HURSTON, ZORA NEALE. "THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD".   Term Paper ID:24140 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Examines evolution of protagonist Janie from helpless girl to woman empowered in body & mind.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Examines evolution of protagonist Janie from helpless girl to woman empowered in body & mind. Paper Introduction: This study will examine the character of the protagonist Janie in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. As the study will argue, the book shows the character of Janie to be the very embodiment of "female empowerment," as Cheryl A. Wall writes: During the twenty-odd years spanned by the plot, Janie grows from a diffident teenager to a woman in complete possession of herself. To achieve selfhood, she must resist the definitions of "what a woman should be" imposed on her by her grandmother Nanny and by the three men she marries (Wall 179). As Janie herself says at the end of the book, the process of life in its essence involves active participation and an aggressive attitude toward one's own identity: "Two things Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. 94-1 7.Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. He responds: "Over, Janie? In short, instead of treating her like "de mule of de world," Tea Cake treats Janie as an equal. Dunn. One of the major symbols of Janie's coming to empowerment is her bodyand the transformation of her relationship with her body. Janie might not be able to articulate her feelings or perceptions atthat point, but she is sensing on some level the profound truth she willdeclare at the end of the book--she must find out about living for herself.Her first two husbands are not capable of even considering that Janie doesand should have a life of her own. . Here was peace. Ah told you in de very first beginnin' dat Ah aimed tuh be uh big voice. . . yet it is far from ahappy ending Hurston gives Janie or the reader: Tea Cake goes mad and Janieshoots him, goes on trial for her life, and is set free to live out herdays and tell her story: Now, dat's how everything wuz. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Steve Glassman and Kathrym Lee Seidel. Eds. Janie wins her identity, her consciousness, her character, hersexuality, even her salvation, through her endurance and her ability totake advantage of opportunities to grow and change. Janie complains to her grandmother that she does not love her firsthusband, and her grandmother tells Janie that she should be happy becausethe man owns his house and much land: "Lawd have mussy! De white man throw down de load and tell de nigger man tuh pick it up. "Zora Neale Hurston: 'A Negro Way of Saying.'Afterword in Their Eyes Were Watching God. She says she hopes the hustle and bustle of their life will be overso they can spend more time together. Symbolically, the human body represents the individual's materialdestiny in and connection to the world; the body is the symbol of thematerial world and all of the problems and opportunities which that worldholds, especially for the black female. . For Janie, herbody is the vessel of both her imprisonment and her eventual liberation.The body is literally the means society uses to judge the ethnic female asinferior, and especially the black female. Immediately on the heels of this sweet, almost mystical recognitionof her own sexuality, her grandmother nullifies that sweetness with adeclaration that Janie must be married right away. She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside her (Hurston 67). . . Bloomington: IndianaUniversity Press, 1995.----------------------- 9 . She did not merely escape the prison; she created a new world aswell, which is reflected in her memory and language. From the very first time we see her in the book (actually after themajor events of her story have taken place) Janie is defined by her body,desired by men and resented by women (Hurston 2-3). The process of Janie's liberation is a process of herlearning for herself that sex and love can be liberating as well asimprisoning. But the body is also vesselfor the soul which in Janie's case eventually transcends the body'ssuffering: The day of the gun, and the bloody body . . He hand it to his womenfolks. Her second husband's ambitions in the material world are even greaterthan the first, and, like the first, he expects Janie to find her identitynot as an individual but as an object attached to him and his ego andpower. To achieve selfhood, she must resist the definitions of "what a woman should be" imposed on her by her grandmother Nanny and by the three men she marries (Wall 179). 1-11.Wall, Cheryl A. tea Cake . she learns . She is free as an individual human being, whethershe is ever with a man again or not. Wall writes: During the twenty-odd years spanned by the plot, Janie grows from a diffident teenager to a woman in complete possession of herself. Here again the body (suggested by "dat bedroom") is the door toliberation, but clearly Janie's freedom is not finally dependent on any manor even on her sexuality. . The message pounded intoJanie by her well-meaning grandmother is that sexuality is dangerous, thatshe must marry immediately, before she is seen as used material and toprotect her from becoming a loose woman. . . . As Henry Louis Gates, Jr. She found that out one day when he slapped her face in the kitchen. . I god, Ah ain't even started good. . He was a step up from her firsthusband, but the slap has awakened her to the fact that she has settled forfar less than she should both from him and from herself. She needed others tofind her path to liberation, but in this she is not unlike any other humanbeing whose relationships--good and bad, familial or sexual--serve as thestepping stones out of various imprisonments, as long as they seek thatliberation. This study will examine the character of the protagonist Janie inZora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. . Orlando: University of CentralFlorida Press, 1991. New York:Harper & Row, 199 . 