Their Eyes Were Watching God is a 1937 novel by American writer Zora Neale Hurston. It is considered a classic of the Harlem Renaissance and is also considered Hurston's best-known work. The novel explores protagonist Janie Crawford's "ripening from a vibrant, but voiceless, teenage girl into a woman with her finger on the trigger of her own destiny."
Hurston wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God in Haiti in the span of seven weeks. Hurston was self-described as "under internal pressure" when writing and wished she could "write it again". Though retrospectively she felt the work captured "all the tenderness of [her] passion".
Set in central and southern Florida in the early 20th century, the novel was initially poorly received by the African-American community. After the publication of Alice Walker's article "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston" in Ms. magazine in 1975 and Robert Hemenway's publication of a biography of Hurston in 1980, Hurston was back in the literary realm. Since the late 20th century, Their Eyes Were Watching God has been regarded as influential to both African-American literature and women's literature.Henry Louis Gates Jr., Zora Neale Hurston: Critical Perspectives Past and Present (New York: Amistad, 1993), p. xi. Time magazine included the novel in its 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels published since 1923. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is a New York Times Bestseller as well as a foundational text in college courses across American literature, African American studies, and gender studies.
Plot synopsis Janie Crawford, an African-American woman in her forties, returns to her old town after a year-long absence and recounts her life story, along with the time she had been gone, to her friend Phoeby. Janie starts with her sexual awakening, comparing it to a blossoming pear tree kissed by bees in spring, that occurs when she allows a local boy, Johnny Taylor, to kiss her, which Janie's grandmother, Nanny, witnesses.
As a young enslaved woman, Nanny was raped by her white owner, then gave birth to a mixed-race daughter whom she named Leafy. Though Nanny wanted a better life for her daughter and even escaped her jealous mistress, after the American Civil War Leafy was later raped by her school teacher and became pregnant with Janie. Shortly after Janie's birth, Leafy began to drink and stay out at night, eventually abandoning the baby and leaving Janie with Nanny.
Nanny, having transferred her hopes for stability and opportunity from Leafy to Janie, arranges for Janie to marry Logan Killicks, an older farmer looking for a wife. However, Killicks does not love Janie and wants only a domestic helper, rather than a lover or partner; he thinks she does not do enough around the farm and considers her ungrateful. When Janie speaks to Nanny about her desire for love, Nanny, too, accuses Janie of being spoiled and dies soon after.
Unhappy, disillusioned, and lonely, Janie leaves Killicks and runs off with Joe "Jody" Starks, a glib man who takes her to the all-Black community of Eatonville, Florida. Starks arranges to buy more land, establishes a general store, and is soon elected mayor of the town. However, Janie soon realizes that Starks wants her as a trophy wife to reinforce his powerful position in town and to run the store, even forbidding her from taking part in the town's social life. During their twenty-year marriage, he treats her as his property, criticizing her, controlling her, and physically abusing her. Finally, when Starks's kidney begins to fail, Janie says that he never knew her because he would not let her be free.
After Starks dies, Janie becomes financially independent through his estate. Though she is beset with suitors, including men of means, she turns them all down until she meets a young drifter and gambler named Vergible Woods, known as "Tea Cake.” He plays the guitar for her and initially treats her with kindness and respect. Janie is hesitant because she is older and wealthy, but she eventually falls in love with him and decides to run away with him to Jacksonville to marry. They move to Belle Glade, in the northern part of the Everglades region ("the muck"), where they find work planting and harvesting beans. While their relationship is volatile and sometimes violent, Janie finally has the loving marriage that she always wanted. Her image of the pear tree blossom is revived. Suddenly, the area is hit by the great 1928 Okeechobee hurricane. Tea Cake is bitten by a dog while saving Janie from drowning and develops rabies. He becomes hydrophobic and increasingly jealous and unpredictable. When he tries to shoot Janie with his pistol, she fatally shoots him with a rifle in self-defense, and she is charged with murder.
At the trial, Tea Cake's Black male friends show up to oppose her, but a group of local white women arrives to support Janie. After the all-white jury acquits Janie, she gives Tea Cake a lavish funeral. Tea Cake's friends forgive her, asking her to remain in the Everglades. However, she decides to return to Eatonville. As she expected, the residents gossip about her when she returns to town. The story ends where it started as Janie finishes recounting her life to Phoeby.
