Gender Roles In Their Eyes Were Watching God By Zora Neale Hurston

In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, the long-lasting effects of slavery have taken a toll on Janie Crawford. Janie’s grandmother was raped by her master and had a child named Leafy. Leafy, although not born into slavery, endured a similar fate, which led her to run away, leaving her mother to raise her child, Janie. Janie’s appearance, showing strong European features, was both praised and shamed by society. This double standard was created by racism and was able to remain present due to segregation. The minds of black people have been brainwashed into thinking that people with more European features are more beautiful. Janie’s appearance models power, reflects society’s hypocrisy, and shows the distinction between the inner

Simmons analyzes the complexities of hierarchy throughout Their Eyes Were Watching God. Hurston utilizes Janie to critique the domination of society based on gender and race, which she eventually empowers and finds herself. Janie’s second husband, Joe desires a big voice, which places too much power in his hands that is parallel to the oppressive authority whites have over blacks. As Joe becomes a successful leader, he and Janie’s wealth and materialism set them apart from the rest of the community. The people of Eatonville question Joe’s leadership, but do not challenge him like Janie does.

Over time, women have slowly gained more and more rights. They have become more prominent in society, making more decisions that influence their lives, as well as the lives of other people. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston highlights how the gender roles of men and women differ including women being less powerful than men, how Janie had the strength and determination to gain her own happiness, and how stereotypical roles should not play a part in society.

Being a woman of color in the 1920’s was no easy task. Gender and racial inequalities have made progress throughout history, however during the time of this novel, and even in our modern day world they are still present and causing conflict. This is an issue that should be focused on and taken more seriously. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie does a fantastic job overcoming several of these inequalities in order to pursue her own happiness, overall depicting her as an extremely powerful role model for young

1)Hurston’s opening paragraph in “How it Feels to Be Colored Me” functions as a joke that aims to lessen the stigma around discussing race in the 1920s. The phrase “extenuating circumstances” is defined as lessening the seriousness of a situation and therefore reducing any consequence that may emerge from her controversial stance. Hurston’s assertion that her “grandfather on the mother’s side was not an Indian chief” is intended to bring humor to the African American tendency to claim Native American ancestry in order to raise their social status. Her sarcastic juxtaposition of accepting her color versus colored people distancing themselves from it creates a colloquial tone that illustrates her defiance of social stigmas and norms. This biting opening paragraph intrigues the reader and allows her audience to grasp the overall purpose of the

David Gaspar and Darlene Hine evaluate similarities and contrasts in the role of gender in different slave societies. Together, they create a novel on the topics of contrasts such as, Africa and the Americas, life and labor, and slavery, resistance, and freedom. What harsh conditions did these poor women go through? This book explains an African American woman’s life from experiencing slavery first-hand, to, at last, freedom. I will use examples of the harsh encounters Gaspar and Hine explain throughout this novel to support my main topic of my thesis; the theme of the corrupt power of slavery Harriet Jacob

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.

The story takes place at the height of the Civil Rights Movement in America, when desegregation is finally achieved. Flannery O’Connor’s use of setting augments the mood and deepens the context of the story. However, O’Connor’s method is subtle, often relying on connotation and implication to drive her point across. The story achieves its depressing mood mostly through the use of light and darkness in the setting.

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

Long ago, racism was very common in the United States. In Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy by Gary D. Schmidt, Turner Buckminster, and Lizzie Bright have to endure a racist town against Negros. Turner and Lizzie are both hated by the town, nevertheless, Turner's and Lizzie's understanding of racism is completely different. Turner and Lizzie are both hated by the town for certain reasons. For example, when Mr. Stonecrop asked if Turner to sell Mrs. Cobb's house and Turner refused, Mr. Stonecrop says,"You'll regret living in a town where no one wants you."

When Janie first arrives to the town, she is greeted by envious glares and cruel remarks from the porch sitters. “Seeing [Janie] as she was” made them remember the “envy they had stored up from other times.” Their jealousy ate them them through till they couldn’t take it any longer. They made “burning statements with questions, and killing tools out of laughs. It was mass cruelty.

Social Change Social change in our society can be good and bad at the same time; it can fix things that are not operating well, but it can also badly affect what could be currently working. In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie Crawford proves her independence by making decisions that change her life both positively and negatively. From the beginning to the end of the novel, Janie switches from allowing her grandma to create her life to taking charge and dictating her own path.

Her generation that while the characters are fictional there were individuals like St. Clare and Shelby in real life that shook the constraints of skin color and treated them as people. That just because their skin was black didn't mean that they were any different than a white person, they could think, they could feel, and most importantly they could believe. That it would get everyone to think about slavery and what it meant for all parties involved and it did ultimately selling over 300,000 copies in the U.S. and 1 million in Great Britain and being claimed to have aided in the repeal of slavery. For our generation, this book allows us to see into the mindset of the country as individuals like Stowe get drowned out in the sea of slave owners and we can tend to forget that there were kind

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).

At another level, it is a clear narration of how internalized concepts of beauty works in the minds of blacks and they themselves become their oppressors. All through the novel we can find numerous instances where “whiteness” is the measure for beauty. This is evident in all the characters in the novel who degrade themselves for not being fair and lovely like the whites. The novel is narrated through the eyes of a ten-year old girl Claudia McTeer who witnesses white hegemony around her as well as this superiority being unquestioningly accepted by the blacks. Sexism is one