Love in Their Eyes Were Watching God and The Autobiography of My Mother

It is difficult for humans to allow life to flow without being proactive. This is especially true when it comes to love. One may try very hard to try to resist the attraction that they may feel to avoid the potential hurt that may result from being in love. In contrast, others may seek love and never find it. In the two novels, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Hurston and The Autobiography of My Mother by Jamaica Kincaid the characters demonstrate that although one may attempt to manipulate the circumstances in which love is attained, there is no way of predicting how love will manifest itself. The characters are put into situations that compromise their beliefs towards love, and in addition, they engage in a socially unacceptable relationships. The unpredictable nature of love can also be observed as one character resists the urge to be swept into the arms of love whereas the other is vigorously searching for it.

Zora Hurston's character, Janie has already had two husbands. After being widowed by Joe, her second husband, Janie is content to be alone and says, “This freedom feeling is fine. These men didn't represent a thing she wanted to know about. She had already experienced them through Logan and Joe.” (Hurston 90). Janie is content being single and she does not plan on entering into another relationship. She finally achieves independence and is enjoying all the freedom that it encompasses. All of the appreciation that Janie has for her liberty is quickly abandoned for love when Janie meets Tea Cake, who is twelve years her junior. Now, Janie is married for the third time and her relationship with Tea Cake is the only marriage is actually if full of true love. The novel describes, “He drifted off into sl...

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... eventually realizes that there is absolutely no way to control whom you will love or when one will fall love. Xuela admits, “It is sad that unless you are born a god, your life from its beginning, is a mystery to you.” (Kincaid 202). The love that both Janie and Xuela feel, testifies to the incalculable and expected, nature of love.

In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God and The Autobiography of my Mother, Zora Hurston's character Janie and Jamaica Kincaid's Xuela are strikingly similar. They both experience love in an unforeseen way, and are forced to acknowledge that the person one falls in love with can not simply be a matter of choice.

Works Cited

Hurston, Zora Neale. Their eyes were watching God: a novel. New York: Perennial Library, 1990. Print.

Kincaid, Jamaica. The autobiography of my mother . New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1996. Print.