Janie's Journey In Their Eyes Watching God

Janie’s Journey to the Horizon

Their Eyes Watching God was written by African American writer Zora Neale Hurston in the 1930s during a time of great change in America: the Great Depression hung over the lives of all Americans, and in the black cities of the North, the Harlem Renaissance was underway. Seen as influential work in both African-American literature and women’s literature, Hurston’s novel traces the life of a black women, Janie Crawford. Set in Florida, the novel narrates Janie’s search for love, which is represented by the motif of the horizon. This motif is introduced in the very first paragraph: “ Ship at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For other they sail forever on the horizon...”

(1). Janie’s wish aboard her ship is real love. In Their Eyes Watching God, the horizon represents Janie’s idea of real love that she develops under the pear tree; Janie’s journey to reach her horizon is shown by her marriages to Logan, Jody, and finally Tea Cake, with whom she finds real love, thus reaching her horizon.
Janie initially discovers her horizon at a young age: in her adolescent, Janie finds her notions of real love while masturbating under a pear tree in the back yard; however, her marriage with Logan Killicks represents the constraints her Nanny has set upon her horizon. Janie discovers her horizon when “She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree...she saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the loving embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree....So this was a marriage! She had been summoned to behold a revelation” (11). Her vision under pear tree represents her revelation that a marriage with real love involves sexual pleasure and equal partnership; the exchange between the bee and the flower represents sex; Janie’s masturbation and orgasm represents the pleasure involved; and the equal exchange of pollination and honey between the bee and the flowers represents an equal partnership. After Jody’s death much later in her life, Janie realizes that her Nanny had limited her horizon: "Nanny had taken the biggest thing God ever made, the horizon - or no matter how far a person can go the horizon is still way beyond you - and pinched it in to such a little bit of a thing that she could tie it about her granddaughter's neck tight enough to choke her" (p 89). Instead of urging Janie to chase her notions of love, Nanny urges Janie to marry Mr. Killicks, a respectable older gentlemen who Janie did not like. Nanny’s actions effectively cut off Janie’s ability to sail toward her horizon because it forced Janie to marry for reasons that did not match with her horizon. With her own notion of an ideal marriage, Janie attempts to break free from Nanny’s constraints when she runs off with Jody, her second husband, who offers Janie a new hope at finding her horizon.
While Jody promises to give Janie real love, he fails to meet her expectations: Jody tries to please Janie by placing her in a pedestal, but Janie desires a marriage of equal partnership which Jody fails to give. When Janie first meets Jody, he claims that “You ain’t never knowed what it was to be treated lak a lady and Ah wants to be de one tuh show yuh” (29). While Jody promises to treat Janie like a lady, his ideas regarding treatment of women is different from Janie’s vision of love that involves equal partnership. Jody believes the best thing he can do for Janie is place her on a pedestal of status and wealth above the other women. His ambition to succeed carries not only him but also Janie up the social ladder in Eatonville: “Here he was just pouring honor all over her; building a high chair for her to sit in and overlook the world” (62). He does so by making Janie the mayor’s wife, which makes her the most respected women in the town. Janie, however, does not want to be hoisted upon a high seat of pride and wealth. After Jody dies, Janie admits that “[she] nearly languished to death up [on the high chair]” (114) because her notions of love were different. Janie’s doubts first appear after Jody doesn’t let her speak at the town assembly (43). Similar episodes occurred all the time on the store porch; Janie wishes she could join the conversation of men, but Jody does not permit her (53). Jody fails to treat Janie as an equal partner because he limits her voice, and as a result, Janie “gradually pressed her teeth together and learned to hush. The spirit of the marriage left the bedroom and took to living in the parlor” (71). No longer did the marriage match Janie’s notions of love and equality; instead, it was about the store and Jody’s desires. As a result, when Jody dies, Janie feels a sense of freedom: “[she] went rollicking with the springtime across the world.” (89). With Jody’s constraints no longer present, Janie feels free to search for real love. Due to Jody’s failure to give Janie equal partnership, Janie did not find her notions of love with Jody; instead, she discovers it with Tea Cake, who she marries during her period of freedom following Jody’s death.
With her third husband Tea Cake, Janie finds her horizon: her ideas about love and marriage are all found in their relationship; he treats her as an equal, and he fulfills her sexual desires and pleasures.

Tea Cake demonstrates his sense of equality in two ways: teaching Janie and giving her a voice. During their initial encounters, Tea Cake teaches Janie to play checkers: “he set it up and began to show her [how to play] and she found herself glowing inside. Somebody wanted her to play. Somebody thought it natural for her to play” (95-96). Tea Cake’s willingness to teach Janie checkers show his belief that women should have the chance to learn the same things as men; he even says Janie must be hard to beat, showing his respect for women’s intelligence. After they move to the Muck, Tea Cake also teaches Janie how to shoot a gun, a skill that only men typically knew in their time period: “Tea Cake made her shoot at little things just to give her good aim...She got to be a better shot than Tea Cake” (131). Not only is he willing to teach her to shoot, but also seems to accept that a woman could be better than a man at typically masculine tasks. Tea Cake also demonstrates his sense of equality when he gives Janie a voice by allowing her to interact with the men on their porch. While in the Muck, “she could listen and laugh and even talk some herself if she wanted” (134) with the people on her porch. The freedom to talk to the others as she pleased gave Janie the voice that she

lacked while with Jody. Tea Cake’s treatment of Janie matches her desire for equality within a marriage.
Furthermore, Tea Cake matches Janie’s vision marraige in terms of sexual desires and pleasure.

When she first meets him, she thought “he looked like the love thoughts of women. He could be a bee to a blossom - a pear tree blossom in the spring” (106). From the very start, Janie compares Tea Cake to her image of love under the pear tree. Janie would be the blossom, Tea Cake would be the bee, and the bee-tree interaction would represents their sex and marriage. This comparison is eventually proven true; right before they move to the Muck, Janie admits that she “felt a self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from its hiding place” (128). Jody’s treatment of Janie caused her to hide her desires of marriage, but with Tea Cake, Janie feels safe to pursue her desires. After Tea Cake's death, Janie returned to Eatonville and “pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder” (193). Now that she has found her horizon with Tea Cake, Janie has completed her quest and no longer searches for real love. Thus, her metaphorical fish-net that she used to find love can be pulled in. Janie attains her notions of marriage through her relationship with Tea Cake because he treats Janie as an equal and fulfills her sexual desires allows; and thus, by the end of the novel, Janie reaches her horizon and can end her quest for real

love.
Hurston’s novel traces the journey of a black women to reach her horizon: real love. From her adolescence to her late adulthood, Janie sails the seas in search of her horizon. She looks for a marriage involving equal partnership and sexual pleasure. While her first two attempts with Logan and Jody fail, Janie eventually finds real love with Tea Cake. Because Janie is able to break free from her Nanny’s constraints on her horizon by the time she meets Tea Cake, their relationship meets Janie’s standards of real love. And thus, by the end of the novel, when Janie pulls in her fishnet, she has reached her horizon and has to search no more. The motif of the horizon in Their Eyes Watching God not only represents Janie’s dreams, but also the dreams of all individuals: each person sails toward their own horizon in hopes of achieving their dreams.