Their Eyes Were Watching God Finding the Woman in Janie
Their Eyes Were Watching God - Finding the Woman in JaniePeople grow and develop at different rates. The factors that heavily influence a person’s development seem like heredity and environment. Genetics can play a key role in what kind of person one becomes. Environment seems like the factor that most often and influentially affects a person’s development. The people one meets and the experiences one has seem very important in what makes a person who he or she is. Janie develops as a woman with the three marriages she has. In each marriage she learns valuable lessons, has progressively better relationships, and realizes how a person is to live his or her life. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie’s marriages to Logan Killicks, Jody Starks, and Tea Cake seem like the most crucial elements in her development as a woman.
Throughout the story Hurston uses different men to portray the continuum that men fall into in their society. Janie’s marriage to Logan Killicks seems like the first stage in her development as a woman. She hopes that her forced marriage with Logan would end her loneliness and desire for love. Right from the beginning, the loneliness in the marriage shows up when Janie sees that his house feels like a “lonesome place like a stump in the middle of the woods where nobody had ever been” (Hurston 20). This description of Logan’s house seems symbolic of the relationship they have. Janie eventually admits to Nanny that she still does not love Logan and cannot find anything to love about him. “She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman” (Hurston 24). Janie’s prayer seems like her final plea for a change in her life. She says, “Lawd, you know mah heart. Ah done de best Ah could do. De rest is left to you” (Hurston 23).
Janie’s prayer gets answered with her next husband, Jody Starks. He seems like the man who fills the voids of loneliness and love, and continues her development as a woman. When they first meet, Jody bestows compliments on Janie, convincing her of her special qualities. For two weeks, before they married, they talked and Janie believed that Jody “spoke for change and chance” (Hurston 28). The problem Janie found with Jody dealt with him not treating her as an equal. He would not let her speak in front of people, teach her to play checkers, or participate in other events. Like Janie, Hurston’s voice seems dismissed- as not bitter enough, not depicting the harsher side of black southern life. Janie notices the problem early in the relationship and confronts Jody about it when she says “it jus’ looks lak...
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