Major Works Data Sheet: Their Eyes Were Watching God
Corey Feger, Celia Stidham, and Tori Evans
Author: Zora Neale Hurston
Date of Publication: September 1937
Author’s Background:
Zora Neale Hurston was born on January 7, 1891, in Notasulga, Alabama. Her father was John Hurston, a carpenter and Baptist preacher; mother was Lucy Potts Hurston, a former schoolteacher. She was the fifth of eight children. Her family moved to Eatonville, Florida: the first all-black incorporated town in the United States, which serves as the setting for the majority of Their Eyes Were Watching God. Her father served several terms as mayor of the town, possibly providing a background character for Jody Starks.Hurston enrolled at Howard University in 1920, andthe university’s literary magazine published her first story in 1921.In1925, she moved to New York and became a significant figure in the Harlem Renaissance.Their Eyes Were Watching God was published in 1937, butby the late 1940s, she began to have increasing difficulty getting her work published, andby the early 1950s, she was forced to work as a maid. In the 1960s, the literary world continued to show disdain for any literature that was not overtly political, and Zora Neale Hurston’s writing was further ignored, and soon became swallowed in controversy.
Genre:
Historical fiction with heavy romantic influence.
Characteristics of the Genre:
During the narration of the novel, Hurston’s own writing is elegant and very clearly influenced by the romantic period. This becomes evident as she describes Janie’s awakening under the pear tree: “She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the… ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch… frothing with delight.”
The events and places in the novel, such as Eatonville and the hurricane, are based on historical fact. Eatonville was the first all-black town to be incorporated into the United States—a major historical and political breakthrough.
Setting:
Their Eyes Were Watching God is set in Florida during the early 20th century. Janie spends the majority of the novel in Eatonville. It is both the place where she recounts the story to Pheoby, and the place where she lives during her longest marriage and her courtship with Tea Cake.
Historical Background:
Their Eyes Were Watching God was published at the end of the Harlem Renaissance, a literary period in which authors such as Zora Hurston and Langston Hughes began to celebrate their cultural identity. The birth and peak of Black literature was during this period, and the works are unified in that they focus more heavily on Black culture and identity than any overt political agenda.
Style:
Dialogue between characters is written according to their dialect, substituting “Ah” for “I,” “hongry” for “hungry,” etc., while the narrative portions are written in Hurston’s own style. The result is a historically authentic novel written from the perspective of a romantic.
Significance of the Opening Scene: At the beginning of the story, Janie is returning to her hometown, Eatonville, Florida, after being away for many years. The people in the town all gather around Pheoby Watson’s front porch and gossip about her. They assume that the man she ran off with, a young man named Tea Cake, must’ve taken her money, a conclusion they draw from her muddy overalls. Janie ignores them all, but Pheoby, an old friend of hers, speaks out against them and invites Janie inside for some dinner. Janie finally opens up a little about her situation, and explains that Tea Cake didn’t leave her how the other townspeople think, and that she left the everglades because she couldn’t be happy there anymore. From that point on, Janie recounts her life to Pheoby through the rest of the novel
Plot Summary:
An attractive, older, but rebellious and free spirited woman, Janie, appears out of nowhere back home after a year's absence. Gossip begins to circulate about her running wild and leaving with a much younger man, Tea Cake, and Janie confides the truth of the story in her friend Pheoby:
Janie began as a bright young woman who lived with her overprotective, freed-slave grandmother, who demanded she marry a much older, stable man who could provide security for her. Janie married him, much to her own distaste, to please her grandmother, but soon meets a man by the name of Joe Starks. As her marriage goes downhill, her flirting with Joe goes up, until eventually she runs away with him.
The two travel to an all-black township called Eatonville, which Jody expands and declares himself mayor of. He builds up the town and the store, but as time goes on, he, too, begins to neglect Janie, and eventually treats her more as property than as a marriage partner.
Janie is dejected and forced to wear her hair tied back, becoming as an old woman. Her relationship with Joe boils and turns sour, but the two remain together until Joe's kidneys fail and he dies.
