One of the most sensationalized aspects of adulthood in our society is that of finally getting to experience sexual relations. In fact, it is so overly sensationalized that it is often seen as unacceptable to talk about in public. A woman with too many sexual partners is slut shamed, while one with too few is seen as prude. Early sexual experiences are ones that can truly shape how society will see a woman and how she may feel about herself. Through passionate and sexual imagery, a sense of innocence and curiosity, and an idealized perception of the world, presented in this passage, Janie is characterized as eager to experience the world around her. Janie’s eagerness is most prominently portrayed through the passionate and sexual imagery …show more content…
describing her observations of and reactions to the pear tree. Thoughts of the pear tree are said to, “[caress] her in her sleep.” These thoughts are thus ones of passion, striking her and comforting her when she is in her most vulnerable state, asleep. Janie is so overwhelmed by thoughts of intimacy that even when her brain is left to simply wander, she dreams of the passionate experiences the pear tree provides her. Her experiences under the tree fill her with such passion that they are practically orgasmic giving her an, “ecstatic shiver.” She is filled with such passion that it is almost unbearable. Her feelings overwhelm her, blocking out anything in the world but the the sensation she is currently feeling. The orgasmic nature of the language plays off of Janie’s idealized expectations of sex and drive to understand sex, and in result, adulthood to her fullest potential. While lying underneath a pear tree outside, Janie comments on the “virginity of bloom” around her, alluding to her own eagerness to lose her virginity. Seeing sexual relations in nature shows that how to her, they are just part of natural life. They are a part of the world she has yet to experience, and cannot wait to. She sees intimacy in every interaction around her- from the rustling of the leaves on a tree to the flight of the bees into the flowers- showing how the anticipation for new experiences completely consumes her. Though Janie yearns to experience sex, she is quite clueless about it as is explained through the innocence and curiosity evident in the diction of the passage. Upon witnessing what she sees as sexual relations in nature, Janie avidly exclaims that “this [is] marriage!” Her ease in jumping to conclusions without reasoning them out blatantly exposes her innocence and lack of knowledge about the world. Yearning to learn more, she pushes to make generalized conclusions about complex phenomenons in her head. By looking at marriage from simply a sexual side, she strips it down to a microscoping aspect of the large concept, and takes in the idealized view on the matter. She skips the moments of marriage that require work and compromise and chooses the one aspect of it that provides instant ecstasy. He tone emphasizes the eagerness of her words. The use of an exclamation mark reveals her giddy, childlike excitement towards the subject. She also presents an glorified metaphor comparing her experiences to, “a flute song forgotten in another existence and remembered again.” The sense of nostalgia this presents is one that emphasizes her youthful fascination with the phenomenon surrounding her. The familiarity of the feeling also emphasizes the natural enigma which is sex. Once again though, Janie merely displays an idealized version of the story fueled by her yearning to learn. Flutes, as upper range instruments are often given prominent melodies in hymns and many upbeat pieces, thus allowing for the comparison to a flute song to her desire to fully experience and allow herself to be absorbed in the adult world. Finally, Janie’s eagerness is displayed through her idealized perception of the world around her.
The flowers around her seem to be, “frothing with delight.” To Janie, the passion in the world around her is so great that it is overbearing. The flowers are overflowing with pleasure, as if the goodness of the world was an uncontainable force, reeking out of every living thing. At this moment, Janie’s sole focus is gaining sexual experiences, so even in her fleeting moments she only sees in beauty and sexual pleasure in everything around her, playing off of her own yearnings. The world Janie sees is basking in the, “gold of the sun.” The sun is what ties all of what Janie sees together. It touches every living creature and glistens off the surface of each and every leaf. The sun is a source of warmth and welcome to all that it touches, tieing them all together in one golden hue. Gold is also a metaphor for value and wealth. With the sun reaching every aspect of the image created within the passage, it is giving it value thus glorifying it in Janie’s eyes to portray her desire to understand more of what happens around her. The passage ends referring to the “singing of the world.” Playing off of the depiction of music presented earlier with the flute, the world around Janie is characterized to have an imperishable happiness presented through constant music and harmony between the elements, an image that draws on her eagerness to take part in the joy and singing surrounding her, almost as if the her surroundings are consuming her and making her one with
them. The passage, though specific to Janey, is one that can be applied to any almost teenager. Sixteen is an age where one begins to fully grasp the meaning of those surrounding them and travel through life a part of the world around them, without the need for constant protection. At her age, Janie is slowly beginning to understand the wonders of the world and experiencing the natality of her sexual self.
In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie Crawford the main character goes through some big changes. Throughout this book Janie struggles to find her inner voice and purpose of love. She looks high and low for a sign of what love really is and she finds it as being the pear tree. The pear tree is very symbolic and ultimately shows Janie what love is and how it should be in a healthy relationship. This tree, with the bees pollinating the blossoms, helps Janie realize that love should be very mutual and each person needs to provide for the other equally. Janie tries to find this special kind of love through her three husbands, but she comes to realize it is going to be much harder then she expected. Each one of Janie’s husbands are a stepping stone for her finding her voice.
At the beginning of the 1900s, there was a “sexual revolution” in New York City. During this time, sexual acts and desires were not hidden, but instead they were openl...
