The United States Constitution states that the country values liberty, life, and happiness for all of its citizens. These three values shape the ideal American experience. Most view it as living freely, where all men, women, and races are created equal, and where oppression of genders and races does not exist. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, however, Zora Neale Hurston challenges the traditional view of this experience by illustrating how gender roles and racism change it, manifesting that it is not close to what the average citizen goes through, especially if he or she is black. Throughout the course of the book, Janie experiences oppression as a woman, revealing the hidden gender roles in American society that help form the American …show more content…
In Janie’s third marriage with Tea Cake, they encounter a white racist woman named Mrs. Turner. She is comfortable talking to Janie because she is part white and wants to bring her from the dark side to that of the light. One of her beliefs is that “it’s too may black folks already. We oughta lighten up the race” (Hurston 140). As a direct result of this belief, she feels hatred towards Tea Cake because he is a common black man, and tries to convince Janie to leave him for her brother. Through this, Hurston puts forth Tea Cake’s experience of discrimination based on his race as a microcosmic example of what takes place in American society. Part of Mrs. Turner’s views come from the fact that “it was distressing to emerge from her inner temple and find these black desecrators howling with laughter before the door” (145). For her, black people are too rambunctious and too foolish; she fails to recognize that the black people she knows simply have a different way of life than her, and, as a result, becomes prejudiced. Hurston demonstrates that racist whites like Mrs. Turner meet a few black people, decide that they are too loud, careless, or whatever trait they dislike, and characterize the entire race based on the traits of these few people. These kinds of whites disintegrate the American experience of equality, leaving behind a
The black culture is very diverse in different parts of the world-even in different parts of the state. Janie as moved throughout Florida to places such as West Florida, Eatonville, and the Everglades. Residing in these different places helps develop and define the character of Janie. Throughout Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie experiences many variations of black culture that helps build her character as she travels through Florida.
Turner perpetuates anti-blackness in her own black community by directly dismissing one’s personality based on the color of their skin, worshipping whiteness as a god, and working to achieve a racial hierarchy based on Eurocentric standards of beauty. As off-season for harvesting has commenced, Janie and Tea Cake have decided to remain on their residence in the Muck during this time of year; thus, Janie has more leisure time. Mrs. Turner, a townswoman of the Muck, begins to speak with Janie in her home during their free time about Janie’s husband, Tea Cake, and urges her to marry her brother instead. Mrs. Turner “didn’t forgive [Janie] for marrying a man as dark as Tea Cake, but she felt that she could remedy that” (Hurston 140). Here, Mrs. Turner clearly reveals her colorism against dark-skinned members of her community.
Parents are known to shelter their kids from the things they fear might be bad, after all it is totally normal to want one's child to stay innocent as long as possible. However, at some point one must acknowledged that children grow up and should be allow to start learning about the world they live in. " Their Eyes are Watching God", is a beautiful book that talks about women empowerment and teaches women how materialistic things lead to an empty life. Yet the book has always faced many controversy, since adults are always blinded by the things they fear, like ratio slurs, sexual content, and a realistic depiction of how life as a black woman was like in the past. An article, explaining how Neale Hurston helped her readers understand the world around them, stated, "in North and South alike, the critic posited, people hesitated to confront the harshest realities of what life was like for their non-white neighbors.
The novel begins showing Janie as a young girl. Hurston explains Janie 's family history by recounting how her black mother was raped by a white school teacher, leading to her biracial nature. The story instills in the reader a reason to be against white men. The novel is centered around the main motif of hair and most specifically Janie 's hair. Throughout the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie 's hair represents her strength as a woman, and by showing how a woman 's strength collides with both masculine ideals as well as white power, Hurston shows ingrained problems of acceptance within the world.
Everyone in town uses derogatory labels to address black people and discriminate anyone that associates with them. While Mrs. Dubose is having a conversation with Jem she says, “Your father’s no better than the niggers and trash he works for”(Lee 135). Mrs. Dubose is a resident of Maycomb and represents the racist mentality of the town. She and other white people discriminate black people and consider them criminals and slaves.
