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Caroline Cooper
Great American Novels
Professor Pennington
12/7/12
Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God: Black Feminism during the 1930s
Zora Neale Hurston is unlike other African American authors during the 1930s and
before because her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God is not only a protest novel, but also a
feminist novel about women's empowerment.
Their Eyes Were Watching God describes the way Janie grows and matures sexually as
first a young African-American girl and then into an African-American woman. During this time
in the United States women were not supposed to have sexual desires and it was never talked
about which is why Hurston’s explanation of Janie’s sexual growth was so poignant in the novel.
Hurston describes Janie’s sexuality through the imagery of a pear tree, “she saw a dust-bearing
bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace
and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and
frothing with delight. So this was a marriage!” (11). Janie sees marriage as something so
wonderful and full of love. Janie herself is experiencing desires to be loved in a romantic and
sexual way. As Hurston describes, “oh to be a pear tree-any tree in bloom! With kissing bees
singing of the beginning of the world! She was sixteen. She had glossy leaves and bursting buds
and she wanted to struggle with life but it seemed to elude her. Where were the singing bees for
her?” (11). Her dreams of having a marriage full of love and romance were shattered when
Janie’s grandmother informed her that she was to marry a man whom she had no desire and no
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love for whatsoever. Hurston explains, “the vision of Logan Killicks was desecrating the pear
tree, but Janie didn’t know how to tell Nanny that” (14). Janie goes through with the marriage to
Logan and she waited for the love to come, but it never did. Janie is exasperated and tells her
grandmother, “but Nanny, Ah wants to want him sometimes. Ah don’t want him to do all de
wantin” (23). Sadly for Janie all her grandmother cares about is making sure that Janie is taken
care of, even if that means that Janie feels no love. Janie lived on Logan’s farm and was his wife,
but she was in no way happy and now that her grandmother died she was alone in the world,
“She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a
woman” (25). This quote ends one section of the story, Janie’s childhood, and signifies a change
into the beginning of her womanhood even though she was still very young. Janie grew up very
quickly in a very short time frame.
Janie had a hard life ahead of her according to her grandmother which is why she insisted
that Janie would marry Logan Killicks. In Nanny’s eyes Logan was the perfect person to take
care of Janie because he owned his own farm. He had a way to support Janie and in their
community Logan was a wealthy man. He achieved his own version of the American Dream of
owning his own land. Nanny also did not want Janie to end up being raped like Janie’s mother.
So at the exact moment Janie showed any desires to have a relationship with a man, any man,
even the boy she kissed coming down the road that sunny pear blossom morning, Nanny had to
marry her off quick so she would not be in any danger of being abused. Unfortunately, Janie is
abused and by trying to keep Janie from abuse, Nanny is actually enslaving Janie into this
marriage she has no desire for and is not ready for. Nanny tells Janie, “honey, de white man is de
ruler of everything as fur as Ah been able tuh find out. So de white man throw down de load and
tell de nigger man tuh pick it up. He pick it up because he have to, but he don’t tote it. He hand it
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to his womenfolks. De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see” (14). Nanny
thinks that Janie will have a comfortable life with Logan and that is all that matters to her, but
Janie wants more, she craves love which is why when a smooth talking Jody Starks comes
walking up the road after just one week Janie has no qualms with leaving Logan for Jody.
Jody Starks seems to be the perfect answer to Janie’s desires, but he enslaves her as
Nanny and Logan enslaved her just in a different way. Jody takes away Janie’s voice and openly
belittles her in front of the entire black community of Eatonville of which Jody is the selfappointed mayor of. Janie tried to keep hold of her voice, but eventually she just gave in and as
Hurston explains, “time came when she fought back with her tongue as best she could, but it
didn’t do her any good. It just made Joe do more. He wanted her submission and he’d keep on
fighting until he felt he had it. So gradually, she pressed her teeth together and learned to hush”
(71). Jody never allowed Janie to participate in the stories the men told on the front porch of their
store. He wanted a wife who was seen, but not heard. She was never allowed to participate in any
activity that he considered solely for men, like these stories, checkers, or even burying Matt
Bonner’s mule. The front porch was no place for a woman, especially a woman like Janie. Jody
was very jealous of other men looking at Janie so he made her tie her hair up in public so only he
could look at it. Now Janie goes from a wife who was seen, but not heard to a wife that might as
well be invisible. By making her tie up her hair in a scarf Jody took away Janie’s identity as a
woman and eventually Janie had had enough, “she wasn’t petal-open anymore with him. She was
twenty-four and seven years married when she knew. She found that out one day when he
slapped her face in the kitchen” (71). Janie realizes that her second marriage is just like her first,
loveless. Even on his death bed Jody Starks was angry at Janie for refusing herself to him and he
never forgave her. Then, Janie meets a man named Vergible Woods who is called Tea Cake.
