Hair plays a significant role in illustrating Janie’s independence and power. In chapter 5, Janie's second husband, Jody, orders her to fully cover her hair with a rag while she works in the supermarket. This is due to the amount of unprovoked attention she receives from other men, who admire her long, straight hair. One day, Jody witnesses a man touching her hair without her knowledge or consent. This evoked jealousy inside him, as he felt that he should be the only man to admire his wife. “That night, he ordered Janie to tie up her hair around the store. That was all.” (Hurston, 57). Although Jody wished to protect Janie from the lustful eyes of men, he refused to offer an explanation to her and expected her to comply without questioning his authority as her husband. …show more content…
She burned all of her head rags and then placed her hair in her favored hairstyle of one thick, long braid. These actions symbolized her release from the restraints placed on her by her late husband. In her relationship with Tea Cake, the symbolism of her hair takes a liberating turn. A week after the meeting, Tea Cake returns to Janie’s home, and they spend the day enjoying each other's company. When Janie falls asleep, “she wakes up with Tea Cake combing her hair and scratching the dandruff from her scalp.” Tea Cake encouraged Janie to understand her beauty and live freely, therefore allowing her to fully break from the hold of Jody’s restrictive ideology. This continues even after his passing. In the opening chapter, Janie returns to Eatonville after the death and burial of her third and final husband. As she walks through the town, the townspeople are stricken with envy. Her hairstyle quickly became the focal point for gossip and speculation. The townspeople, specifically the women, ask, “What dat ole forty-year-old ole ’oman doin’ with her hair swingin’ down her back like some young gal?” (Hurston, 21) as Janie wears her hair in a loose and flowing
In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston which is set in the 1930’s explores the life of an African American women from the south, that trying to find herself. The protagonist of this novel is Janie Crawford. In the novel, Janie is going on a journey to find who she really is and to find spiritual enlightenment. To help shape Janie character in this novel Hurston is influence by the philosophical view from the Romanticism, and Realism movement in addition she is influence by the social events that were happing in the Modernism period.
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
After years of surrendering her dignity in the name of a constructed love she is free to be and to find herself after the death of her second husband Joe Starks, or “Jody”. Her hair symbolising her woman-hood is let down to be free after she burns the head scarves that symbolically and literally hid a piece of herself from the world she wanted to be a part of. While janie sacrificed her dignity and her morals for Jody she was not sacrificing in order to live by what she values most, it was for survival more than want. However, we see her true need for real love when she begins seeing Teacake and risking multiple aspects of her life for him. Janie is a lighter skinned woman, putting her in a higher social rank due to the racism infringed on people even in the African American community. She has a good amount of money in the bank and she has a rather high social ranking due to her deceased husband Jody being the mayor of the town prior to his death. These factors all lead to Janie not only being an upstanding member of the community but also a very desirable woman for a number of men in the town. Teacake on the other hand is nearly the opposite. He is very dark skinned causing bias’ against him and his relations with Janie. While much of the town judged behind her back on this aspect one character, Mrs. Turner,
TeaCake makes no promises to Janie and has nothing to offer her except his love, making him different from his previous counterparts who promised to meet her every want and need but fails extremely short of their goal. Janie has low expectations for the relationship, and is proven mistaken when he gives her what she truly desires. TeaCake 's loving fidelity and simple but true love for her is a relief to Janie after her previous marriage confinements. She feels completely free to do as she pleases without losing her feelings of love as she did in her relationships with Joe and Logan. As Janie and Tea Cake bond, Janie sees that TeaCake, a younger man with no richness, knows, accepts, and values her as no one else has ever done. Tea Cake is the only man Janie marries who cannot does not claim or insist to protect or solely provide for her. But Joe still takes a great deal of responsibility in the relationship. Janie also rightfully believes that who a person is, is more important than what he has. Only after Janie starts to trust Tea Cake, does Janie begin to free herself, and in fact feel eager, to tell her friend Pheoby all that has happened since she left Eatonville. Tea Cake 's love, acceptance, and understanding frees Janie to reveal her uniqueness, through non restricted language, and with a mature, confident, real presence. Janie easily leaves her elevated position in the community to start a new life with TeaCake. Hurston hints that the pursuit of individual aspirations can bring mental freedom, much more valuable than wealth. Regardless of obvious differences in age and social status Janie finally seems to have found true love in
In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie Crawford confronts social and emotional hardships that shape who she is from the beginning to the end of the novel. Living in Florida during the 1900s, it was very common for an African American woman to face discrimination on a daily basis. Janie faces gender inequality, racial discrimination, and social class prejudice that she is able to overcome and use to help her develop as a person.
