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Gender essay on thier eyes were watching god
Gender essay on thier eyes were watching god
Their eyes were watching god and gender
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Ana Arellano Mrs. Hladik AP Literature 7th 13 January 2014 Their Eyes Were Watching God In her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston introduces the theme of gender roles through the use of characterization. Gender roles were very important in the African American culture during the 1930’s. Hurston highlights the importance males place on feeling superior to their wives and forcing them in a role of subservience. Men in the South viewed women as property. Men were the masters of the household and women were the slaves in the marriage. The novel is the story of Janie’s awakening from this oppression into her own self-awareness and personal identity. Janie’s journey to awakening was filled with oppression before she entered the pear tree garden of her self-actualized dreams of love. The beginning of her awakening as well as the beginning of her slavery begins with her grandmother. Janie experiences awakening to love in her grandmother’s backyard while staring at a blooming pear tree. “Oh to be a pear treeany tree in bloom! With kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world! She was sixteen. She had glossy leaves and bursting buds and she wanted to struggle with life but it seemed to elude her. Where were the singing bees for her?” (Hurston, 11) Janie’s grandmother believes that Janie needs a husband not lover. She wants Janie to marry a rich man. Nanny chooses Logan Killicks, an older man than Janie, because she believes he will provide for Janie all the material things she needs. Janie was neve... ... middle of paper ... ...troys their town. Janie is attacked by a wild dog and Tea Cake saves her from its powerful jaws, incurring a savage bite on his face. Several weeks later, Tea Cake is diagnosed with rabies. Tea Cake’s condition worsened to the point that in his delirium, he tried to shoot Janie. In self-defense Janie shot back and killed Tea Cake. Janie’s final state of awakening occurs in Etonville, where she finishes telling her friend Phoebe the story of her and Tea Cake. Janie realizes that she had attained her dreams, has lived them, and still keeps them in her heart. She keeps the memory of Tea Cake alive in her heart. Through the realization of her dream of love, Janie discovers herself, and this self-discovery is a joy that she will carry throughout her life. She has peace, because she finally knows who she is, and she is strong enough not to back away from that person.
Over time Janie begins to develop her own ideas and ideals. In Their Eyes Watching God. Each principle character has their own perceptions. towards the end of marriage. & nbsp;
Janie then leaves Joe and doesn’t speak to him again until he is on his death bed. After Joe’s passing Janie meets a young man called Tea Cake. The town’s people feared that Tea Cake was only with Janie to attempt to steal her money. Janie ignored these warnings and runs away with Tea Cake anyway; Tea Cake soon gambles all of Janie’s money away. Not wanting Janie to provide for the two of them, Tea Cake moves the two of them to the everglades to harvest crops. Tea Cake allows Janie to be his equal and even lets her work in the fields with him. A hurricane rolls into Florida and instead of leaving with everyone else Tea Cake and Janie stay. During the storm while trying to protect Janie, Joe is bitten by a rabid dog and contracts rabies which eventually leads Janie to shoot him in self-defense. After buying an extravagant funeral for Tea Cake Janie returns to Eatonville to tell her story. Throughout Janie’s life her care takers/husbands have played four very different roles in molding Janie into the strong woman she becomes: Nanny wan an overbearing parental figure, Logan was her first husband that treated Janie like his slave, Joe was her second husband who held Janie as a trophy, and Tea Cake her third and final husband was Janie’s
In the beginning of the novel, Janie attempts to find her voice and identity; the task, of harnessing
At age sixteen, Janie is a beautiful young girl who is about to enter womanhood and experience the real world. Being joyous and unconcerned, she is thrown into an arranged marriage with Logan Killicks. He is apparently unromantic and unattractive. Logan is a widower and a successful farmer who desires a wife who would not have her own opinions. He is set on his own ways and is troubled by Janie, who forms her own opinions and refuses to work. He is unable to sexually appeal or satisfy Janie and therefore does not truly connect with her as husband and wife should. Janie's wild and young spirit is trapped within her and she plays the role of a silent and obeying wife. But her true identity cannot withhold itself for she has ambitions and she wills to see the world and find love. There was a lack of trust and communication between Logan and Janie. Because of the negative feelings Janie has towards Logan, she deems that this marriage is not what she desires it to be. The pear tree and the bees had a natural att...