Themes Gender roles The novel explores traditional gender roles and the relationship between men and women. Nanny believes that Janie should marry a man not for love, but for "protection". Janie's first two husbands, Logan Killicks and Jody Starks, both believe Janie should be defined by her marriage to them. Both men want her to be domesticated and silent. Her speech, or silence, is defined by her physical locations, most often. For example, Starks forces her silence at the store, a public—and therefore, male space at the time. He says: "... Muh wife don't know nothin' bout no speech-makin'. Ah never married her for nothin' lak dat. She's ah woman[,] and her place is in de home." Janie is also forbidden from socializing with the townspeople on the porch. Tea Cake is Janie's last husband, who treats her as more of an equal than Killicks and Starks did, by talking to her and playing checkers with her.
Duke professor and Black feminist cultural critic, Mark Anthony Neal, writes that Tea Cake defies the heteronormative roles of his own masculinity and Janie's femininity in their relationship despite his domestic violence towards her. He writes: "Tea Cake reads as progressive in opposition to traditional gender politics within black communities and institutions and the larger society during the era." Throughout the novel, Janie struggles with her agency in relation to domineering male figures, even Tea Cake whom she chose to love. Alt URL
Masculinity and femininity Scholars argue that in Their Eyes Were Watching God the role of masculinity is portrayed through the subordination and objectification of women. In a reflection of post-slavery Florida, Black men are subordinate only to their white employers and adhere to white, patriarchal institutions of masculinity in which women are held in a positive social regard only if they are attractive, are married, or have attained financial security via previous marriages. Specifically, Black women face greater oppression, as their own struggle for independence was considered counter-productive to the greater fight for equality for Black Americans as a whole. Nanny explains this hierarchical structure early on to Janie when she says:
In the book, men view women as an object to pursue, acquire, and control through courting, manipulation, and even physical force. Janie's journey for the discovery of her self-identity and independence is depicted through her pursuit of true love—her dream—through marriages to three different men. Each of the men she marries conforms in some way to gender norms of the day. The role of femininity is portrayed through the symbolism of property, mules, and elements in nature. Women in the book are considered a trophy prize for males, to simply look pretty and obey their husbands. The analogy of the mule and women is stated repetitively in the book. Janie's Nanny explained to Janie at a young age how African-American women were objectified as mules. "De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so far as Ah can see." Mules are typically bought and sold by farmers, usually to be used to work until exhaustion. Later in the book, Janie realizes that Nanny's warnings were true when she identifies with an abused mule in Eatonville. She sees herself as a working animal with no voice, there for the amusement of others and at the expense of her own free will. This identification is shown in the book when the townspeople are laughing at the mule that Jody had eventually bought and rescued (in an attempt to manipulate Janie). However, Janie does not laugh alongside the townspeople as she is shown to empathize with the mule ("Everybody was having fun at the mule-baiting. All but Janie") and she feels disgusted by the situation. The mule represents the feminine gender role in the story by which men suppress and degrade women who are stereotyped as unable to think for themselves and needing constant guidance from men. These stereotypes "become a chain on the American women, preventing them from developing individuality, and from pursuing their personal happiness" and ultimately what forces them to mold into their gender role.
Janie Crawford
Janie Crawford is the main character of Their Eyes Were Watching God. At the beginning of the story, she is described as naive, beautiful, and energetic. However, as the story progresses, Janie is constantly under the influence and pressure of gender norms within her romantic relationships. As she navigates each of her relationships with men, Janie ultimately loses her confidence and self-image, conforming to roles that the husbands want her to fill.
In Janie's first relationship, she was given as a wife by Nanny at an early age and was told that love may come with marriage but that it was not important. However, as time passed, Janie was unable to love Logan. "She began to cry. 'Ah wants things sweet wid mah marriage lak when you sit under a pear tree and think.'" As time passed on, Logan began forcing Janie to conform to a traditional lifestyle, telling her that he would buy a mule for her so that she could work. However, Janie was strong-minded and Logan made little progress on changing Janie. Janie raised her voice, but still she remained susceptible to suppression and abuse. "You ain't got no particular place. It's wherever Ah need yuh. Git a move on yuh, and dat quick."
Then, in Janie's second relationship, she left Logan Killicks in an attempt to pursue a better future with her new husband, Joe Starks. Joe was the mayor of Eatonville and achieved much wealth, placing Janie in a higher status than her peers, since she was "sleeping with authority, seating in a higher chair." Janie believed that her life would change for the better. However, she was confined in the roles of a housewife and was made to be Joe's prized possession. "The king's mule, and the king's pleasure is everything she is there for, nothing else."
In Janie's third and last relationship, she was able to experience true love, on her own terms, with her third husband Vergible "Tea Cake" Woods. Janie was older than Tea Cake by nearly twelve years. He loved and treated her better than her previous husbands, though while she was no longer strictly confined by the gender roles placed upon her by her previous husbands, she was still easily influenced and manipulated by Tea Cake. Janie was forced to shoot and kill Tea Cake in self-defense after he developed rabies.
Logan Killicks