| Lecture 11: Janie’s
Journey A discussion of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (Chapters 5-9) |
| By the end of Chapter 4, we find our
protagonist, Janie Crawford, disappointed with her loveless marriage to
farmer Logan Killicks and ready to take off with the charming stranger,
Joe Starks, who has talked to her about "when he would be a big
ruler of things with her reaping the benefits" (Hurston 28).
Unfortunately, readers might perceive the seeds of new disappointment
when we hear that "Janie pulled back a long time because he did not
represent sun-up and pollen and blooming trees, but he spoke for far
horizon. He spoke for change and chance" (28). Janie prefers change
to the stagnation of her current circumstances, and she takes a chance
on Joe. She steps away from the known world, the secure world her Nanny
had wished for her, and heads off into the unknown. Perhaps there she
would find what she desired. How much of the world had she seen from
Nanny’s front porch or Logan’s farm? Not much. Perhaps a "bee
for her blossom" would be found out in the larger world, as she had
not found it nearer to hand.
I don’t want to spoil the reading for you by telling you exactly what she discovers in her relationship with Joe. I want to urge you to watch carefully how the relationship unfolds, reflecting on whether or not Janie moves along in her journey for selfhood and community. Like Kiyo, in All I Asking for Is My Body, Janie’s search takes place in a highly stratified society, a fact that poses a significant challenge to her but of which she may not as yet be fully aware. Wise Nanny has warned her of the low place black women hold in the world, but Janie was perhaps too young and optimistic to take heed of Nanny’s harsh assessment, based on her many years as a slave and in the difficult period following emancipation. In attempting to prepare naïve Janie for the world, Nanny has told her:
But what young girl full of romantic visions wants to hear such a message? I believe Janie, even a few years later, looks back on Nanny’s words, not to mention the practical marriage she arranged between Janie and Logan, with resentment. Can one have romance, though, without equality? From the beginning of her relationship with Joe, he is clearly dominant. In the marriage that unfolds in their new community, what is Janie’s role? In Joe’s eyes, a beautiful wife enhances the power of a big man. "Jody told her to dress up and stand in the store all that evening. . . . he didn’t mean for nobody else’s wife to rank with her. She must look on herself as the bell-cow . . . ." (39). In this atmosphere of competition and domination, what kind of intimacy can Janie have with fellow townsfolk or her husband? Well, I guess I’ve taken away a bit of the mystery of the relationship. I’ll leave it to you to observe how things fall out for Janie and Joe. Pay special attention to two aspects of the novel here: the stories of Matt Bonner’s mule and what they might represent, and the theme of voice as it applies to Janie. In the first case, we’ve already heard black women called "the mule of the world." Watch how the community pays attention to Bonner’s mule and what kinds of stories and ceremonies people invent. Consider the irony of holding a big funeral to mark the death of the poor, neglected beast. The theme of voice applies here, too, as Joe’s voice seems to fill each public occasion while Janie recedes. Mark the occasions that provoke Janie to reclaim her lost voice. |
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Work Cited Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Harper & Row, 1990. |