Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God reveals the role of masculinity as well as femininity in one’s life. Janie’s various relationships develop her sense of femininity, as the different men who she becomes involved with all possess different masculine traits. The progression from Logan to Jody to Tea Cake allows Janie to find her own feminine identity due to the different hardships she endures throughout her relationship with the three men. The vast difference in characteristics of the three men emphasizes the role that masculinity plays in a consensual, reciprocal relationship, and what ideal reciprocity looks like. While men typically exude power through control and influence, women tend to find strength through inner voice …show more content…
Tea Cake functions under a loving, gentle personality and proves this personality through his treatment of Janie. Following years of abuse and disrespect, Janie is presented with the opportunity to spend time with a man who listens to her, treats her like a lady, and provides her with compliments often. Tea Cake expresses his masculinity through compassion and kindness rather than through authority and suppression. Tea Cake is the exception to the three men that Janie involves herself with, as he is the only man with whom she can connect with on an emotional level. Both Logan and Jody could not understand Janie as a woman and as a person and relied on her for either physical satisfaction or labor. Tea Cake considers himself as a man as he is always there for Janie and is willing to perform all sorts of gallantries for her as he says, “You don’t have tuh say, if it wuzn’t fuh me, baby, cause Ah’m heah, and then Ah want yuh tuh know it’s uh man heah” (Hurston 109). Tea Cake’s character challenges the preconceived notion of masculinity and how a man behaves as he is nothing like the brutish, powerful men who Janie was with before him. Tea Cake exhibits an unconventional sense of masculinity through his gentle and compassionate nature which contrasts with the typical male characteristics of power and …show more content…
Nanny plays an integral role in the development of Janie because she becomes Janie’s guardian and mother. Nanny also balances the role of Janie’s caregiver and source of wisdom. Nanny, in turn, provides Janie with a source of reason careful intuition, especially with regards to men. This reasoning helps Janie to be more careful about putting herself out there for all to see and allows her to be analytical. Consequently, Nanny embraces her belief that a woman needs to be careful with the men she meets and seek a more stable relationship in life. Janie even marries Logan Killicks, a man of stability, much to her grandmother’s own arrangement. With Janie newly married to Logan, the reader can even see that Janie values stability and a man that will take care of her. Much of this value Janie places in a steady marriage stems from her grandmother’s belief that it is better to marry a man who will treat a woman with some decency than purely off of what one believes is love. Janie’s marriage to Logan even brings Janie to a realization that she does not truly love Logan. Hurston writes, “She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman” (Hurston 25). Janie now realizes that she never really loved Logan but only felt artificial attraction because the values her grandmother instilled in Janie were
“It was generally assumed that she thought herself too good to work like the rest of the women and that Tea Cake “pomped her up tuh dat.” But all day long the romping and playing they carried on behind the boss’s back made her popular right away” (Hurston 157). Men on the field were surprised to see her pick of the basket to pick beans, but as time went on they grew fond of her and their opinions of her changed. TeaCake and Janie’s relationship is going so strong and so well, and Janie starts to reflect on her previous relationships and how they compare to hers with TeaCake. He makes dinner with her, respects her, and see’s her as equal to him, whereas the men in past relationships have not treated her, or seen her, like that.
In "Their Eyes Were Watching God," Zora Neale Hurston. Writes a novel were Janie, the main character, finds herself into two unpredictable marriages. Were one was give and the other was chosen. Nevertheless, Janie is unable to find her true love, which cause her to fail on understanding the idealistic reality of marriage.
In The Eyes are Watching God, the author Zora Neale Hurston expresses the struggles of women and black societies of the time period. When Hurston published the book, communities were segregated and black communities were full of stereotypes from the outside world. Janie, who represents the main protagonist and hero, explores these communities on her journey in the novel. Janie shows the ideals of feminism, love, and heroism in her rough life in The Eyes. Janie, as the hero of the novel, shows the heroic qualities of determination, empathy, and bravery.