Once again a free woman, Janie quiets down for a while and runs her shop in peace in the town she and Jody had built up. After a while, however, she meets a much younger man named Tea Cake, who sparks in her a renewed sense of adventure and romance. Despite the disdain of their fellow townspeople, the two begin a relationship and eventually leave Eatonville to marry and move on to better things.
They end up, however, on a farm after Tea Cake gambles away all their money, but the work happily together for a time. This becomes the best life Janie has ever known, with a man she truly loves by her side.
This time is short-lived, when in a hurricane, Tea Cake is bitten by a dog and contracts rabies. As his condition worsens, Janie discovers his chances of getting the proper medicine in time are slim. In the end, he attacks her, and she ends up shooting him. Court rules in her favor and she returns home, where she reflects warmly on her life with Tea Cake and finds her own sense of inner peace.
Characters:
Janie:
Janie Crawford is the novel’s protagonist. She is exceptionally beautiful and proud of her long, dark hair. She is of mixed ancestry and was raised by a white family, which leads to the humorous realization upon taking a picture as a little girl that she was, in fact, “colored.” Janie is a sensual woman with a defiant streak. She craves independence and sets out to unravel the mystery of a marriage. She marries three times over the course of the story, and learns something more from each man she meets.
Adjectives: Free, strong-willed, romantic, contemplative.
Nanny:
Janie’s grandmother raised Janie since she was a little girl. She is an ex-slave, and, as such, she has a very utilitarian mindset about marriage. She arranges for Janie to marry Logan Killicks so she will be taken care of in life.
Adjectives: Stern, loving, devout, worrisome.
Pheoby Watson:
Pheoby is Janie’s best friend and confidante. She listens to Janie’s story throughout the novel, and says she feels “ten feet taller” by the end of it. When Janie goes to the everglades with Tea Cake, Pheoby stays behind because of her marriage.
Adjectives: Supportive, everyday, dedicated.
Logan Killicks:
Janie’s first husband. Logan is a much older man than Janie, and neither of them feel the slightest bit of affection for one another. Their reasons for marriage were purely economical: Janie needed security once her Nanny passed, and Logan needed a wife to cook for him and help him farm. Janie entered the marriage with the belief that she would grow to love Logan, but this fantasy was quickly killed—“and so she became a woman.” While Logan is away during the day, Janie meets the man who will become her second husband: Joe (“Jody”) Starks.
Adjectives: Hard-working, blunt, abrasive, detached.
Jody Starks:
Janie’s second husband, Jody, is the man to whom she is married the longest. He sweeps her away with promises of luxury in a new town in South Florida in which he plans to invest. The two arrive in Eatonville, Florida, where Janie lives for over twenty years. Jody is loved by the townspeople and becomes the mayor, but as he acquires power in the town, he only thirsts for more. He is also very protective and domineering over Janie, and makes her wear a rag over her head to hide her hair from the lustful men in town. He forbids Janie from speaking in public or joking with the “common folk” who spend their time gossiping on the storefront. Jody, in his old age, get sicker and sicker, and refuses any treatment. Janie finally sees him during his final moments, and she tells him just how oppressive and cruel he has been right before he dies.
Adjectives: Jealous, ambitious, influential, cunning.
Tea Cake:
Tea Cake is Janie’s third and last husband, and gives her the romance she has been craving for so many years. Even this marriage, however, has its flaws. For Janie to date a man ten years her junior is a strong social taboo, and Janie is criticized for becoming romantically involved a relatively short period of time after Jody’s death. Janie, however, feels no need to mourn, because she feels no grief. The two move out into the everglades together. Tea Cake has a naïve streak—a trait that ends up being the death of him. He insists that he and Janie stay in town as a strong hurricane approaches. When the two are swept away by the flood waters, he saves Janie’s life, and gets bitten by a rabid dog. Janie suffers through Tea Cake’s illness and cares for him as well as she can, but the virus eats away at his mind. In his paranoia, Tea Cake accuses Janie of no longer loving him and tries to shoot her. Before he reaches the loaded chamber, Janie is forced to shoot him herself.
