In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the main character Janie goes through some changes. In the beginning she is a young girl who desires attention and to be in love. She wants to fall in love with someone and for it to be beautiful. As she grows up, she marries her first husband Logan. She expects it to be a loving marriage filled with happiness, she is soon disappointed. Her marriage has failed her, she does not love him and she is unhappy. In her time, you married someone for their land or just to marry, love did not exist. While Janie is extremely unhappy, she meets a rich and successful man named Joe Starks. He offers for her to run away with him and live a life more suited for a lady. She accepts, as she is miserable in her current marriage and runs away with Joe Starks. As she gets further into the marriage with Joe she realizes he may not be as wonderful as she first thought. In chapters 5 and 6 things …show more content…
Another example of Janie allowing Joe to control her is she can not have her hair down in the store, ever. She resents him for this, “this business of the head-rag irked her endlessly”. (Ch 6 pg 55). Joe is incredibly jealous of anyone else ever seeing her hair. Janie is aware of his jealousy, he just does not know. “She was there in the store for him to look at, not those others”. (Ch 6 pg 55). Joe viewed Janie only as an object for him stare at all day. The reason behind Joe's jealousy is he caught Walter in the store admiring her hair and lightly brushing it between his fingers. Walter was doing this so light that Janie had no idea, but Joe saw him from a distance. This completely outraged Joe and he wanted to “rush forth with the meat knife” and chop off his hand. Because of this, Joe forces Janie to tie her hair up. This can be taken as another sign of abuse. His jealousy is so strong, he forces it to control what Janie does or
In Their Eyes Were Watching God Janie goes through several marriages in her journey to seek love. As Janie's husbands change so does her wardrobe. Janie's different marriages are symbolized by her very different wardrobes.
The next husband that Janie comes into her life in Joe Starks. Joe starts was a very rich man and had lots and lots of money. Janie seen him coming down the road one day and this is how Joe and Janie meet. Joe affected Janie spiritual growth. For example, When Joe starts to belittle her and try to make himself boss. Joe said, “I am the boss missy and you are going to do what I say”(Hurston.41). This shows how abusive and mean Joe can be. Joe also affects Janie emotional growth. For example, When joe starts to abuse her Janie gets very upset and starts to cry and wants to leave. This shows you how much pain emotionally Joe is making Janie. joe also affects Janie spiritually. For example, When Joe starts to argue with Janie. Janie say, “I am
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.
He tells her what to do the same way Logan did, just a little bit more delicately by saying that it is not a woman's job to do whatever he does not want her to do. Throughout her twenty years of life with Joe, Janie loses her self-consciousness because she becomes like a little kid being told what to do by an adult, Joe. She does it without even questioning herself, which is why I think that she loses the part of her voice that she has discovered by running away from Logan. At times, she has enough courage to say no to Joe, but he always has something to say back that discourages Janie from continuing her argument.
Self-esteem is confidence in one’s own worth or abilities or self-respect. Janie from Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston and Jefferson from A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines both struggle with establishing a positive self-esteem or a sense of self-worth. Both characters get so overwhelmed by the supremacy of someone or something around them that they doubt their own power, thus, creating a feeling of doubt for themselves and the voice that they have. In order to gain a sense of high self-esteem, a person must endure points of self-doubt.
Janie were pretty well off and had the privilege to live in the yard of white
Janie marries three different men over the course of Their Eyes Were Watching God: Logan Killicks, Joe (Jody) Stark, and Tea Cake. Janie is able to preserve her agency in these marriages via an internal rebellion, she uses her thoughts to remain happy and outside the world her husband’s create. It is often the case that husbands expects a marriage where the female is subordinate to them and even Janie’s grandmother suggests Janie should abide by this expectation. However, Janie creates a space in her mind for an idealistic relationship and a place that her husband’s cannot touch. This ...
In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, we follow our protagonist, Janie, through a journey of self-discovery. We watch Janie from when she was a child to her adulthood, slowly watching her ideas change while other dreams of hers unfortunately die. This is shown when Jane first formulates her idea of love, marriage, and intimacy by comparing it to a pear tree; erotic, beautiful, and full of life. After Janie gets married to her first spouse, Logan Killicks, she doesn’t see her love fantasy happening, but she waits because her Nanny tells her that love comes after marriage. Janie, thinking that Nanny is wise beyond her years, decides to wait. But, as Logan continues to snap at Janie day to day, she becomes even more uninterested. While avoiding
In the book, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, the main character, Janie’s past actions affects her development throughout the novel. There are also positive and negative effects that impacted her life. Janie is influenced through the development of her relationships such as her Nanny’s advice to her as a child, Joe tries to control her, and before and after the hurricane causes Tea Cake and Janie’s relationship to become more tense, causing the outcome for her to free herself from the restrictions and make her own personal decisions. She becomes more confident, more self-aware , and discovers her capabilities .