Tea Cake treats Janie as an equal and encourages her to pursue her dreams, which is
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
People come into our lives for different reasons. Some leave a positive impact, while others bring negativity. Readers and critics alike have treasured Zora Neale Hurston’s 20th century novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, for generations particularly for its complex portrayal of the different main characters. The people a person meet and the experiences that person many go through in their lifetime can alter a person significantly. Through the tyrannical words of Joe Starks and the inconsiderate actions of Nanny, Janie in the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God is negatively influenced as her actions and thoughts alter her life.
In the beginning Janie feels as if Tea Cake’s age would effect their relationship. She has strong feelings for him, but on the other hand people are saying he will run off with her money. Janie proves them wrong and runs off and gets married to Tea Cake. He makes Janie feel wanted, she feels like she could be herself. Janie states, "We been tuhgether round two years.
For example, just like Jody, Tea Cake also physically abuses Janie to display his authority over her. What makes Janie 's relationship with Tea Cake different from her other relationships is that it is based on a love that runs much deeper than her motivation in staying in her other relationships. Janie married Logan in search of love. She married Jody in search of wealth and his ambition. When both of these relationships failed, she entered into her relationship with Tea Cake with low expectations.
1. Unlike Janie’s previous husbands, Tea Cake treats Janie with compassion and respect. In addition, he loves Janie for her personality instead of her looks and her role as a woman (housewife). 2. The speech characteristic that Tea Cake encourages Janie with is truth.
Another example of Tea Cake's ego is his tendency to exert control over Janie, even to the point of dictating her appearance,"Ah wants yuh to dress up all de time." This statement shows Tea Cake's desire for Janie to reflect his own self-image and lack of respect for her individuality. Furthermore, his behavior reflects his self-importance, as he sees Janie as an extension of himself and not as an independent person. Tea Cake behavior is also very similar to that of Joe Staks, as they both are very controlling of Janie. This type of behavior ultimately causes Janie to re-evaluate her views on marriage, as she realizes that Tea Cake's ego is limiting her freedom and preventing her from being her true self.
Hurston describes Janie’s quest to finding love and to recovering herself, though
Zora Neale Hurston, an author during the Harlem Renaissance, wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God, an amazing novel written about the losses and loves of a lady named Janie Crawford. The author describes the way Janie found out who she really was and what love was throughout her three marriages. Janie’s first two marriages were unfulfilling and not healthy for herself. Janie realized what true love was when she met Tea Cake. Janie’s first marriage was to a man named Logan Killicks, which was forced upon her by her grandmother.
“Their Eyes Were Watching God” is a novel written by Zora Neale Hurston. The novel portrays Janie, a middle aged black woman who tells her friend Pheoby Watson what has happened to her husband Tea Cake and her adventure. The resulting telling of her story portrays most of the novel. Throughout the novel, Zora Neale Hurston presents the theme of love, or being in a relationship versus freedom and independence, that being in a relationship may hinder one’s freedom and independence. Janie loves to be outgoing and to be able to do what she wants, but throughout the book the relationships that she is in with Logan,Jody and Tea Cake, does not allow her to do that.
Janie Crawford Killiks Starks Woods is the main character in the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, where she learns what's it's like to go from marriage to marriage looking for love. In the novel, Hurston utilizes the pivotal moment when Janie realizes that marriage doesn’t always mean love to show Janie's coming of age and psychological development which is used to show that love doesn't always come first. Logan Killicks was Janie's first marriage, which was brought about after Nanny (her grandmother) decided that she need to be married after she caught Janie and a young boy kissing when she was 16. After that Janie finds herself being thrown into some random marriage with some man she barely knew, and for a reason
Thus it is still possible to see Tea Cake as having a degree of control over Janie until the moment of his death. In each of her relationships, we watch Janie lose parts of herself under the forces of male domination. The men are not the only characters who see the traditional take on gender relations, where the men are dominant, and the women are obedient, as necessary and