Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Janie Crawford Killicks Starks Woods is the novel's central character, a beautiful, romantic, and hopeful black woman who, over the course of thirty years and three marriages, grows into an attractive, life-affirming, and independent woman. As an adolescent, Janie imagines life and especially marriage as a blossoming pear tree kissed by singing bees. She has her first experience of sexual ecstacy under the pear tree in her grandmother's backyard. Her first two marriages end in disappointment, but Tea Cake, her third husband, reminds her of a pear tree blossom in spring. Even after Janie kills Tea Cake in self-defense, he lives in her memory, associated with sunshine and life's plenty (Davies, 1992).

The richest element of the novel is Janie herself. She becomes powerful and self-reliant as she moves from being controlled by men to being self-assertive and independent. Janie is ultimately never beaten down because she learns to separate her private self from her public life until she finally gets the opportunity to combine the two (Cooke, 1984). Janie provides a positive image of the black woman who is able to reject conformity and security at the same time that she controls her life on her own terms. Her choice—to trust love—invigorates her; upon her return from the muck, she tells Pheoby, “Ah been a delegate to do big 'ssociation of life. Yessuh! De Grand Lodge, de big convention of livin' is just where Ah been.”

Janie's experiences reflect the difficulties of being black and female in the South in the early twentieth century. Hurston shows her both as a part of a community and as an outsider in that community by virtue of her gender and her choices. She rises above her circumstances. Saddened but not defeated at the end of her tale, Janie tells her old friend Pheoby not to judge harshly the neighbors who gossiped so cruelly upon her return to Eatonville: “Two things everybody's got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin' fuh theyselves.” Janie had found out about livin', and she was at peace (Callahan, 1988).

Janie Crawford, the central character in the novel, is one of the strongest female figures in American literature. Unlike her counterparts in many of the African American novels influenced by European realism and naturalism, her quest is fulfilled and her desire is celebrated.

Janie's idealism forms the core of the novel. She desires not only romantic love but also connection with the natural and folklife that surrounds her. Hurston vividly illustrates this motif with the image of the blossoming pear tree kissed by singing bees, which is Janie's picture of romantic love. Hurston elaborates the point by providing Janie with three husbands, each of whom reflects a part of Janie's character and demonstrates the perils of the quest she has undertaken (Boyd, 2002).

Starks originally appeals to Janie's sense of adventure and romance when he tells her ...