Adjectives: Suave, young, naïve, passionate.
Important Quotations and Their Significance:
“The vision of Logan Killicks was desecrating the pear tree but Janie didn’t know how to tell Nanny that. She merely hunched over and pouted at the floor.”
Janie’s vision of love is so romantic and idealized that it comes as a rude awakening to her when her marriage to Logan is nothing like she wanted. She is too young to see just why nanny is forcing her to marry a man she could never love.
“Besides, she liked being lonesome for a change. This freedom feeling was fine. These men didn’t represent a thing she wanted to know about. She had already experienced them through Logan and Joe.”
Immediately after Jody dies, Janie embraces her newfound freedom as a single woman. She is in her element again. The pangs of loneliness are a comfort to her, because with solitude comes the independence she craves.
“Things lakdat got uh whole lot tuh do wid convenience, but it ain’t got nothin’ tuh do wid love.” –Tea Cake
Tea Cake is an unconventional man—he doesn’t seem to care much what society thinks of he and Janie being together. He simply wants to love her despite the difference in age.
“They huddled closer and stared at the door. They just didn’t use another part of their bodies, and they didn’t look at anything but the door. The time was past for asking the white folks what to look for through that door. Six eyes were questioning God.”
God is presented again as the moving force behind the universe, drawing people together in times of fear, and pushing them into change.
Symbols:
Janie’s hair:
Janie’s long hair is her pride and her freedom. When Jody requires her to hide it under a head rag, we realize that her wings are clipped. When Jody dies, she is finally able to both literally and figuratively let her hair down. She becomes liberated again.
Horizons:
Janie looks to the horizon throughout the novel as a source of hope. This symbol is at its most prominent when she leaves Logan Killicks, and heads off towards the horizon with Jody.
God:
In Their Eyes Were Watching God, God is more of a symbol than a literal figure. Janie’s God isn’t so much a deity as it is a force of change and motion. As the storm clouds roll in over the everglades, Janie and Tea Cake are “watching God” in the sky—change, turmoil, and forward movement.
The pear tree:
Janie spends her time as a teenager under a pear tree, where she has an epiphany as she is filled with the buzzing song of the fertile springtime. As a bee is “embraced by a thousand sister-calyxes,” she witnesses her first notion of what marriage means: an erotically charged, divine harmony that fits well with the sensual woman that she is to become.
The hurricane:
The hurricane is a counterpart to the pear tree. It, too, is a force of nature, but it is a force of destruction. It takes away Janie’s friends, her home, and, eventually, the only man she ever truly loved. Where the pear tree coaxed her into bloom, the hurricane toughens her into the twilight of her womanhood.
Significance of the Closing Scene:
As Janie’s story draws to a close, she explains to Phoeby that, without Tea Cake, the muck means nothing to her anymore. She’s a self-actualized woman and has risen far above the town’s petty gossip. She is sad, at first, as she reflects on the day she killed Tea Cake. But she has “been to the horizon and back.” Janie has lived her dream to the fullest, in good times and bad, and we see just how much she has grown since that day years before as she was laying under the pear tree. After a turbulent life, Janie is at peace with herself and the world.
Possible Themes:
The nature of love and marriage:
Janie explores, through her three husbands, various aspects of marriage. With Logan she finds security; with Jody, she is idealized; with Tea Cake, she finds passion and intimacy. Ultimately, all three marriages end because each lacks what the others have.
Independence:
Janie is a free spirit who does not wish to be tied down. This is the main reason why she finds herself so unhappy with Jody. He wraps her hair and keeps her hidden away from the world, and Janie suffers because of it. She did not like the idea of being dependent on another man, despite Nanny’s insistence that she marry Logan for financial security. The novel provides very few clear answers regarding the consequences of being such a free spirit in the era. Rather, we see both the positive and negative results of Janie’s journey: she becomes stronger and wiser in the end, and was able to experience true passion with Tea Cake. She also suffers immensely as she works for Logan, becomes trapped by Jody, and is made to kill Tea Cake.