marriage.
Society plays a huge part in how gender roles still exist today because people are still stuck on the notion that women should always respect someone else.Now for Janie’s third husband, Teacake, he had the power to make Janie go wherever he wanted to go and make her believe he was a sweet and loyal man. He convinced Janie to leave town with him and go to a new city. Later on during the time they were living in the new city the reader can tell how Janie still played a part in these gender roles. In one particular incident Tea Cake had beaten Janie because he wanted to remind her that she is his possession. “ Tea Cake had a brainstorm. Before the week was over he had whipped Janie. Not because her behavior justified his jealousy, but it relieved that awful fear inside him. Being able to whip her reassured him in possession” (qtd. in Their Eyes Were Watching God). He even bragged to his friend, Sop-de-Bottom, about beating his wife. Sop-de-Bottom told Teacake how lucky of a man he was for having a wife who does not fight back and how he wished he had a wife like her. “Lawed! wouldn’t Ah love tuh whip uh tender woman lak Janie! Ah bet she don’t even holler. She jus’ cries, eh Tea Cake”. They thought that when a man beats his wife it shows who is boss and lets their society know as well. It was seen as a good sign back
Hurston uses ethos to show that Tea Cake was Janie’s best husband even though society thinks other wise. Tea Cake thinks that he will treat and show Janie a better time in life than any man has ever did. “Ah tell you lak you told me--you’se mighty hard tuh satisfy. Ah betcha dem lips don't satisfy yuh neither(page.103).” Tea Cake was telling Janie that she put on the show that she is hard to please but truly it only takes the right things to make her pleased. He felt that most of the things that Janie was doing was a show. Society felt that Tea Cake was playing Janie and Janie was taking chances falling in love with Tea Cake. “You doin right not tuh talk it, but Janie, you’se takin’ uuh mighty big chance(page.115).” Janie was having a discussion and they were telling her that she was taking a chance running off with Tea Cake. Phoebe feels as if Tea Cake is just a bomb ready to explode in Janie face. Janie felt that Tea Cake was the true love that she was always looking for in her life. “He done showed me where it’s de thought dat makes de difference in age(page.115).” Tea Cake changes janie’s whole train of thought around , so there had to be some love somewhere to make someone change their mind. Janie was really in love with Tea Cake.
Jody requires that Janie hold her hair in a head rag because it didn’t make sense for her to have it down. In reality, Jody was jealous about how the other men looked at Janie when she had her hair down. In fact, “one night he had caught Walter standing behind and brushing the back of his hand back and forth across the loose end of her braid ever so lightly so as to enjoy the feel of it without Janie knowing what he was doing” (Hurston 55). This infuriated Jody and he ordered Janie to always have her hair tied up when she was in the store because, “she was there in the store for him to look at, not those others” (Hurston 55). Janie’s hair can be seen as a symbol of her independence, but with Jody’s demands, her independence is lost. This inequality only exists for Janie, because she is a woman. She could not make similar demands from Jody, or else she would be punished. However, in her relationship with Tea Cake, Janie is allowed to be somewhat free of gender bias. Tea Cake was the only person that treated her as an equal. It begins with the game of checkers, which Tea Cake sets up himself, a sign that he wanted to play with her and saw her as an
A Feminist Reading of Their Eyes Were Watching God In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, the reader is treated to an enthralling story of a woman’s lifelong quest for happiness and love. Although this novel may be analyzed according to several critical lenses, I believe the perspectives afforded by French feminists Helene Cixous and Luce Irigaray have been most useful in informing my interpretation of Hurston’s book. In “The Laugh of the Medusa,” Cixous discusses a phenomenon she calls antilove that I have found helpful in defining the social hierarchy of women and relationships between them in the novel. In addition, Cixous addresses the idea of woman as caregiver, which can be illustrated through the character of Janie in Their Eyes Were Watching God.
