Blog #17: Their Eyes Were Watching God Essay, Draft 1

In Zora Neal Hurston’s frame narrative Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston tells the coming-of-age story of Janie as she experiences failures in seeking true love due to falling victim to oppression and male dominance in her first two marriages, and ultimately realizing the futility in trying to find love in a man through coming to terms with the importance of self-love and having the strength to live alone contently. Ironically, Janie’s pivotal moment in which she finds the will to be a strong and independent woman is after the death of her husband Joe Starks; though she does not yet attain her dream of true love with Tea Cake, she is freed from coercion from men and finds autonomy as an individual.

Joe’s death and Janie’s experience of widowhood prompt her own discovery of power and independence as a woman. It is evident that Janie’s beauty represents a certain kind of power that Joe feels threatened by, which justifies his reason behind insisting that Janie hide her beautiful hair. The Caucasian quality of Janie’s hair also adds the power that it possesses. Because Joe sought a life of excess and wealth that would be comparable to a white man, Janie’s hair reinforces his racial insecurity, as other men also seem drawn to the power of its allure. Hurston conveys Janie’s liberation after Joe’s death as “she [Janie] tore off the kerchief from her head and let down her plentiful hair. The weight, the length the glory was there” (Hurston, 87). Janie recognizes that she is no longer a “young girl”, but she realizes that she has transformed into a “handsome woman”. The image of a “handsome woman” is eloquent and mature, which contrasts the pretty and innocence girl that is longer a part of Janie. Notably, the word “handsome” also connotes an appearance that demonstrates strength, enhancing Janie’s transition.

The discovery of self-esteem in being a woman is crucial for Janie’s maturity and self-empowerment. Her discovery of the significance of womanhood opposes Nanny’s view; she reveals her hatred towards her grandmother’s pessimistic influence towards her perception of love. The dream that Janie chases is embodied by the image of the horizon, Nanny taints that image as Hurston describes, “Here Nanny had taken the biggest thing God ever made, the horizon…and pinched it in to such a little bit of a thing that she could tie it about her granddaughter’s neck tight enough to choke her” (Hurston, 89). Janie resents her Nanny’s distorted outlook on the purpose of marriage and love because Nanny only viewed marriage to be a form of security for women; she states, “de [black] woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see”. Nanny believes that finding a man with security that can support a woman is the most optimal solution and the only purpose of marriage. As Janie finds the muscle in the beauty of womanhood, she realizes that she detests Joe and Nanny’s traditional view that the role of the wife is confined to being an object of display, a position under the husband. Joe tells Janie, “A pretty doll-baby lak you is made to sit on de front porch and rock and fan yo’self and eat p’taters dat other folks plant just special for you” (Hurston, 29). After experiencing the failure of her marriage with Joe, however, Janie alters her hopes in what the horizon can offer her.

Janie’s realization of the value of freedom in womanhood over all else leads her to discover a simple, yet fulfilling life on the muck with Tea Cake. She is free to leave her hair down, wear overalls, and speak her mind in the Everglades; she pities her friends in Eatonville and recognizes her liberation, stating that “Only here, she could listen and laugh and even talk some herself if she wanted to” (Hurston, 134). Her discovery of womanly freedom proves to be pivotal in that it evidently allows her to experience self-actualization through the means of a true and boundless love. Thus, the death of Janie’s husband Joe is what allows her to discover the determination to be independent, and consequently the exquisiteness in having the ability to share an equal, compromising love with Tea Cake, which is also a perpetual love as Janie comes to terms with the eventual loss of Tea Cake.