Not One, Three Marriages Does love, marriage, and happily ever after actually exist? Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God explores the idea of love and marriage. The main character, Janie sees “her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone” (Hurston 8). She is in search of the romantic love that she experiences in nature as a young girl. Each uniquely different, Janie’s three marriages share many of the same qualities. Janie’s first marriage, to the much older Logan Killicks, is not one that she desires. Nanny, Janie’s grandmother, arranges the marriage so that Janie has protection and financial security. “Tain’t Logan Killicks Ah wants you to have, baby, it protection” …show more content…
Tea Cake is very charming and playful and despite the fact he is 12 years younger, Janie is very attracted to him. They have an immediate connection and she feels like she has known him her entire life. “Tea Cake leads Janie to discover things about herself she never knew about in her years with Joe, Logan and Nanny” (Randall 50). One evening Tea Cake challenges Janie to a game of checkers. When she insists she doesn’t know how to play, he assures her “Dis is the last day for dat excuse” and they spend hours playing together (Hurston 96). Janie, in a childish way, is tickled at the fact that someone wants to play with her. “As Janie and Tea Cake live as partners and soul mates participating in life harmoniously, their relationship is the envy and curiosity of gossipers and onlookers” (Lester 5). Unlike Logan and Jody, Tea Cake is not wealthy, but he does want Janie to do everything with him. They attend baseball games, picnics, and dances together. For the first time in her life someone “loves her for who she is; he does not try to remake her into a mule driver, as Logan Killicks had, nor a baby-doll, as Joe Starks had” (Campbell 61). Even after two marriages, Janie has never felt the way she does about Tea …show more content…
“One day, a chunky girl named Nunkie attempts to make a play for Tea Cake, and Janie is instantly jealous” (Randall 36). Janie is so enraged and for the first time, she is the one who becomes violent. The jealously between the two continues to escalate and before long Tea Cake “had whipped Janie…being able to whip her reassured him in possession. No brutal beating at all. He just slapped her around a bit to show he was boss” (Hurston 147). These incidents do not seem to affect the marriage at all, if anything the two become closer. For the first time, Janie is completely head over heels in love and this love is
Perceptions of Marriage in Their Eyes Were Watching God & nbsp; For generations marriage has been accepted as a bond between two people. However, the ideals involved in marriage differ by the individuals. involved. The book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston. clearly demonstrates these differences. In the book a girl by the name Janie was raised by her grandmother and then married to her grandmother. Originally all Janie knew of marriage and love was her grandmother. tells her. As Janie moves on in her life and re-marries, she finds that everybody has their own idea about the role of their spouses in marriage.
They flirt often and Tea Cake doesn’t try to stop it. Janie goes looking for them one day because they are “missing”, but Tea Cake denies that he did anything with her. They fought for a long time, but the fight eventually turns into makeup sex. They aggression they felt was changed into a desire for one another. Tea Cake continued to refuse Janie’s accusations.
Finding one’s soul mate is a difficult and lengthy process for most, as it is for Janie in the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. She marries Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and Tea Cake Woods who seem to be alike; however, the motives for the actions they each take are completely different.
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 conclusion, Janie is an outgoing and caring person who wants to meet and have fun with other people. Most of the people in her life made her avoid being able to fit in with the crowd. Janie could not overcome the control others had over her. People always continued the gossip throughout the community because she was different. After Janie met Tea Cake, she was determined to do as she wanted without anyone’s say so. Janie will always be known as the
To begin with, a husband needs to be honest with his wife. Out of all of Janie’s husbands Tea Cake is the least honest one, but one of the times he does lie to her, but he makes it better. Tea Cake is going everyday and working then spending some nights till late with his friends. Janie wakes up one day finding out that her
Janie’s character undergoes a major change after Joe’s death. She has freedom. While the town goes to watch a ball game Janie meets Tea Cake. Tea Cake teaches Janie how to play checkers, hunt, and fish. That made Janie happy. “Somebody wanted her to play. Somebody thought it natural for her to play. That was even nice. She looked him over and got little thrills from every one of his good points” (Hurston 96). Tea Cake gave her the comfort of feeling wanted. Janie realizes Tea Cake’s difference from her prior relationships because he wants her to become happy and cares about what she likes to do. Janie tells Pheoby about moving away with Tea Cake and Pheoby tells her that people disapprove of the way she behaves right after the death of her husband. Janie says she controls her life and it has become time for her to live it her way. “Dis ain’t no business proposition, and no race after property and titles. Dis is uh love game. Ah done lived Grandma’s way, now Ah means tuh live mine” (Hurston 114). Janie becomes stronger as she dates Tea Cake because she no longer does for everyone else. Janie and Tea Cake decided to move to the Everglades, the muck. One afternoon, a hurricane came. The hurricane symbolizes disaster and another change in Janie’s life. “Capricious but impersonal, it is a concrete example of the destructive power found in nature. Janie, Tea Cake, and their friends can only look on in terror as the hurricane destroys the
At age sixteen, Janie is a beautiful young girl who is about to enter womanhood and experience the real world. Being joyous and unconcerned, she is thrown into an arranged marriage with Logan Killicks. He is apparently unromantic and unattractive. Logan is a widower and a successful farmer who desires a wife who would not have her own opinions. He is set on his own ways and is troubled by Janie, who forms her own opinions and refuses to work. He is unable to sexually appeal or satisfy Janie and therefore does not truly connect with her as husband and wife should. Janie's wild and young spirit is trapped within her and she plays the role of a silent and obeying wife. But her true identity cannot withhold itself for she has ambitions and she wills to see the world and find love. There was a lack of trust and communication between Logan and Janie. Because of the negative feelings Janie has towards Logan, she deems that this marriage is not what she desires it to be. The pear tree and the bees had a natural att...