185-195.Hurston, Zora Neale. imagin[ed] her life different from what it was. . Dis love!" (Hurston 22). He brings Janie strawberries, takes her fishing, and introduces her to the joys of planting and growing vegetables in the Everglades. Recounting her life,she recalls being shocked to discover in a photograph that she is "colored"(Hurston 9). In other words, she is defined and limited again by her body,by its color, and is shamed by that awareness and by the reactions ofothers to her body. followed her . Of course, Janie is able to make such a statement and live such alife only after many years and much experience, including manyrelationships in which others imposed upon her their own notions about theroles a woman should and should not have in life. Dis house ain't so absent o things lak it used tuh be befo' Tea Cake come along. But mostly she livedbetween her hat and her heels" (Hurston 72). Zora Neale Hurston. Joe slaps her, which causes"something" to "fall off the shelf inside her," meaning that an internalshift has occurred which is irreversible. . and connected itself withother vaguely felt matters that . New York: Harper & Row,199 .Morris, Ann R., and Margaret M. Again, herbody is seen as a prison in which the most she can hope for is aminimization of her suffering. Her grandmother yearns to believe that something better ispossible for the black woman, but she cannot really believe and she passesher fear onto her granddaughter. As Janie herself says at the end of the book, the process of life inits essence involves active participation and an aggressive attitude towardone's own identity: "Two things everybody's got tuh do fuh theyselves. . To them, as to the world at large, sheis a female object who was created to be an adjunct to the man in her life,to suffer and bear it with dignity, to do as she is told, to be grateful tothe man in her life for taking care of her and keeping her from being thewhore she would be if she were not married. When the bread didn't rise, and the fish wasn't quite done . The book tells thestory of Janie's journey from that imprisoning message to the liberationshe wins for herself and her body. . She felt far away from things and lonely (Hurston 44). Instead of the pleasure and transcendence ofsex and love which Janie envisions in the symbol of the pear tree, she istaught by her grandmother and her first husbands that for a woman sex andlove mean suffering. is associated with nature and springtime. Works CitedBaum, Rosalie Murphy. When Janie resists being marriedoff, her grandmother declares: "You just wants to hug and kiss and feelaround with first one man and then another, huh?" (Hurston 13). It's full of thoughts, 'specially dat bedroom (Hurston 182). Her body for Janie is a marker ofexperience: "The years took all the fight out of Janie's face. Ah done been tuh de horizon and back and now Ah kin set heah in mah house and live by comparisons. . Here Baum quotesfrom Barbara Johnson on Their Eyes: Hurston's work is often called non-political simple because readers of Afro-American literature tend to look for confrontational racial politics, not sexual politics" (Baum 94). Janie's eventual victory seems to be more a victory of a woman overmale domination than a victory of a black individual over white domination.Hurston's focus on the sexual/romantic struggle between Janie and her menhas been criticized by some black critics, as Baum notes. As the study will argue,the book shows the character of Janie to be the very embodiment of "femaleempowerment," as Cheryl A. . . . Janie is certainly not a whore, but she is a woman who takes a lotbefore she comes to her senses. . . Dat's de very prongall us black women guts hung on. Janie's liberation, then, involves both her body and her mind, bothher sexuality and her imagination, both her love and her self-awareness.True, a man is the catalyst for her liberation as men were the keepers ofthe keys to her prison, but Janie is not dependent on Tea Cake as she wason her first two husbands. She learnsfrom him, by example, to allow herself to blossom. . The fertility of theswamps reflects the new-found fertility of Janie's body as well as herimagination, her sense of herself as a woman and an individual human being.As Morris and Dunn write, Janie's relationship with . Women of the Harlem Renaissance. . So much of life in its meshes! "The Shape of Hurston's Fiction." Zora in Florida.Eds. . Orlando: University of Central Florida Press, 1991. Gates goes on in thesame passage to say: Their Eyes is a lyrical novel that correlates the need of her first two husbands for ownership of progressively larger physical space (and the gaudy accoutrements of upward mobility) with the suppression of self-awareness in their wife (Gates 187). buried themselves in her flesh"(Hurston 1 ). She was twenty-four and seven years married when she knew. Theygot tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin' fuh theyselves"(Hurston 183). However, as Baum dds, "Hurston anticipated 'future black womenwriters who would attempt to define themselves as persons within a specificculture rather than primarily through their relationships with whites"(Baum 95). to rejoice in the creative forces of the universe (Morris and Dunn 8). . . . Janie, learning about life fromher long-beaten-down grandmother, is told that as a black female in thewhite man's world she might as well be in the body of a work animal: Honey, de white man is de ruler of everything as fur as Ah been able tuh find out. . . Following quickly on the heels of that discovery forJanie is her awareness of her sexuality, stirred up by a kiss from a boy.This experience has a transcendent effect, making her aware of the promiseof love: "This singing . , he slapped Janie until she had a ringing sound in her ears. Their Eyes Were Watching God. . writes in the Afterword to Hurston's novel,the book is "the charting of Janie Crawford's fulfillment as an autonomousimagination," meaning that Janie's liberation involves not merely changingher behavior but changing the way she thinks and feels and perceives theworld and her place in it. Her grandmother believes she is teaching Janie what she most needs toknow in order to get through the world with as little damage as possible,trying to please whites and black men who are higher on the ladder of theworld than she. She called in her soul to come and see (Hurston 184). . came and commenced to sing a sobbing sigh out of every corner of the room. She will never again see herhusband as the possible love of her life. . For a whileshe thought it was gone from her soul." In the same passage, in which Janiebroods on her suffocating life with Jody, Hurston writes: "Sometimes she .. She endures her unhappy sexual, mental andspiritual imprisonment with Joe much like a mule might endure plowing thefields, until one day when Joe strikes her because she failed to fix dinnercorrectly: She wasn't petal-open to him anymore. . As Gates writes, "Only with her third and last lover, a roustaboutcalled tea Cake whose unstructured frolics center around and about yeFlorida swamps, does Janie at last bloom" (Gates 187). Steve Glassman and Kathrym Lee Seidel. Importantly, Janie does not find herself through Tea Cake. De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see (Hurston 14). Janie is taught that she is her body andthat her body is good for two things--sex and hard work. You oughta be glad, 'cause dat makes uh big woman outa you." A feeling of coldness and fear took hold of her. Again her body is the catalyst for her change, and again her bodyregisters that change most profoundly. . "Flora and Fauna in Hurston's Florida Novels." Zora in Florida. The very fact that she is telling her own storyof liberation is crucial because it illustrates the creativity sheachieved. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.