In this opening lines, Zora Neale Hurston characterizes the central contrast amongst men and women. She depicts how women are surrendered to their destiny and don't have the opportunity to dream, however rather should secure those considerations and leave themselves to straightforward activities and regular day to day existence. Men, then again, have the opportunity to accomplish their fantasies since society gives them more prominent flexibility. Men are not kept down by any conditions as are women, restricted to a supporting part in their own particular stories. Janie challenges this generalization of women, which is the thing that makes her trip so interesting. She can break out of the sexual orientation hindrances and accomplish her fantasies …show more content…
and goals. Janie can take after her fantasies and search strongly for her frame of reference, which separates her from the customary ladies in the public eye at the time and makes her the star of her own trip, not second to any man. "She stood in front of Joe and said, '...You have tuh power tuh free things and dat makes you lak uh king uh something.' Hambo said, 'Yo wife is like a born orator, Starks.
US never knowed dat befo'. She put jus' de right words tuh our thoughts." (Hurston 58). "She got up that morning with the firm determination to go on in there and and have a good talk with Jody... He gave a deep-growling sound like a hog dying down in the swamp and trying to drive off a disturbance. 'Ah come in heah tuh git shet uh you but look lak 'tain't doin' me no good. G'wan out. Ah needs tuh rest.' 'Naw, Jody, Ah come in heah tuh talk widja and Ah'm gointuh do it too. It's for both of our sakes Ah'm talkin'" (Hurston 84-85). In these two entrances, Janie starts to utilize her voice. In the principal, she stands up in acclaim of Jody before the townspeople, who are stunned that she is so great with her words. Jody has stifled her voice for so long that she has started to lose it, and nobody in the town has heard her talk since he doesn't as a rule let her discussion out in the open. Her short discourse after Jody purchases the donkey is a case of her basic, concealed voice turning out. This is the start of her recovering her voice from Jody, who had taken it …show more content…
away. In the second entry, Janie decides to go converse with Jody before he bites the dust. As his voice and power blur, hers winds up noticeably more grounded. He tries to boss her around like he used to, yet she disregards him since she is resolved to make him tune in to what she needs to state, now that she at long last has the voice and the words to do as such. She declines to sugar-coat reality, and cautions him that he will bite the dust soon. Janie has now completely make her mark, and when he inhales his final gasp she goes to the window and shouts out to the town that he is dead making her voice heard again. Janie's strict voice and capacity to talk speak to her opportunity and strengthening as a lady. With Logan and particularly with Jody, her voice is smothered, however with Tea Cake she can speak. "Janie loved the conversation and sometimes she thought up good stories on the mule, but Joe had forbidden her to indulge. He didn't want her talking after such trashy people" (Hurston 53). Jody declines to give her a chance to stand up and recount stories with whatever is left of the general population on the patio. By not letting her utilization her voice and be common, he detaches her from individuals that she would most likely invest energy with as opposed to acting like she is above them as the Mayor's significant other. "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" (Hurston71). During her marriage to Jody, Janie comes to acknowledge his control over her, since he is determined and it appears to be less demanding to simply give in. She covers her voice somewhere inside and disregards it for a bit. "But he done showed me where it's de thought dat makes de difference in ages. If people thinks de same they can make it all right. So in the beginnin' new thoughts had tuh be thought and new words said. After Ah git used tuh dat, we gits 'long jus' fine. He done taught me de maiden language all over" (Hurston 115). With Jody's death, Janie comes to inside herself and brings her voice pull out. Tea Cake causes her enhancement and even extend her voice, which she never genuinely had the opportunity to create some time recently. The horizons speak to the removed parts of the normal world, which Janie is so resolved to be in. All through her journey in the book, Janie's principle objectives are to achieve the horizons, so she can be regular and at one with
herself. After Joe's demise, Janie marry a happy young fellow, Tea Cake, who has diverse genuine identities. He is around twenty years of age with no property. Janie likes finding new air in her life since Tea Cake gives her new encounters which she never experienced: "Tea Cake and Janie gone hunting. Tea Cake and Janie gone fishing. Tea Cake and Janie gone to Orlando to the movies. Tea Cake and Janie gone to a dance. Tea Cake making flower."(Hurston 110).