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
While Janie’s Nanny forces her into marrying Logan Killicks for security; Logan also lacks love and compassion for Janie and silences her. Janie cannot use her voice when she marries Logan Killicks because of her Nanny. Although Janie knows “exactly whut” she wants to say; expressing her voice is “hard to do” (Hurston 8). From the beginning, Logan does not resemble her perfect pear tree love, which to Janie means a man who instills confidence into his wife and listens to her voice. Logan falls short of fulfilling that dream as he isolates her from the community, leaving her with no voice whatsoever. Realizing her marriage lacks love and compassion which she longs for, Janie comes to understand that her relationship with Logan will not last long .Not only does Janie’s marriage to Logan stifle any hopes of exp...
...women he has seen walk seven full miles. But at the same time he still wants to feel like the man. In chapter 13, nstead of hitting her to show that, he just wants to be able to support his wife. "Put dat two hundred back wid de rest, Janie. Mah dice. Ah no need no assistance tuh help me feed mah woman. From now on, you gointuh eat whutever mah money can buy uh and wear de same. When Ah ain’t got nothin’ you don’t git nothin’." Tea Cake demonstrates his strong sense of masculinity by making "his woman," Janie, financially dependent on him. He takes pride in being able to provide for a woman who has lived such a privileged life. Although Janie never seems conflicted about living a poor life with Tea Cake, she kind of has to agree to live by what he provides or severely damage his pride. Also Janie likes that feeling of finally having someone who wants to support her.
(Hurston 148). While discussing this topic Tracy L. Bealer says “Tea Cake's jealousy and violence is the novel's most intense and disturbing representation of the pervasiveness of domination because he is so unlike Logan and Joe, yet sporadically performs the same dominative masculinity that they do”. Since both Jody and Tea Cake fell to the knees of society's expectations of how men should treat others it causes Janie to suffer and be
The book, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is about Janie Crawford and her quest for self-independence and real love. She finds herself in three marriages, one she escapes from, and the other two end tragically. And throughout her journey, she learns a lot about love, and herself. Janie’s three marriages were all different, each one brought her in for a different reason, and each one had something different to teach her, she was forced into marrying Logan Killicks and hated it. So, she left him for Joe Starks who promised to treat her the way a lady should be treated, but he also made her the way he thought a lady should be. After Joe died she found Tea Cake, a romantic man who loved Janie the way she was, and worked hard to provide for her.
In Zora Neale Hurston’s, “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” she expresses Janie’s home in many different ways. The saying, “You can leave home all you want, but home will never leave you,” simply suggests that home is a certain feeling or state of being. When it comes to Janie, home for her would be anytime she felt free, loved, or accepted which ties into the novel as a whole; anything the characters worried about or hoped for they looked unto God.
Janie was with a variety of men throughout her life but she only allowed three of them to wed her. She faced many negative opinions, judgments, and misfortune; however, she was still capable of moving forward despite it all. Janie was born into a world in which her looks made it easy for her, but also was her downfall. Many guys looked at Janie as just a beautiful woman—no more. None of them could connect with her on an intellectual level or valued what she really had to offer, except Tea Cake. Janie’s lack of maternal and paternal relationships with her parents left her seeking to be loved. Although, Nanny Crawford, Janie’s grandmother, did her best to raise her; Janie still had emptiness in her heart. Janie showed her disregard for her own happiness when she agreed to an arranged marriage to Logan Killicks, set-up by the grandmother. Nanny Crawford felt that love was...