Analysis Of Their Eyes Were Watching God By Zora Neal Hurston

The novel Their Eyes Were Watching God follows the journey of Janie, a biracial woman, who, though subjected to gender and racial prejudice, challenges dichotomous truths of the world she lives to find herself and ultimately gain self-autonomy. The feminist author, Zora Neal Hurston, contests these rigid social binarisms by exploring the role of Janie over the course of her three marriages; these relationships form the journey towards finding a “self which is not predicated on oppression” (Clarke).
The protagonist, Janie Craawford, is not only subjected to prejudice because of her gender, but also because of her race; “she is caught between the worlds of black and white, creating a class of her own. In creating Janie by explicating her differences,

Hurston is able to explore both the role of women and racism through point of view, symbolism, and poetic imagery of blooms and horizons in the engaging story of an ultimately triumphant, autonomous black woman.” (Garland)
The novel opens with the third person omniscient narration of Janie’s return home. Her neighbors perceive her as a fallen woman abandoned and disgraced by her young lover. They question all aspects of her life and appearance before she even gets a chance to greet them, “’Where all dat money her husband took and died and left her? – What dat ole forty year ole ‘oman doin’...Where she left dat young lad of a boy she went off here wid?”’ (Their Eyes, Hurston 2). “Because of the projections of her neighbors, the reader is presented with a proud woman with a questionable past instead of the complete and complex Janie. It is here that the reader is first familiarized with the central problem of an autonomous female voice being accepted as valid. From the beginning of the story, Janie is the last to be given a voice: in her walk back to Eatonville, the point of view does not shift to include her thoughts until she tells her story to Phoeby, a close friend.”(Garland) Because Janie shares her own account, “and her telling of the story is a consciously artistic act, one in which she imposes order and meaning on the material of her life,” her voice gives the story credibility and shows that the end result of Hurston’s work is a fully self-realized black woman (Crabtree).
Janie’s autobiographical account begins in the first-person and dialectic voice. “The author reframes the story by intruding and in so doing comments on the importance of the listener to the event,” when the third person narrator tells the reader Janie’s thoughts in order to transition into a more conventional literary style (Crabtree). This allows for the reader to explore the adventures and independent mind of Janie, to feel as though he/or she is being told the story directly as a friend (Crabtree). Janie’s conversation with Phoeby echoes the, “collective spirit of the African-American oral tradition” (Washington xiv-xv). “The self constructed in women’s autobiographical writing is often based in, but not limited to, a group consciousness.” (qtd in DeShazer 901) Janie and Phoeby form a group which is centered around the truth of the story and lessons learned (qtd in DeShazer 901).
Throughout history, the stories of women have only been, if ever told at all, by men. Women have been pushed aside as docile, fragile creatures (Garland). As Janie’s grandmother clearly states, “De nigger woman is de mule of de world so far as Ah can see”; women are depicted as base creatures, born to bear the labor of children and work for their husbands with no thought or appreciated identity of their own (Their Eyes, Hurston 14). As a former slave whose daughter was fathered by the white slave master, Janie’s grandmother, Nanny, believes that the dream of women is not self-actualization but comfort and stability. “Ah didn’t want to be used for a work-ox and brood- sow,” she implores while convincing Janie that a being settled early is better than a life of adventure and self discovery (Hurston 16). This view is because the only adventure Nanny has known is desperation and self-preservation. Nanny believes that a woman’s happiness comes not from the total freedom she once dreamed of, but from marriage. Because of this limited view of the capabilities of black women, “Janie’s grandmother forces her to perpetrate this vicious cycle by ignoring Janie’s wishes for love; instead, when Janie becomes married to the unassuming Logan Killicks, she is signing Janie up for a life as a future “work-ox and brood- sow” for her husband rather than an owner (16)” (Garland). Although she does believe that if “dat grassgut, liver-lipted nigger [ain’t] done took and beat mah baby already!” Janie’s marriage is still worth salvaging because it brings her financial security (22). When Logan leaves to go “see uh man about uh mule” for Janie to use, Logan is literally attempting to make Janie his own mule and the realization of her grandmother’s fears, because common folklore equates mules with women (26). This mule is a strong point of contention for the couple; the argument about a mule “all gentled up so even uh woman kin handle ‘im,” is juxtaposed with Janie’s own stubbornness and Logan’s refusal to listen to her voice (27, Garland). Logan’s refusal to respect Janie as an individual self causes “feminist themes fuse with themes of black self-determination as Janie discards her apron, historically the badge of the slave woman as well as the docile wife, and goes off with Jody Starks” (Crabtree). When Janie decides to flee Logan and his sixty acres and a life without love, he threatens to “take holt uh dat ax and come in dere and kill yuh!... God damn yo’ hide,” likening her flesh to that of the brute or mule to which she is compared (Their Eyes, Hurston 31- 32).
The image of a woman as a mule is seen repeatedly throughout the book, and is especially poignant when Jody purchases the mule in Eatonville. The mule is not purchased for it to thrive, but so that Jody can appear to be benevolent and humane. Likewise, Jody’s marriage to Janie is not one of mutual love and compassion, but of rigidity and verbal abuse (Garland). The beautiful man who “spoke for far horizons” and promises of taking her away on “some high, ruling chair” to escape has fallen from the pedestal on which she had placed him. Janie is shut away to be a pretty object in Jody’s thriving shop doing his bidding while Jody campaigns for mayoral support and the love of the citizens of Eatonville (Their Eyes, Hurston 29-32). He “aimed tuh be a big voice” which he believes will make “uh big woman outa you [Janie]” more than a relationship based on mutual love (46). The all-black town believed that “somebody got to think for women and chillum and chickens and cows. I god, they sho don’t think non theirselves” (71). While she is by no means being the “work-ox” for Jody, the pedestal he has placed her on, “subjugates Janie to intra-racist remarks and value judgments based on the lightness of her skin.” (Garland) “He wants to put Janie on display in order to reap the benefit of reflected glory of her owner, this is precisely the position which is threatened by the eyes of other men” (Clarke). “Once this “owner[ship]” is challenged by Janie speaking her opinion, he loses his forced privilege of viewing the private Janie through her assertion of a valid and respectable voice.” (Garland) However, Jody purchases an abused mule that is “taunted and abused by the townspeople. Hurston inserts this subplot as a metaphor of Janie and Jody’s marriage,” as well as a metaphor for the treatment of any of the women in Eatonville (Dilbeck). The mule is overworked and underappreciated. At its funeral, Jody performs the ceremony over it without real caring, and denies Janie the privilege of seeing off the pitiful creature with which she had empathized as a creature “who carries the burdens laid on her by whites and by Black males” (Crabtree). After twenty years of disregard, and, “being the mere show mule for Jody, their relationship fully deteriorates”(Garland). When Janie finally asserts her voice, “Jody dies in horror of her independent thought”(Garland). After Jody, she refuses to be duped by material “things” and false promises that would lead to another marriage like the one with Jody or Logan (Their Eyes, Hurston 90). “Janie eventually finds a relationship which sets her free of the mule-metaphor in her life, a section of Their Eyes Were Watching God that is shows more of Janie’s external voice.”(Garland)
Janie meets and falls in love with a young man named Tea Cake. “The people of Eatonville think that she is too old, too wealthy, and too high-class and light-skinned for a boy like Tea Cake, who is very dark skinned and ten years her junior. She defends her right to love Tea Cake and refuses to have her story tarnished by what has happened to past older women pursuing young men. This voice exposes a philosophical and steady-minded woman, one whom tries to balance practicality and emotion when discussing her plans with Phoeby: ‘Ah’m older than Tea Cake, yes. But he done showed me where it’s de thought dat makes de difference in ages’ (Their Eyes, Hurston 115).” (Garland)
Their relationship not only defies societal rules on age, wealth, class, and skin-color, but also power. Janie’s approach toward a marriage is based on mutual respect. “With Tea-Cake, Janie is able to look toward the horizons and blooms which she discovered and had sought since her first sexual awakening beneath the pear tree. Janie begins her story to Phoeby with an account of her first real memories, where she discovered that she was not white, which caused her to reevaluate her identity, and those moments under the tree.” (Garland) “Oh to be a pear tree – any tree in bloom!... She [Janie] had glossy leaves and bursting buds and she wanted to struggle with life but it seemed to elude her,” until she experienced too much struggle with Logan and Jody (Their Eyes, Hurston 11). Now, as a grown woman, Janie is ready to be a tree which, despite being desecrated and withered, could bloom once again. “The familiar people and things had failed her so she hung over the gate and looked up the road toward way off. She knew now that marriage did not make love,” but she hoped to reach that far off childhood dream as Tea Cake took her off into the night of the everglades (Their Eyes, Hurston 25).
Although Janie is no longer the mule, she is by no means less subject to scrutiny and gender or racial criticism with Tea Cake.