“Yes indeed. You know if you pass some people and don’t speak tuh suit ‘em dey got tuh go way back in yo’ life and see whut you ever done.” (Hurston
But Janie is young and her will has not yet been broken. She has enough strength to say "No" and to leave him by running away with Joe. At this point, Janie has found a part of her voice, which is her not willing to be like a slave in her husband's hands. After Janie marries Joe, I think that she discovers that he is not the person she thought he was.
Zora Hurston was an African American proto-feminist author who lived during a time when both African Americans and women were not treated equally. Hurston channeled her thirst for women’s dependence from men into her book Their Eyes Were Watching God. One of the many underlying themes in her book is feminism. Zora Hurston, the author of the book, uses Janie to represent aspects of feminism in her book as well as each relationship Janie had to represent her moving closer towards her independence.
Until one day, towards the end of their long marriage, when Jody made a very mean comment about Janie's body. She came back with, "When you pull down yo' britches, you look lak de change uh life." After these words came out, Jody hit her. These harsh words could never be forgiven. At the end of their marriage, before Jody died she finally told him her feelings.
The first time Janie had noticed this was when he was appointed mayor by the town’s people and she was asked to give a few words on his behalf, but she did not answer, because before she could even accept or decline he had promptly cut her off, “ ‘Thank yuh fuh yo’ compliments, but mah wife don’t know nothin’ ’bout no speech-makin’/Janie made her face laugh after a short pause, but it wasn’t too easy/…the way Joe spoke out without giving her a chance to say anything on way or another that took the bloom off things” (43). This would happen many times during the course of their marriage. He told her that a woman of her class and caliber was not to hang around the low class citizens of Eatonville. In such cases when he would usher her off the front porch of the store when the men sat around talking and laughing, or when Matt Boner’s mule had died and he told her she could not attend its dragging-out, and when he demanded that she tie up her hair in head rags while working in the store, “This business of the head-rag irked her endlessly. But Jody was set on it. Her hair was NOT to show in the store” (55). He had cast Janie off from the rest of the community and put her on a pedestal, which made Janie feel as though she was trapped in an emotional prison. Over course of their marriage, he had silenced her so much that she found it better to not talk back when got this way. His voice continuously oppresses Janie and her voice. She retreats within herself, where still dreams of her bloom time, which had ended with Joe, “This moment lead Janie to ‘grows out of her identity, but out of her division into inside and outside. Knowing not mix them is knowing that articulate language requires the co-presence of two distinct poles, not their collapse into oneness’ ” (Clarke 608). The marriage carries on like this until; Joe lies sick and dying in his death bed.
In the beginning of the story, Janie is stifled and does not truly reveal her identity. When caught kissing Johnny Taylor, a local boy, her nanny marries her off to Logan Killicks. While with Killicks, the reader never learns who the real Janie is. Janie does not make any decisions for herself and displays no personality. Janie takes a brave leap by leaving Killicks for Jody Starks. Starks is a smooth talking power hungry man who never allows Janie express her real self. The Eatonville community views Janie as the typical woman who tends to her husband and their house. Janie does not want to be accepted into the society as the average wife. Before Jody dies, Janie is able to let her suppressed anger out.
The contrast of these two places reinforces the theme of a search for love and fulfillment. To see what an ideal situation for an independent woman like would be, Hurston must first show the reader what Janie cannot deal with. Hurston has her character Janie go on a quest, one that was begun the day she was forced to marry Logan Killucks. The contrast in the setting is similar to one between good and evil.