The text belongs to a novel called The Planter’s Northern Bride, written in 1854 by Caroline Lee Hentz. It describes the first time that Eulalia, the daughter of an abolitionist, visits her husband’s plantation in the South. Race is one of the most important topics of the text. Taking in consideration the fact that this novel was written almost a hundred years ago and before the American Civil War, it is not surprising to see the way that African Americans are depicted in the excerpt. Therefore, racism and slavery are very present in Eulalia’ s train of thoughts.
Racism can be defined as prejudice, discrimination, or contributions to a system that perpetuates the idea that one race is inferior to another. Racism was heavily enforced throughout American history, specifically in the early 1900’s. Coincidentally, this was the same time feminists, or women’s-rights activists, were in the in the midst of their fight for equality. Feminism is the theory that women should be treated equally to men in terms of social, political, and economic matters. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston uses the protagonist, Janie, to convey both concepts through her journey to self-love and acceptance.
Duncan Padgitt Mrs. Froemling English 10 honors 3/8/23 The Irony of Racism In her novel, “Their eyes were watching god '', Hurston writes about the hardships and cycle of being oppressed using imagery, dialogue, and even irony to show the true redundancy of racism and the cycle it creates. As Janie was home alone she saw some native americans, and after they warn her of a hurricane she brushes it of and thinks “ Beans running fine and prices good, so the Indians could be, must be, wrong. You couldn’t have a hurricane when you’re making seven and eight dollars a day picking beans. Indians are dumb anyhow, always were”(Hurston 178).
She questions why Janie would marry a dark man like Tea Cake. Mrs. Turner falsely assumes, like the rest of the people form the town, that Janie only married Tea Cake for his money because she could not possibly love him. Janie informs Mrs. Turner that her assumption is incorrect because Tea Cake was not wealthy when they met, and he is the only person that has made her truly
After watching her father fight hard for a case he was bound to loose, hearing all the mean names her family and Tom was called and hearing the news of Tom’s death she began to understand the reality of racism. “Just what I said. Grandma says it's bad enough he lets you all run wild, but now he's turned out a nigger-lover we'll never be able to walk the streets of Maycomb agin. He's ruinin' the family, that's what he's doin'.” (Lee, 110)
De thought uh mah youngness don’t satisfy me lak yo’ presence do’ ” (Hurston 127). Janie and Tea Cake’s newfound relationship expresses the theme of personal happiness verses social pressure because their age difference will stir up trouble amongst the townspeople, but they can not help but spend time together because it makes them feel joyful and
She writes through Tea Cake saying on 156, “De white folks ain’t gone no where. Dey oughta know if it’s dangerous” and on 158 where Hurston writes, “The folks [blacks] let the people [whites] do the thinking”. With so much white influence blacks have allowed their views to be veiled by the anglo-saxon ideaology that the whites spread. In another use of non- sequitur, Tea Cake announces not only that the Indians are wrong about the hurricane but that they, “...don’t know much uh nothin’ tuh tell de truth. Else dey’d own dis country
She also describes how some women, like Janie, are able to overcome the stereotypical roles. These stereotypical roles should not play a part in society. Women should not just rely on their husband, following the traditional roles of women, being satisfied with her life as the weaker sex. Women should be like Janie, searching for their inner strength to gain their happiness while overcoming these ancient viewpoints about women. So, how will this issue be buried in the years to come?
Is it worth risking everything in order to be happy? In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, an African American woman named Janie makes many challenging decisions in order to be happy. This novel takes place in the 1920’s which creates many obstacles that Janie must overcome in order to achieve happiness. There are many stereotypes and inequalities during this time that make life extremely difficult for Janie. Although Janie allows others to mistreat her at points throughout the novel, she is overall an excellent role model for young readers because she overcomes several stereotypes of African American females during this time period, and she makes many difficult decisions based solely on her own happiness.
The story represents the culmination of Wright’s passionate desire to observe and reflect upon the racist world around him. Racism is so insidious that it prevents Richard from interacting normally, even with the whites who do treat him with a semblance of respect or with fellow blacks. For Richard, the true problem of racism is not simply that it exists, but that its roots in American culture are so deep it is doubtful whether these roots can be destroyed without destroying the culture itself. “It might have been that my tardiness in learning to sense white people as "white" people came from the fact that many of my relatives were "white"-looking people. My grandmother, who was white as any "white" person, had never looked "white" to me” (Wright 23).