Their Eyes Were Watching God

3 Pages 778 Words

In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie is a young girl with dreams who matures into a woman as she lives through three different marriages. Her first marriage is arranged to Logan by her grandmother, who thinks more practically than her. However, she does not love Logan and runs off with Jody. This marriage also turns stale and after Logan’s death she marries once more to Tea Cake which eventually ends with his own tragic death. These three marriages are quite similar in ways, yet Janie gains different experiences from each in her long journey to find herself. Throughout her life, Janie struggles to live life on her own terms as she goes through three periods of her life that are similar, yet definitely vary as Janie ages.
The three steps of Janie’s life, which are characterized by each of her three husbands, are very similar in the distinction of Janie’s characteristics and the difficulties in each marriage. Janie wishes for true love and is not content with Logan, her chosen husband. When she visits Nanny, she says, “Ah wants things sweet wid mah marriage lak when you sit under a pear tree and think.”(23) Throughout her life, Janie wants a real, true, unconditional love. In each marriage, she faced certain uphill battles. For example, as Janie is asked to make a speech at the committee meeting, Jody says, “Thank yuh fuh yo’ compliments, but mah wife don’t know nothin’ ‘bout no speech-makin’. Ah never married her for nothin’ lak dat. She’s uh woman and her place is in de home.”(40) This shows the sort of space she was limited to in her relationships and she faced one form or another of it throughout her marriages. In addition, as Tea Cake spoke about beating Janie to Sop-de-Bottom, he said, “Ah beat her tuh show dem Turners who is boss.”(141) Tea Cake even whips Janie to express his possession of her to Ms. Turner’s brother. Even though Tea Cake just whi...