Feminism In The Early 1900s: Understanding Women
Feminism in the Early 1900s: Understanding Women Feminism has created many opportunities for women, and it has expanded the rights for women in today’s society. However, women in the early 1900s were not as treated with respect and did not have as many rights as the women in our time period do. Women were looked at objectively, as possessions of men, and someone to cook, clean, and bear the children. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, the portrayal of women shows the said stereotypical woman from the early 1900s. This novel shows the struggles of a young, beautiful, black woman, Janie, that is trying to fit into the world and find the love that she has always desired. Janie goes through beatings, a forced marriage, and being controlled
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Women were still fighting for their rights in this time period; especially black women. Deborah King in “Multiple Jeopardy, Multiple Consciousness” mentions Frances Beale, a member of the Women’s Liberation Committee of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and also the Third World Women’s Alliance, who wrote, “As blacks they suffer all the burdens of prejudice and mistreatment that fall on anyone with dark skin. As women they bear the additional burden of having to cope with white and black men” (46). Janie had to listen to the men when they told her to do something because they were superior over her. She was told to stay back at the store when everyone else got to enjoy themselves at the burial of the mule. She was told that it wasn’t a woman’s place to go. Whenever she was sullen about not being able to go, Joe says that she had no right to feel that way. The novel states what Joe thought about Janie when he found her sulking, “Joe returned to the store full of pleasure and good humor but he didn’t want Janie to notice because he saw that she was sullen and he resented that. She had no right to be, the way he thought things out” (Hurston 62). Joe believed that she should’ve been happy when he got back. This shows the lack of trust and respect towards women in Janie’s
Women were still fighting for their rights in this time period; especially black women. Deborah King in “Multiple Jeopardy, Multiple Consciousness” mentions Frances Beale, a member of the Women’s Liberation Committee of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and also the Third World Women’s Alliance, who wrote, “As blacks they suffer all the burdens of prejudice and mistreatment that fall on anyone with dark skin. As women they bear the additional burden of having to cope with white and black men” (46). Janie had to listen to the men when they told her to do something because they were superior over her. She was told to stay back at the store when everyone else got to enjoy themselves at the burial of the mule. She was told that it wasn’t a woman’s place to go. Whenever she was sullen about not being able to go, Joe says that she had no right to feel that way. The novel states what Joe thought about Janie when he found her sulking, “Joe returned to the store full of pleasure and good humor but he didn’t want Janie to notice because he saw that she was sullen and he resented that. She had no right to be, the way he thought things out” (Hurston 62). Joe believed that she should’ve been happy when he got back. This shows the lack of trust and respect towards women in Janie’s