Janie’s character grows phenomenally over the course of the novel. Before I can go into that, however, I need to explain her family’s background. It will help in the understanding of why certain events happened the way that they did. First of all, Janie’s grandmother, Nanny, was a slave that was impregnated by her master and her mother, Leafy, was the child produced by that event. Leafy ended up being raped by her schoolteacher and that is how Janie was conceived. Leafy then became an alcoholic after she had Janie and ended up leaving home. Nanny was left to care for Janie and because of all that had happened to her family, she was very strict when it came to Janie and boys.
Janie grew up in a big house with Nanny and the family that Nanny worked for. She was always a confident child and did not even realize she was black until she was six years old. The children and she got photographed and she did not recognize herself in the final product. She had to have herself be pointed out in the picture by someone else. “Dat’s where Ah wuz s’posed to be, but Ah couldn’t recognize dat dark chile as me. So Ah ast, ‘where is me? Ah don’t see me.’ Everybody laughed …’Dat’s you, Alphabet, don’t you know yo’ ownself?” (Hurston page 9).
The first time Janie was really challenged by Nanny was when Nanny caught Janie kissing Johnny Taylor. Janie was sixteen at the time. “She bolted upright and peered out of the window and saw Johnny Taylor lacerating her Janie with a kiss.” (Hurston page 12). Nanny then arranges for Janie to marry Logan Killicks. Janie did not want to go through with the marriage. Her idea of love was what she had witnessed with the bees under the pear tree. “She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was a marriage! She had been summoned to behold a revelation.”(Hurston page 11). This was all an ideal to her. She believes that marriage is equivalent to the process of bees pollinating a tree. There is an idea of co-dependence. Janie’s marriage to Logan was full of him not really caring about her and just using her as another worker.
Janie didn’t last very long with Logan Killicks. Not too long after marrying him, she ran away to Eatonville with Joe Starks. Starks basically builds the town from the ground up and sets up a general store. Then, the townspeople appoint him mayor. He bans Janie from partaking in basically any form of a social life. She soon realizes that he wants her more as a trophy wife than an actual partner. A turning point in their relationship is when he beats her in front of many of the townspeople just because she gave him a little bit of an attitude. “Joe Starks didn’t know the words for all this, but he knew the feeling. So he struck Janie with all his might and drove her from the store.”(Hurston page 80). Soon after Joe Starks passes away, Janie runs off with a man named Tea Cake.
Janie’s relationship with Tea Cake was the closest she got to love. He even told her, “From now on you’se mah wife and mah woman and everything else in de world Ah needs.”(Hurston page 124). Unfortunately, their happiness did not last long. The Okeechobee Hurricane hits them at their home in the Everglades. They both survive the hurricane but Tea Cake is bitten by a rabid dog while he is saving Janie from drowning. He then develops rabies and in his madness, tries to kill Janie. Janie shoots him in self defense and eventually ends up back in Eatonville to start a life for herself on her own.
Janie arrives in Eatonville in a very different mindset and state of mind than when she left. She is now an independent woman, unattached to any man. She has had much personal growth due to her varied and complex relationships starting with Johnny Taylor and ending with Tea Cake. She is self-assured and she can express her own ideas more clearly now. The story ends with Janie as an independent woman who is financially stable, owns her own land, and is happy overall.
Works Cited
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Harper Collins, 1937.
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