Character Analysis Of Janie In Their Eyes Were Watching God By Zora Neale

He expects that his wife will do what he tells her to do and will do it without question. Joe fits the male stereotype in a different way. He tries to keep his woman in line by beating her and brags to the others about it. Although they had a good marriage at the start, the minute that he starts to beat her, her feelings change. She just wants to stick up for herself, “So he struck Janie with all of his might and drove her from the store” (80).

Janie’s skin color is lighter than most of the people in the book. Her mother was half white and half black and was raped by a caucasian man which created Janie. Janie had light skin, her light skin gave her many advantages such as more opportunities, people treating Janie kindly and also being more respected. Janie was treated differently by most of the people in her life such as Mrs. Turner. Mrs. Turner is a light skinned woman that was married to a dark skinned man.

Their Eyes Were Watching God follows a young woman, Janie Crawford, and what she discovers about herself throughout the events that take place in her life. Janie is described and known as being very beautiful, and she often receives both welcome and unwelcome attention from male members of her community, who also influence her ideas about gender roles and what a woman’s role in society should be. Although the concept of feminism is not specifically referred to in the text, many related ideas and values play prevalent roles. Janie grapples with the concepts of being a good wife and a good granddaughter. Feminism is defined as the advocacy of women's rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes, but that idea manifests itself as the traits

Growing up, Janie was taught to keep quiet by society due to not only her race, but her gender. Keeping her hair from Society's eye was, in a way, keeping her voice from it, as well. “How about playin’ you some checkers? You looks hard tug beat. ’’Ah is, ‘cause At can't play uh lick.

However, many times in the book, many of the characters have told Joe that Janie is too good for him. That she should leave him and get another man. Which would anger an insecure man, who feels that he needs to have all material things to have a good life. In this quote, “He didn’t really hate Janie, but he wanted her to think so” (81). It shows that he thinks that guilting people into thinking that he’s the victim, that people will start respecting him again.

When Janie and Tea Cake move to the muck, she is first seen as a snobby wife who just sits around the house. “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” (133). An important step in Janie’s transformation involves her willingness to work in the fields along with the men. The symbolism of this action is that a gender barrier is broken and Janie shows a truly independent side of her.

Janie shows determination as she persists and struggles to define love on her own terms through her marriages. First, her determination shows when Janie runs away with Jody. She becomes aware that her marriage with Logan does not satisfy her goals and dreams for love, so she takes a chance and marries Jody. Hurston states, “Janie hurried out of the front gate and turned south.

The porch also gives a clear vision of the how segregation in this town of Eatonville. Men sat around on the porch and played games but women were not allowed to participate in these activities because it lacked “class.” However, clearly not all men are alike so when Tea Cake came along, Janie felt the freedom she never experienced in her past relationships. Even before meeting Tea Cake, the death of Joe exonerated Janie from the shackles that were placed on her individuality and "[she] did what she had never done before, that is, thrust herself into the conversation."

She was a rut in the road,” (Hurston 76). By this Janie was not well respected by Jody, she was not able to say how she felt. Considered being the wife of a rich man, she was treated less than

Janie reacts in different ways to people in her life trying to control her, and this can be seen with Grannie, Jody, and Tea Cake. Grannie forces her to marry Logan, but Janie stands up for herself when she decides to leave him after Grannie dies. Throughout the novel Janie is looking for love, and she

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie’s flaws about love continuously brought her to the same ending with all of her husbands, no matter how long the marriage lasted. In The Odyssey, Calypso was trapped on an island to fall in love with men who washed ashore. The fatality of her faults was her over affection and her need for love while being so alone on her island, Ogygia. Their weaknesses are exact opposites, specifically in their relationships with men. The flaws are role in relationship, attachment to men, and lastly, their submissiveness to men.

When Janie leaves Logan to go with Joe, she thinks Joe is her love of her life. But, when he becomes the mayor of Eatonville he changes. He now is very protective and controlling of Janie. He makes Janie wear a head rag to cover her hair. Joe says, “Her hair was NOT going to show in the store” (55).

events like her marriages and her childhood memories. It was while Janie was a young teen she was always working. Going into her first relationship she was always working, her husband made her work like a mule. In her second marriage, she was not adequate to do much. She could not let her hair down, she could not express her mind, and she could not play checkers with her husband or anyone else.

In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, the protagonist Janie, is influenced by others to change her ideals. Hurston vividly portrays Janie’s outward struggle while emphasising her inward struggle by expressing Janie’s thoughts and emotions. In Kate Chopin’s The Awakening the protagonist is concisely characterized as having “that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions,” as Janie does. Janie conforms outwardly to her life but questions inwardly to her marriages with Logan Killicks, her first husband, and Joe Starks, her second husband; Janie also questions her grandmother's influence on what love and marriage is.

Janie is both the narrator and the main character of her own story, and the way in which Janie's two styles of communication are used is integral to the illustration of the development of Janie's voice over time. During Janie's stifling marriage to Joe Starks, she is forced to be a woman of few words. Like her hair tied up with a rag, her voice is choked into silence by her controlling husband. Nonetheless, while her mouth is largely unmoving through large periods of her life, her brain is hardly unthinking. The separate ways in which Janie's thoughts and the dialogue of the story are presented emphasize the juxtaposition of Janie's internal self with her external reality.