Throughout history and even today, women are undoubtedly perceived as inferior. Women are often associated with passivity and domesticity, while men are associated with robusticity. In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, Hurston explores the theme of gender roles and relations through the audacious protagonist, Janie. Janie unveils the eventful life she endured upon her return to her hometown of Eatonville, Florida, as she speaks to her best friend, Pheoby Watson. Through her imparting, Janie describes her past relationships with men, which accentuate the demeaning aspects of gender roles in society.
At first, her grandmother pressures her to marry Logan, then she runs from her marriage to marry Jody, but ultimately finds true love with Tea Cake. By the end of the novel, Janie forgot what she did not want to remember and remembered everything she didn’t want to forget and with that she built a “rich” life. At the beginning of the novel, Nanny, who is Janie’s grandmother, wants the best for Janie. Nanny is old and is dying and wants to see Janie married and taken care of before she dies. So, she tells Janie to marry Logan, a wealthy farmer that can take care of her.
Once a slave, Nanny tells of being raped by her master, an act from which Janie’s mother was brought into the world. With a
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.
...ea Cake, and that it would only end in misery, but Janie proved them wrong. Janie found the freedom she had been looking for since she was sixteen in a place no one would have expected.
After this incident he continually puts Janie back in her place and allows her no authority, which causes her to relinquish her love for him. After his death, Janie is once again longing for power, which she finds in her love for Tea Cake. Tea Cake is younger than her, which automatically gives her more authority. He also loves her, an older woman, and that also gives her a sense of more power. She follows her power, and consequently her love, to the Everglades.
Through her three marriages, the death of her one true love, and proving her innocence in Tea Cake’s death, Janie learns to look within herself to find her hidden voice. Growing as a person from the many obstacles she has overcome during her forty years of life, Janie finally speaks her thoughts, feelings and opinions. From this, she finds what she has been searching for her whole life, happiness.
Once Janie was of age to have serious relationships, Janie’s grandmother tried to guide Janie in the direction of the upper class and money. The point was so that Janie would never have to work a day in her life and only have to fulfill her normal housewife duties. But once word got
For twenty-years this love was the same as the marriage before. Although Janie became familiar with the people in Eatonville and built herself a home, she did not live for wealth or security. She was beaten by her husband and told that she was nothing but a women who was good for nothing but cleaning, cooking and keeping her mouth shut. Their marriage ended when Joe died of old age. She felt no remorse. About a month after Joe's death, along came a spirited, young man named Vergible Woods but known to all as Tea Cake. Tea Cake showed Janie a way of life and love that she had never known before. He had loved her for who she was ...
Janie is older, more mature and understanding of the real world, when meeting Tea Cake she’s hesitant to pursue a relationship with him. Here the reader can see how these past two marriages have affected Janie’s perspective on marriages and the way it’s utilized by Hurston will help with Janie’s development as a character and her understanding of happiness. The marriage between Janie and Tea Cake is much more composed and open, Tea Cake is more emotionally connected to Janie and much more understanding of her needs that her previous two husbands were. With the first marriage Janie was introduced to reality, and within this reality she couldn’t be happy because she didn’t understand how to deal with the reality given to her, in turn her marriage with Tea Cake takes her away from reality in the context of her understanding and being able to react in a way that allows her to be
In Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, the image of a pear tree reverberates throughout the novel. The pear tree is not only a representation of Janie's life - blossoming, death, metamorphosis, and rebirth - but also the spark of curiosity that sets Janie on her quest for self-discovery. Janie is essentially "rootless" at the beginning of her life, never having known her mother or father and having been raised by her grandmother, Nanny. Nanny even says to Janie, "Us colored folks is branches without roots and that makes things come round in queer ways" (Hurston, 16). Under a pear tree in Nanny's backyard, however, Janie, as a naïve sixteen-year-old, finds the possibilities of love, sexuality, and identity that are available to her. This image, forever reverberating in her mind through two unsuccessful marriages to Logan Killicks and Joe Starks, is what keeps Janie's spirit alive and encourages her quest for love and life. "It followed her through all her waking moments and caressed her in her sleep" (10).