Jody believes that Janie has poisoned him, illustrating the magnitude of both of their unhappiness. Almost immediately after Jody dies, Janie “starches” and “irons” her face, which could also imply how the headrags represent a facade that she unwillingly dons in public. Janie goes to the funeral inundated in loneliness and grief. However, after she emerges from the funeral Janie burns all of her head rags. Hurston states: “Before she slept that night she burnt up everyone of her head rags and went about the house the next morning..her hair in one thick braid”(pg 89). Fire represents the destruction of something; by burning the very tool that was facilitating the suppression of her identity, Janie is making a vow to never sacrifice herself to others. The long, nimble braid the reader is introduced to in the first chapter reemerges. It is important to note that as she lets her hair down, her circumstances change for the better. Janie meets Tea Cake, her playful new husband. Hurston describes Janie as the curious, vibrant child she was under the pear tree similar to how she is presently with Tea Cake. Therefore, Hurston reveals the overarching theme that when one unwillingly enshrouds their identity, their circumstances become unpalatable. This theme is conveyed through JAnie: As she sacrifices herself to tie her hair up, her happiness devolved into loneliness. However, once she crosses the threshold to her true self, she fully exuded the vivacious Janie that she truly is. All of this is manifested through her
Janie’s character undergoes a major change after Joe’s death. She has freedom. While the town goes to watch a ball game Janie meets Tea Cake. Tea Cake teaches Janie how to play checkers, hunt, and fish. That made Janie happy. “Somebody wanted her to play. Somebody thought it natural for her to play. That was even nice. She looked him over and got little thrills from every one of his good points” (Hurston 96). Tea Cake gave her the comfort of feeling wanted. Janie realizes Tea Cake’s difference from her prior relationships because he wants her to become happy and cares about what she likes to do. Janie tells Pheoby about moving away with Tea Cake and Pheoby tells her that people disapprove of the way she behaves right after the death of her husband. Janie says she controls her life and it has become time for her to live it her way. “Dis ain’t no business proposition, and no race after property and titles. Dis is uh love game. Ah done lived Grandma’s way, now Ah means tuh live mine” (Hurston 114). Janie becomes stronger as she dates Tea Cake because she no longer does for everyone else. Janie and Tea Cake decided to move to the Everglades, the muck. One afternoon, a hurricane came. The hurricane symbolizes disaster and another change in Janie’s life. “Capricious but impersonal, it is a concrete example of the destructive power found in nature. Janie, Tea Cake, and their friends can only look on in terror as the hurricane destroys the
Janie's hair is a reminder throughout the entire novel that she is unconventional and a strong woman which causes her to be characterized as independent. It is obvious from the start that Janie is not a typically women for this time period and she does not follow society’s rules, which is evident when the town people continuously comment on her appearance: "What dat ole forty year ole 'oman doin' wid her hair swingin' down her back lak some young gal?” Her hair is mentioned often by the townspeople, and the tone the people use to describe her hair is typically with disdain as evident by calling Janie a
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 shown 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 the course of their marriage, he had silenced her so much that she found it better to not talk back when they got this way.
When Tea Cake enters Janie's life, Janie really starts to come out of her shell. She lets down her hair that was kept up the entire time with Starks. This symbolizes Janie letting all her inhibitions out. In finding Tea Cake, Janie has "completed her voyage" of self-discovery. Tea Cake allows her to feel exhilarated and young again. She makes more friends and becomes more social. During this time in her life Janie is an excellent role model for other black women. She does not give a second look at what other people think about her, which is very admirable. This is shown when Hezekiah Potts tells Janie that Tea Cake is too low of a man for Janie yet, she stills persists on seeing him. Many people also think that Tea Cake is courting Janie for her money only. Janie pays no regard to these onlookers though.
