Essay on Janie in Their Eyes Were Watching God

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The Charater of Janie in Their Eyes Were Watching God

In Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie Crawford is the heroine. She helps women to deal with their own problems by dealing with hers. She deals with personal relationships as well as searches for self-awareness. Janie Crawford is more than a heroine, however, she is a woman who has overcome the restrictions placed on her by the oppressive forces and people in her life.

As a young woman, Janie had no complaints about her role in society and fit in as most young people do. Eventually, Janie made it her purpose to outgrow this mold, defying her societal role and fulfilling her dream of becoming the assertive woman she always wanted to be. To personalize the novel, the female perspective is introduced very early in the story. "Now, women forget all those things they don't want to remember, and remember everything they don't want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly" (Page 1). This phrase not only explains female dreams in Janie's world, but it also foreshadows the restrictions placed upon women in that world. "They act and do things accordingly." Women are expected to comply and not fight when they are told they are not allowed to...

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... Connection: Feminist Strategies in American Fiction. " Women's Studies 28.2 (1999): 185-201.

Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Perennial Classics, 1990.

Interpretations: Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987.

Kayano, Yoshiko. "Burden, Escape, and Nature's Role: A Study of Janie's Development in Their Eyes Were Watching God."

Publications of the Mississippi Philological Association (1998): 36-44.

Kubitschek, Missy Dehn. " 'Tuh de Horizon and Back': The Female Quest in Their Eyes Were Watching God." Modern Critical

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