Janie Character Analysis: Their Eyes Were Watching God

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Janie is being suppressed by her nanny and Jody Starks’ stereotypical view on the role of a woman and only through Tea Cake does she break away from the stereotype that nanny and Jody forced upon her and come into her own.

Janie was raised by her grandmother and she dotted on her a lot. Because nanny was a former slave she has a very different perspective on the world. She sheltered Janie her whole life which brought Janie to a stopping point in her development emotionally and as a woman. She didn’t want Janie to have to go through what she and her mother had to. She wants Janie to have a better life and not have to worry about financial stability. As Janie started to come of age she began to have a budding sexuality.

Nanny tells her that love is not about the ideals. Nanny feels that her time on earth is coming to an end and feels that she has to marry Janie off to protect her from being taken advantage of after she is gone. Janie is only a teenager and is at the age where she should be trying out things and dating so that she can get an idea of what love really is, but nanny is inhibiting her. What nanny perceives as protecting Janie is essentially stopping Janie’s emotional development.

Because nanny is sheltering her, she is setting Janie up for a long journey to self-discovery and to find the answer to the question, what is love? Thinking that she is protecting Janie nanny marries her off to Logan Killicks.so that she could have financial stability and protection from being taken advantage of. The marriage is doomed before it even starts, because it is loveless and trustless. You can’t build a house and expect it to stand if you haven’t even lain the foundation yet. Janie with her naïve way of thinking feels that even though love isn’t present, love with eventually

Joe and Janie get married after knowing each other for a little while. He lavishes her with gifts and puts her up onto a pedestal, so Janie’s idea of love changes. She feels that this is the way a woman should be treated and that, that is love. Before Joe became the mayor of Eatonville there was definitely passion in their relationship, but he gradually began to change when he acquired the position of the mayor. “Gradually she pressed her teeth together and learned to hush. The spirit of the marriage left the bedroom and took to living in the parlor. (Chap 6) Joe feels that women are mere objects for the possession of men. Janie remembers what her nanny said, “de nigger woman are da mule of the world…”and that is exactly how Janie felt all the while she was married to Joe. Only after he dies does Janie become free of him and his domineering ways.

A few months of being free of Jody, Janie meets Tea Cake who treats her like an actual human being. He involves her in conversations and take her to see and do things that she has never done before. Only though Tea Cake does she find the meaning of love, find her voice, and learn that she doesn’t need a man to do things for her that she can do