The Quest for Self Realization

The Quest for Self Realization

Every person has once in life felt repressed. Their Eyes Were Watching God is a story about one woman’s quest to free herself, and to explore her identity. This is the story of Janie Crawford and her journey for self fulfillment. In this story Janie allows us to better understand the restraints that women in her time had to go through in a male dominated society. Janie has to undergo many transformations throughout the story. She has three very meaningful marriages to different men. The marriages almost seem to be stepping stones toward finding who she really is. “One of Hurston’s projects in Their Eyes Were Watching God is silence and the empowerment that arises in the act of breaking free from being concerned with the personal growth that comes from giving voice to outsiders.”(Haurykiewics 1) Though she goes go through many tragedies she is never weakened but instead becomes stronger.” The many critics of Their Eyes Were Watching God have frequently read the novel as a celebration of Janie’s ability to free herself from the confinement represented by her first two husbands and after the death of her third husband, Tea Cake Woods, to attain a new form of cultural power, the ability to shape her own story” (Simmons 1).

Anyone who has read the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God will agree with these critics. The whole story is based on Janie, and her finding her identity. Janie has difficulty with finding her place in society due to her mixed racial make-up and the prejudices among blacks, and whites both, regarding color. “Recognizing visual difference, Hurston suggests, it is crucial to understanding how identity is constructed: by skin and color.” (Clarke 1) Throughout the story there are many racial terms that implicate what the people then had to go through for example “The suggestion that God needs the aid of coffin’s to “see” racial difference again highlights the absurdity of seeing the world only in terms of black and white. By tying vision so intricately to race, Hurston offers a way out of the oppositional hierarchy of both.” (Clarke 15)

Janie’s grandmother who was called Nanny throughout the story arranged Janie’s first marriage with Logan. Nanny is afraid she will soon die and Janie won’t have anyone to protect her. Nanny says “Tain’t Logan Killicks Ah wants you to have, baby, it’s protection.” (15) The real reason her grandmother wanted Janie to marry Logan was because he had a lot of money, and 60 acres of land. One of the critics comments “Jody’s concept of a wife is an object to be possessed.” (Daniel 4) When marrying Logan, she had to learn to love him for who he was whether he was possessive or not. She never had a chance to get to know him before they got married. In the text she says “Ah’ll cut de p’taters fuh yuh. When you comin back?”(26). Janie innocently asks this question. She only wants to know if he will come back to her at all.

Then in her second marriage to Joe Starks from Georgia she became closer to her surroundings more than she was with herself. Joe was “a citified, stylish dressed man with his hat set at an angle that didn’s belong in these parts”. (27) He told her he would treat her like a lady, so she ran off and married him. Joe and Janie left town, Joe became mayor, and the two bought a store together. Janie was always working hard in the store. Joe becomes powerful, jealous, abusive and demanding like a white person: he likes people to ‘bow down’ to him. Joe never wanted Janie to let down her hair because it was so beautiful. He didn’t want anyone else looking at her Joe became very sick. The folks in town came to tell him everything that Janie did in the store when he was bed stricken. Joe eventually died. After Joe’s death Janie let down her hair like it was a new beginning in life. She burned all of the head rags. Janie tells Phoebe “ Tain’t dat Ah worries over Joe’s death, Phoebe. Ah jus’loves dis freedom.”(93) Phoebe tells Janie not to say that because people in town will say she’s not sorry that he’s gone. Janie says”Let’ em say whut dey wants tuh, Pheoby. To my thinkin’ mourning oughtn’t tuh last no longer’n grief.”(93)

The last man she married in the book was Tea Cake. Tea Cake was a charming young man with a sense of adventure. Tea Cake is attractive, and flattering to Janie. Friends and neighbors are skeptical of Tea Cake suggesting he will use Janie for her money. Janie does not accept this idea , and believes in him. She feels that he treats her as an equal and respects her feelings, which is important at this time in her life and the process of self realization. Tea Cake