The first time Janie had noticed this was when he was appointed mayor by the town’s people and she was asked to give a few words on his behalf, but she did not answer, because before she could even accept or decline he had promptly cut her off, “ ‘Thank yuh fuh yo’ compliments, but mah wife don’t know nothin’ ’bout no speech-makin’/Janie made her face laugh after a short pause, but it wasn’t too easy/…the way Joe spoke out without giving her a chance to say anything on way or another that took the bloom off things” (43). This would happen many times during the course of their marriage. He told her that a woman of her class and caliber was not to hang around the low class citizens of Eatonville. In such cases when he would usher her off the front porch of the store when the men sat around talking and laughing, or when Matt Boner’s mule had died and he told her she could not attend its dragging-out, and when he demanded that she tie up her hair in head rags while working in the store, “This business of the head-rag irked her endlessly. But Jody was set on it. Her hair was NOT to show in the store” (55). He had cast Janie off from the rest of the community and put her on a pedestal, which made Janie feel as though she was trapped in an emotional prison. Over course of their marriage, he had silenced her so much that she found it better to not talk back when got this way. His voice continuously oppresses Janie and her voice. She retreats within herself, where still dreams of her bloom time, which had ended with Joe, “This moment lead Janie to ‘grows out of her identity, but out of her division into inside and outside. Knowing not mix them is knowing that articulate language requires the co-presence of two distinct poles, not their collapse into oneness’ ” (Clarke 608). The marriage carries on like this until; Joe lies sick and dying in his death bed.
The beginning of Janie’s marriage to Joe shows promise and adventure, something that young Janie is quickly attracted to. She longs to get out of her loveless marriage to Logan Killicks and Joe’s big dreams captivate Janie. Once again she hopes to find the true love she’s always dreamed of. Joe and Janie’s life is first blissful. He gives her whatever she wants and after he becomes the mayor of a small African American town called Eatonville, they are the most respected couple in town. Joe uses his newfound power to control Janie. When she is asked to make a speech at a town event, she can’t even get out a word before Joe denies her the privilege. He starts making her work in the store he opens and punishes her for any mistakes she makes. He enjoys the power and respect her gets when o...
LAP #2 Compare/Contrast Janie in Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God” & Edna in Chopin’s “The Awakening” in terms of conformity within a male- dominated society.
Oprah’s first mistake, changing Janie’s character to making her equal to men, strengthened Janie in order to show that she controlled her life. Zora Neale Hurtson wrote Janie as a woman subordinate to men, such as Logan Killicks or Joe Starks. “‘She’s uh woman and her place is in de home’” (Hurston 51). By making Janie lesser to men, Hurston portrays the way that men treated women in the 1920s and 1930s and how their husbands expected their wives to act. Janie, a wife, and strictly that, bound to the things that wives existed, at the time, to do had known that she had to follow these unspoken rules and act subordinate to men. Oprah’s change creates an essence of strength for her character in order to make Janie independent and that she does what she wants. In the movie, she played checkers with the people of Eatonville, mouthed off to Joe in front of the town, and even worked in the field with Logan Killicks. Joe Starks nor Logan Killicks would not allow Janie to do these things as the men believed that a wife should do her womanly duties of cooking and cleaning, not a man’s work. Oprah’s alteration created equality with Janie’s character, ther...
As the story begins, the narrator's compliance with her role as a submissive woman is easily seen. She states, "John laughs at me, but one expects that in marriage" (Gilman 577). These words clearly illustrate the male's position of power in a marriage t...
Hurston uses the power of language and different narrative techniques to show Janie's transition throughout the novel. It is important to notice that in Janie's journey from object to subject, the narration of the novel shifts from third person to a mixture of first and third person; thus, the shift shows the awareness of self within Janie. Language becomes an instrument of injury and salvation and of selfhood and empowerment. The use of powerful language is exemplified well in the text when Janie is asked to say a few words as the new Mrs. Mayor. Joe, her second husband, quickly cuts in and says, "Thank yuh fuh yo' compliments, but mah wife don't know nothin' 'bout no speech-makin'. Ah never married her for not...
During Janie’s second marriage, her internal voice grows clearer, yet in order to appease her husband, she holds her tongue and refrains from intelle...
... Janie is free-spirited and unconcerned about what others think of her. When she returns to Eatonville after Tea Cake’s death, she shows no shame for what she has done or where she has been, because she is finally able to live the life she always wanted to lead. Hurston’s own struggles in life for individuality and an outlet for her suppressed spirit clearly contribute to the development of Janie’s character. Just as Hurston struggled for recognition, equality, and purpose in the literary world during the Harlem Renaissance, Janie’s struggle for the recognition, equality, and purpose in her relationships.
The Wife prefaces her tale with a rather lengthy prologue, in which she recounts in detail the story of her five different marriages. The prologue might at first glance appear to have very little relevance to the actual tale, but in fact the Wife’s treatment of her husbands (and their responses to her) are echoed later when she begins her tale. The Wife’s husbands fall into two categories: the rich and elderly, or the “goode,” and the young and virile, or the “badde” (203). The older husbands, while wealthy, are unable to satisfy the Wife in the bedroom. However, she takes great pleasure in dominating these men in almost every aspect of each marriage. Sh...