His death had allowed her to see that in order to be her best self, in order to be able to get it right, she could not allow herself to be a victim of mislove anymore. Because of Jody’s death, Janie was finally able to tare “off the kerchief from her head and let down her plentiful hair. The weight, the length, the glory was there” (87). Janie’s hair was her symbol of strength and sovereignty that had been hidden her entire marriage to Jody, and now she was finally able to let it down, and become her own
Jody Starks was Janie?s second husband and was even more controlling over Janie than Logan. Janie usually wore very nice designer dresses because Joe was the mayor of Eatonville and felt that the mayor?s wife had to wear the best. The dresses symbolize the control and arrogance of Joe, because he forced Janie to wear things she was not comfortable in just to show off their money. Joe also made Janie wear head rags to cover her hair after an incident in the store. ?This business of the head-rag irked her endlessly. But Jody was set on it. Her hair was NOT going to show in the store.? (page 55). The head rags symbolize not only the control of Janie like in her first marriage but it also shows the jealousy Jody has towards his wife and other men.
After the marriage with Logan she met Joe a man she ran off with after an argument with Logan. Joe was the charisma type when you over with talk and charm that's how he won Janie, but little did she know Joe wasn’t who she thought he was. Joe was a controlling man who thought Janie place should be by his side when she is needed or working in the store. “This business of the head-rag irked her endlessly. But Jody was set on it. Her hair was NOT going to show in the store. It didn’t seem sensible at all”. That was because Joe never told Janie how jealous he was.Joe loved Janie’s hair so much that he hated when other men would look at it, Joe was very controlling to the point he made Janie wear rags on her head to cover up her magnificent hair so other men couldn’t enjoy its beauty. Another instances were Joe took Janie individuality was when she had the chance to speak in public because of Joe becoming mayor “Janie had never thought of making a speech, and didn’t know if she cared to make one at all. It must have been the way Joe spoke out without giving her a chance to say anything one way or another that took the bloom off of things. She had the chance to speak to the people of the town, but Joe didn’t give her the chance to speak because he felt like it wasn’t a woman's place to speak in public. Each of those time Joe took a piece of who Janie was.
... and scratching the dandruff from her scalp.” Tea Cake and Janie obviously shared a special love between them as their relationship grew. The things he did for her made her feel unbelievable. They did things she had never even thought of. Tea Cake took her places she had never been. “To Janie’s strange eyes, everything in the Everglades was big and new.” Janie went to many new places and met many new people that she would’ve never met had she stayed with Logan or stayed in Eatonville with Joe. She would’ve just kept on living the same life...never doing anything new with the same boring people. With Tea Cake, Janie began to work, and to feel a certain freedom she had never felt before.
She would eventually find that Joe needed to have control. The head rag was one of Joe’s ways of confining Janie, and a way he could keep her to himself and under his control. Hurston wrote, “This business of the head-rag irked [Janie] endlessly. But Jody was set on it. Her hair was not gong to show in the store… She was there in the store for him to look at, not those others” (6.31). Joe’s jealousy traps Janie, keeping her from being free to express her true self. Taking away her greatest display of beauty prevents her from having her own identity as a beautiful woman. Janie’s life became so confined, “she sat and watched the shadow of herself going about tending the store and prostrating itself before Jody, while all the time she herself sat under a shady tree with the wind blowing through her hair and her clothes” (7.5). Janie was so restrained by Joe’s jealousy she could only find freedom in her thoughts. She imagined a shadow of herself confined in the store while her true self was free to wonder under a tree, like she wondered under the pear tree, which defined her idea of love as teenager. After Joe died Janie “burnt up every one of her head rags and went about the house next morning with her hair in one thick braid swinging well below her waist” (9.3). This was an expression of Janie’s joyful liberation and defiance of Joe’s restrictive ways. After years of