The beginning of Janie’s journey is with her marriage to Logan Killicks, a man with tons acres of land to his name, but to Janie’s knowledge, is just an ugly old bag that has a huge lack of any love or companionship for her. For example, when Janie talks to Logan one night about their relationship he only says “Considerin’ youse born in a carriage ‘thout no top to it, and yo’ mama and you bein’ born and raised in de white folks back-yard” (30). Logan is emotionally destitute towards Janie in the beginning of the marriage. She cannot relate to him in any way what so ever and they both know it as well. In addition, at a point later on in the marriage Logan asks Janie to help him with chores outside, she replies “you don’t need mah help out dere, Logan. Youse in yo’ place and ah’m in mine,” (31). Not only does Logan have an absence of emotion, he also has an absence of love and he expresses the exact opposite of it through his bitterness and anger for Janie. She can now understand that Logan sees himself as supposedly “higher” than her and she loathes it even more. The marriage between Logan and Janie isn’t equal...
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 the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie Crawford, the protagonist, constantly faces the inner conflicts she has against herself. Throughout a lot of her life, Janie is controlled, whether it be by her Nanny or by her husbands, Logan Killicks and Joe Starks. Her outspoken attitude is quickly silenced and soon she becomes nothing more than a trophy, only meant to help her second husband, Joe Starks, achieve power. With time, she no longer attempts to stand up to Joe and make her own decisions. Janie changes a lot from the young girl laying underneath a cotton tree at the beginning of her story. Not only is she not herself, she finds herself aging and unhappy with her life. Joe’s death become the turning point it takes to lead to the resolution of her story which illustrates that others cannot determine who you are, it takes finding your own voice and gaining independence to become yourself and find those who accept you.
Janie represents all of the independent women of her time because she never gave up her happiness. The one moment that brought the whole story together and the one moment that really showed Janie as one strong woman, was the moment she let down her hair. After many years and multiple men burdening her of societal expectations she finally became a woman that she wanted to be. The moment quoted when she became herself was, “She went over to the dresser and looked hard at her skin and features. The young girl was gone, but a handsome woman had taken her place. She tore off the kerchief from her head and let down her plentiful hair. The weight, the length, the glory was there”(Hurston 86), was the climax of the story, and the beginning to Janie’s
She realized that she married him only because of Nanny’s wishes, and she did not - and was never going to - love him. It was with this realization that her “first dream was dead, so she became a woman” (25) And although the “memory of Nanny was still powerful and strong”, (29) Janie left with Joe Starks. However her marriage to Jody was no better than her marriage to Logan. Jody was powerful and demanding, and although at first he seemed amazing, Jody forced Janie into a domestic lifestyle that was worse than the one that she escaped. Jody abused Janie both emotionally and physically, and belittled her to nothing more than a trophy wife. But Janie never left him. This time Janie stayed in the abusive marriage until he died, because Janie did not then know how to the tools capable of making her a sovereign person. She once again chose caution over nature, because caution was the safest option. And overtime she became less and less Janie, and less and less of her sovereign self, and eventually, “the years took all the fight out of Janie’s face. For a while she thought it was gone from her soul...she had learned how to talk some and leave some. She was a rut in the road. Plenty of life beneath the surface but it was kept beaten down by the wheels” (76). During her marriage to Jody, Janie never got it right. She was trapped under Jodi’s command and because of this she never
Janie’s first attempt at love does not turn out quite like she hopes. Her grandmother forces her into marrying Logan Killicks. As the year passes, Janie grows unhappy and miserable. By pure fate, Janie meets Joe Starks and immediately lusts after him. With the knowledge of being wrong and expecting to be ridiculed, she leaves Logan and runs off with Joe to start a new marriage. This is the first time that Janie does what she wants in her search of happiness: “Even if Joe was not waiting for her, the change was bound to do her good…From now on until death she was going to have flower dust and springtime sprinkled over everything” (32). Janie’s new outlook on life, although somewhat shadowed by blind love, will keep her satisfied momentarily, but soon she will return to the loneliness she is running from.