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 Zora Neale Hurston 's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie discovers herself through her relationships with Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and Tea Cake. Each marriage brings her closer to that one thing in life she dreams to have, love. Janie is a woman who has lived most of her life the way other people thought she should. Her mother leaves alone when she is young, and her grandmother , raises her. Nanny has a very strict set of rules for right and wrong, and clearly stated/particular ideas about freedom and marriage. Janie then sees the same restrictions put on her by her later husbands, Logan Killicks and Joe Starks. Only the fact she catches
There are a lot of good husbands out there, but there are also a lot of bad ones too. A good husband needs to be honest, loyal, and kind. Janie has to marry her first husband, Logan, because her grandma made her because he has money. Then she ran off with Joe who becomes the mayor of the first black town. After Joe dies she marries Tea Cake, who is younger than her. Which one of the husbands is the best for Janie.
The character Janie in Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God is portrayed as a woman who has a modern mindset that is much too advanced for her thinking. Janie does things that raise much controversy with the community and endures situations that would be deemed inhumane in today’s society. Examining the abuse, oppression and criticism Janie undergoes in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God from both a contemporary woman's viewpoint and an early twentieth century woman's viewpoint reveals differences, as well as similarities in the way people respond to events.
Under the pear tree on that spring afternoon, Janie sees sensuality wherever she looks. "The first tiny bloom had opened. It had called her to come and gaze on a mystery. From barren brown stems to glistening leaf-buds to snowy virginity of bloom. It stirred her tremendously" (10). Gazing across the garden...
Through her use of southern black language Zora Neale Hurston illustrates how to live and learn from life’s experiences. Janie, the main character in Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, is a woman who defies what people expect of her and lives her life searching to become a better person. Not easily satisfied with material gain, Janie quickly jumps into a search to find true happiness and love in life. She finally achieves what she has searched for with her third marriage.
...izes the chance for happiness. Janie is comfortable knowing that she can live for herself, for she has become the subject of her own life. Janie is a complete woman because her inner and outer self unites; she transforms her social role into an organic role. Being comfortable in one's own skin and self, because of and not in spite of, is the true source of joy.
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
When Janie is growing up, she is eager to become a woman and is ready to dive into the strain, maturity, and exhilaration of adulthood. In the beginning of Janie’s life story, Hurston introduces the metaphor of the pear tree, a symbol of Janie’s blossoming, and describes how “she had glossy leaves and bursting buds and she wanted to struggle with life but it seemed to elude her,” which successfully captures her excitement and perplexity of entering the adult world (11). Janie’s anxiety of growing up is also articulated with the image of her “looking, waiting, breathing short with impatience. Waiting for the world to be made” (Hurston 11). In her teenage years, it seems as if her life revolves around the anticipation of womanhood. Even as Janie grows older, she continues to hold on to her aspiration of living an adventurous, invigorating, and passionate life. In criti...
For centuries, society has placed a remarkably large emphasis on protecting the young from the many perceived errors of growing up. Effective sex education is resisted in many locations across the country in favor of somewhat comical biblical suggestions for abstinence until marriage even while the majority of those targeted teens are viewing the world as a more and more sexual place. So many views are weaving in and out of teenagers' newly formed adolescent minds that any effective argument for responsible attitudes or analysis of sexual behavior in teens should be expressed with a certain minimal degree of clarity. Unfortunately, this essential lucidity of advice is missing in the short story “Where are You Going, Where Have You Been,” in which the misguided Joyce Carol Oates creates the character of Arthur Friend as a cliché personification of the inner demon of uncontrollably budding sexuality. Instead, the murky characterization of the antagonist presents nothing more than a confused and ambiguous view of the meaning of the story.
So, every time she has an expectation of what she would consider love to be in all her relationship. In relation, to this these lines form Daydream Believer portray what Janie's audience or friend message could be. “Cheer up, Sleepy Jean. Oh, what can it mean, To a daydream believer. And a homecoming queen.” These line represent firstly, the idea of Janie being encouraged not to give up on love and not be sad when things doesn’t workout. Secondly, Janie is considered naive which can be seen throughout her expectations in love. The line “to a daydream believer” represents Janie's young and gullible state of mind which makes her believe that love is to be found in every relationship she is in. Also, the line “homecoming queen” can be refering to the self growth after her experience of true love with Teacake and her return to Eatonville. Janie left with teacake as a princess but came back as a
Due to the girl’s current lifestyle and behavior, the mother is focused on sharing the value to save her daughter from a life of promiscuity. The mother fears her daughter will become a “slut” and insists that is exactly what the daughter desires. Moreover, the mother is very blunt with her view when she uses repetition with the statement, “… the slut you are so bent on becoming.” (Kincaid92). It is very clear that the mother holds a reputation to such a standard that it could determine the overall quality of a woman and her life. Therefore, a woman’s sexuality should be protected and hidden to present the woman with respect and to avoid the dangers of female sexuality. The mother is very direct in calling out certain, specific behaviors of the daughter. Such as, the way the daughter walks, plays with marbles, and approaches other people. The mother is very persistent that the daughter must act a certain way that can gain their community’s respect. She fears the social consequence of a woman’s sexuality becoming
Joyce Garity’s essay, “Is Sex That All Matters?” tells about sexual problems of teenagers. Elaine lived with a family who she knew; she was pregnant with her second child when she was seventeen. Elaine also did not have custody of her first baby. Therefore, people should know that sex might have bad problems for anyone. Garity uses Elaine as an example to discuss sexual advertisements, fantasies of teenagers, and sex education can influence negatively people.