"Through the four stages of her life, Janie Crawford undergoes physical and psychological changes that enable her to become self-sustaining. The strength inherent in her character and embodied in the iron will of her grandmother only needs to find its way through the layers of control, injustice, and male assumptions in order to emerge and bloom." (Berridge 1).…
These metaphors, not only constitute a big part of the story but they also show Janie’s journey through marriage, and her resulting character as a self-aware, confident and balanced individual.…
Joe became jealous of other men viewing Janie’s beautiful luxurious hair. “Her hair was NOT going to show in the store. It didn’t seem sensible at all. That was because Joe never told Janie how jealous he was. He never told her how often he had seen the other men figuratively wallowing in it as she went about things in the store.” (Hurston 55) Hurston explains a scene of Joe demanding her hair out of view and Janie obeyed his request. In contrast, during the movie Janie receives the strength of standing up to Joe and refusing to wear her hair up. Polar opposite of what society held Janie accountable to do in the book. Zora Neale Hurston shows Janie doing the everyday expected tasks of a woman during this time period. Oprah depicts Janie partaking in the hard manual labor of the fields. The field work became known as a man’s job during the book. This shows Janie received just as much strength as a man for that day in age. In the novel, Janie could not have a voice in the town because Joe would not allow it. “He kept her socially isolated, set her apart, leaving her lonely and unfulfilled. Without that sense of belonging, Janie could not find the voice she had been lacking for so long, the voice that could stand up to Joe Starks…”(hubpages) The movie opposes this and granted Janie the strength to speak up and voice her opinions for the public to…
In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie’s three husbands treat Janie physically and emotionally different, but their work ethics are the same. Janie’s first husband Logan Killicks treats Janie emotionally similar to the way Joe Starks treated Janie and Tea-Cake treated Janie different emotionally compared to Logan and Joe. But when it came to pleasing Janie, Jody and Tea Cake were very similar. These three men change the course of Janie’s life and impact the decisions she makes when it comes to finding a new suitor.…
As Janie returns to the town the townspeople criticize her attire and her previous love life and speculate what had happened to her lover. The town seems to be resentful about her return and try to pinpoint the reason of her return. This gives me the first look at how the townspeople seem to be zealous of her past and truly are critical of the choices she makes. This piece of symbolism shows aspects of Janie’s life that have had positive effects and negative affects on her life and her life choices.…
Throughout the story Hurston uses different men to portray the continuum that men fall into in their society. Janie's marriage to Logan Killicks seems like the first stage in her development as a woman. She hopes that her forced marriage with Logan would end her loneliness and desire for love. Right from the beginning, the loneliness in the marriage shows up when Janie sees that his house feels like a "lonesome place like a stump in the middle of the woods where nobody had ever been" (Hurston 20). This description of Logan's house seems symbolic of the relationship they have. Janie eventually admits to Nanny that she still does not love Logan and cannot find anything to love about him. "She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie's first dream was dead, so she became a woman" (Hurston 24). Janie's prayer seems like her final plea for a change in her life. She says, "Lawd, you know mah heart. Ah done de best Ah could do. De rest is left to you" (Hurston 23).…
Janie’s concept of marriage is unique in her own, sixteen year old, eyes. “Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches.” (pg. 8) Janie saw her marriages like bees who visit the beautiful blossoms of the pear tree, her life was formed around this tree because of the experiences she had underneath it. She experienced love and life that she wants to replicate. Janie also knows that her life and loved ones would bring her joy and suffering and not everything would be what she hoped for. Joe Starks to Janie was the opposite of her pear tree---he was the suffering. Just like Logan, Jody did not give Janie her ideal pear tree image. “Janie pulled back a long time because he did not represent sun-up and pollen and blooming trees, but he spoke for far horizon.” (pg. 29) Hurston uses the word “sun-up” to symbolize hope and “pollen and blooming trees” to symbolize sex and new life, but Jody did not give her these things he only gave her fortune. Janie's relationship to Jody was also very poor because there was a lack of communication between the two and too much…
“She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman.” (Hurston 25)…
“There are years that ask questions and years that answer. Janie had no chance to know things, so she had to ask. Did marriage end the cosmic loneliness of the unmated? Did marriage compel love like the sun the day?”…
Through the connections made between PP and LA, responders gain a deeper understanding of the purpose of a marital relationship within society, especially its importance in the lives of women. In the patriarchal society of Austen’s context women have no individual rights of their own and since inheritance was passed through the male linage marriage was the economic bases of life and the only option for women with limited fortune and beauty. The subsequent importance of marriage has been supported by the critic Ginger Graph, “the world of this novel; marriage is the market, and the young woman are the merchandise.” Austen has reflected the purpose of marriage as a tool for economic survival through her pragmatic characterisation of Charlotte Lucas who agrees to marry Mr Collins despite his, “conceded, pompous, narrow-minded nature,” she admits to Elizabeth that she “asks only for a comfortable…
Class rankings and social status decide who marries who and who does not in this society. Associating with people of lower classes is unusual and such engagements are looked down upon by members of the higher classes. Exceptions however rise, such as in the case of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet. Mrs. Bennet came from a lower class than Mr. Bennet but such situations prove that the lines dividing classes can be blurred and bent.…
After reading Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, write a persuasive essay in which you rate Janie’s husbands by providing detailed and logical evidence as to whom would have been the best husband for the main character, Janie, in the long-run.…
In conclusion sexism was a major power relationship that exist within the book. Sexism had a huge infulence on the characters in the book. It created a perception for everyones identity in the book. Sexism built janies peronality which lead to her decision making in…
Marriage has gone through profound changes over the last five decades, but we continue to speak about it as though it's the same old familiar pattern. To see how much has changed; I am going to look at the shift from the forties, to the sixties, to today. In 1968, less than a year after the famous Summer of Love, as they used to say out in the country, "The times they were a-changing." The sexual revolution, Viet Nam, drugs--the youth of the day were convinced the world would never be the same again. Yet they didn't think about how such changes would affect marriage. It seemed as if they thought it would be about the same as it had been for their parents, except better because they (like most youth of most times) thought they were better than…
This is not only in the way that Logan and Janie quarrel, but also in the way that Joe takes advantage of the soft spoken, beautiful entity, Janie. Both men have different depictions of what they want of Janie, yet for both of them Janie’s undertakings and voice must be utterly mandated by the them. Hurston give women the role in society which is asserted with men, they posses the responsibilities of a house wife, and in some cases have an even lesser duty. Hurston renders these men as people who disrespect and gain mastery over women. Not only is gender inequality a persistent theme in Hurston’s book, but also in society. Men and women each and everyday struggle in striking a balance in their roles. Living on the North Shore, a constant conception of Women is that they are housewives, having men be the money makers and the handymen. Women rarely take jobs if there husband has a secured job, yet as soon as that happens their husbands act as the “qualified and sufficient” ones. When attaining an equilibrium between men and women, we are able to see that the roles of North Shore women and Men can be asserted with the role of Janie under Joe and…