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Tea Cake is the man Janie truly and wholeheartedly loves and she moves with him to the
Everglades to a place called the muck which is the closest place a person can get to the wildness
of Africa in the United States. Unfortunately still for Janie her relationship with Tea Cake is an
abusive one. Tea Cake steals her money and gambles it away. He hits her and abuses her and he
cheats on her with another woman. Each time Janie forgives him because she truly does love him
and that is what she was searching for her entire life. Tea Cake dies tragically at the hands of
Janie. Janie is forced to shoot the only love she ever truly had because he was crazy with rabies.
Because Janie is an African-American woman she is considered the mule of the world that is
always being forced to do things she does not want to do. Janie wanted to marry for love, but
Nanny made her marry Logan Killicks. Janie wanted to be involved with the town in Eatonville
and she wanted to participate in the stories the men told, but Jody Starks took away her voice and
made her run the store which she absolutely hated. Janie finally finds her true love in Tea Cake,
but she has to shoot him and that she really does not want to do. Janie killed Tea Cake out of
love. Throughout Janie’s entire life she has been made to do things she does not want to do. Janie
is only truly happy at the end of the story when she is free of all men, even from the one she
loved. Janie could only truly be free when she got her voice back which she did by telling her
life’s story to her friend from Eatonville after Tea Cakes death.
Janie learns that she must go to God and that she has to find out about living for herself
and not for her Nanny, Logan, Jody, or even Tea Cake. Janie needs to take care of herself. On the
very first page of Their Eyes Were Watching God Hurston explains the dreams of a woman
compared to a man, “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” (1).
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Their Eyes Were Watching God was controversial when it was first released because
certain activists like Richard Wright did not think the novel protested enough against racism and
that Hurston’s portrayal of sexism throughout the novel hindered it. Alice Walker and her ideas
of womanism brought attention back to Hurston’s novel and now it is considered a great
American novel. In a review Wright wrote, “Miss Hurston voluntarily continues in her novel the
tradition which was forced upon the Negro in the theatre, that is, the minstrel technique that
makes the "white folks" laugh. Her characters eat and laugh and cry and work and kill; they
swing like a pendulum eternally in that safe and narrow orbit in which America likes to see the
Negro live: between laughter and tears” (Wright). The purpose in writing in the way Hurston
wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God is to represent a folk tale and mythic feel into her novel
not to belittle African-Americans in the way Wright is suggesting. Their Eyes Were Watching
God is subtly a protest fiction. It does not come right out and say blacks and whites are equal or
should be equal; it is much more subversive in its meaning. It is also a love story and a women’s
empowerment novel. Hurston focuses on lifting up women more than she focuses on protesting
against racism which is why she has been criticized by other African-American authors.
Alice Walker believes “womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender” she also defines
a womanist as “a black feminist” (Collins). Their Eyes Were Watching God is a womanist novel
that deals with the empowerment of black women. According to the Encyclopedia of Women’s
Autobiography, “It was Walker who was one of the writers responsible for the rediscovery of
Hurston's works”. The critics of Hurston’s novel were focusing on the fact that Zora Neale
Hurston is African-American; therefore she must write a novel protesting the enslavement of
blacks. They were not thinking that Their Eyes Were Watching God was in fact a womanist or
black feminist novel. Through her novel Hurston wanted to rise up black women which Alice
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Walker was the first to recognize. The Encyclopedia of Women’s Autobiography also informs
that, “Mary Helen Washington credits Walker with giving ‘the earliest feminist reading’ of
Hurston's work in a discussion at the December 1979 Modern Language Association (MLA)
conference in San Francisco”.
Zora Neale Hurston wrote her womanist novel Their Eyes Were Watching God at a time
where African-American authors were only supposed to write protest novels about the plight and
enslavement of blacks in the United States. Hurston went out of the box for the time period she
was living in. Even though it was a controversial novel at first, through Alice Walker’s
interpretation, her novel has become known today as one of the great American novels.
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Works Cited
Collins, Patricia Hill. What’s in a Name? Womanism, Black Feminism, and Beyond. 2001. CJ
Resources. Web. 6 Dec. 2012.
Walker, Alice. Encyclopedia of Women's Autobiography. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO,
2005. Credo Reference. 21 Jan. 2010. Web. 6 Dec. 2012.
Wright, Richard. Rev. of Their Eyes Were Watching God. New Masses. 5 Oct. 1937. Web. 6
Dec. 2012