I think both authors would agree with this view. Both stories involve a woman and how they are viewed as well as the struggles they face. Hurston’s story is about a power struggle between men and women. She states “see God and ast Him for a li’l mo’ strength so Ah kin whip dis ’oman and make her mind.”
Hurston, sitting on her porch imagines it to be a theatre as she narrates her perspective of the passing white people. She finds a thin line separating the spectator from the viewer. Exchanging stances at will and whim. Her front porch becomes a metaphor for a theater seat and the passers Despite the current scrutiny that her race faces she asserts to the reader that her race and color define her as a person and does not determine her identity.
She even talks about how they were being generous to her. For example, Hurston says, “During this period, white people differed from colored to me only in that they rode through town and never lived there. They liked to hear me “speak pieces" and sing and wanted to see me dance the parse-me-la, and gave me generously of their small silver for doing these things, which seemed strange to me for I wanted to do them so much that I needed bribing to stop, only they didn 't know it” (539). Hurston would soon find out that when she had to leave her small town to go to a boarding school because of family changes that the real world is full of racism and discrimination towards colored people. I think this is when she realizes that she is
As he stoops over her as she attempts to do her work he yells, “You sho is one aggravatin’ nigger woman!” he declared and stepped into the room. She resumed her work and did not answer him at once. Ah done tole you time and again to keep them white folks’ clothes outa dis house. (Hurston, 1926)
Hurston states,” She said that there was no need for us to live like “no-count Negroes and poor-white trash,” (ll. 58-60). It is clear that Hurston mother wanted what was best for her children. Hurston writes, “Things like that gave me my first glimmering of the universal female gospel that all good traits and learnings come from the mother’s side,” (ll. 65-68). From this the reader can infer that Hurston’s childhood was dictated by these good traits and learnings. Here, Hurston is indirectly tell her audience that she admires her mother. This universal female gospel is present in all cultures in some form or another and Hurston admires her mother for teaching her
Rather, it was acclimating and suited her grandmother's optimal marriage much more. Jody's concealment of Janie's voice was the clearest since he required the ability to feel like a man. He strived on making Janie his ideal spouse, one who was quiet and looked lovely. A prime case of this is Jody fending off Janie from the yard where all the talk and discussions in the town occurred. One of the principal indications of Janie's voice crawling out is after Jody slaps her out of the blue. A while later, "She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside her." (pg. 72) that night was the first occasion when she participates on a yard discussion and the beginnings of her newfound voice. At the point when Teacake tagged along, Janie had officially discovered her voice. I think he basically helped her formed it more into something she could use to shape her existence with. With Teacake, the greater part of the cutoff points and traditions Janie had known with Jody were no more. This is connoted by their unconstrained midnight angling outing and Janie working along Teacake in the fields. I think the court scene is essential in Janie's adventure. In spite of the fact that we don't hear her voice straightforwardly does not imply that she never discovered it. I think Hurston deliberately makes Janie calm to underscore the significance of control. I think it returns to the plain start of the novel when Hurston separates amongst people. She may endeavor to state that for men, having a voice implies showing it so anyone can hear for everybody to hear while ladies can saddle that voice to pick up control over their lives. This is precisely what Janie does in the court. She is quiet, yet she is intense. I think to some degree the novel substantiates Janie's announcement. In any case, I don't imagine that Hurston is
She even goes further to express that she is not ‘petal open’ which refers to her not having sex with Jody. Her transition to womanhood is a negative thing which proves that she has not found her self-revelation when the narrator states, “Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman” (citation). In her marriages with Logan and Jody, Janie is a woman but she has not found her selfhood because of her unhappiness and lack of romantic love and sexual desire. Janie’s sexual desires arise for the first time since her girl-self when she meets Tea Cake. He reminds her of her pear tree which is significant in that he brings her back to her girl-self.
The idea that “what happens behind closed doors, stays behind closed doors…” was very common in the time period that Hurston lived in. Societies were willing to turn a blind eye to what was happening to women because it was someone else’s problem, even though they knew that what was happening was wrong.