However, Tea Cake is able to teach Janie how to work for herself and to further defend herself from slurs from Mrs. Turner. After they have settled in the muck Janie lives with all working class blacks, where no one but Mrs. Turner is trying to be something he or she is not like Janie believed Jody had with their big house from which“the rest of the town looked like servants’ quarters surrounding the ‘big house’” (Their Eyes, Hurston 47). For it is only in fully immersing herself in the blackness of the everglades that Janie is able to find her true identity and voice. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar assert that, “self definition necessarily precedes self-assertion: the creative ‘I AM’ cannot be uttered if the ‘I’ knows not what it is,” therefore, Janie must abandon all that she has been previously defined as in order to discover her true self (qtd in DeShazer 905). Janie turns her back on her status as Mrs. Mayor in blue satin dresses and finds a job working in the crops in mud-splattered overalls. She ignores Mrs. Turner’s “altar to the unattainable – Caucasian characteristics,” and the unseemly worship bestowed on Janie as a result (Their Eyes, Hurston 145). After all of the struggles of the everglades, Janie must literally weather the storm yet again, resulting in the death of Tea Cake and the rise of the rabid dog inside him. This beast reverses the idea of the woman as brute seen earlier in the work, reversing the beatings and abuse of Janie to a situation where she must kill Tea Cake out of mercy and self preservation (Garland). The true test of Janie’s voice is in the courtroom, when she must defend her life on the stand. She is able to “integrate voice and vision” so depict her story for the jury, who is “not there to watch but to listen. Janie’s verbal defense succeeds because she ‘makes them see’” (Clarke). Her testimony

bridges the gap between white and black, as Tea Cake’s friends also accept her, “because they really loved Janie just a little less than they had loved Tea Cake,” finally giving her approval as an independent woman (Their Eyes, Hurston 190). Despite these hardships and unconventional ending, Janie emerges from the ashes, proclaiming “Ah done been tuh de horizon and now Ah can sit heah in mah house and live by comparisons” (Their Eyes, Hurston 191).
Through a unique and changing point of view, the mule symbol, and the recurring images of the tree and horizon, Hurston weaves a story of hardship, trial, and finally, triumph. Hurston is clearly telling the reader that the steps Janie takes as she walks back to Eatonville with her head held high are feasible for all women, and the journey begins an awakening. Freedom becomes the real bee to Janie’s blossom, and in turn Janie becomes a distinguished role model.