. . . [L]ove ain’t somethin’ lak uh grindstone dat’s de same thing everywhere and do de same thing tuh everything it touch. Love is lak de sea. It’s uh movin’ thing but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore. (Hurston 182)

When Janie meets Tea Cake, she seems to have found her bee. He’s charming and loving and seems to view Janie as an equal rather than someone to dominate. But as we watch their relationship unfold, we may be troubled by some of what we see. First, just after their arrival in Jacksonville, Tea Cake leaves Janie in her room for 24 hours while he goes off "to see how it felt to be a millionaire" with Janie’s money (Hurston 117). At the party he throws, he "paid all the ugly women two dollars not to come in" (Hurston 117). We can’t have much sympathy with him leaving Janie alone to worry all day and night. He tells her, though, that he didn’t go and "fetch her" because she wasn’t "usetuh folks lak dat" and that he was worried she would leave him if she saw his "commonness" (Hurston 119). She reassures him that she wants to be wherever he is and enjoy the company he keeps. With the commitment to stay together through thick and thin, Janie and Tea Cake decide to head off to the Everglades, where, according to Tea Cake, "[f]olks don’t do nothin’ . . . but make money and fun and foolishness" (Hurston 122). After surviving the early tests of the relationship, "Janie looked down on [a sleeping Tea Cake] and felt a self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from its hiding place" (Hurston 122).

Down in the ‘Glades, Janie for the first time in her life experiences both love and connection to her community. Working alongside Tea Cake feels like "romping and playing," and afterwards "Tea Cake would help get supper" (Hurston 127). Can you picture Joe playing or helping to get supper? What a sweet way Janie and Tea Cake experience love, with so much playfulness and mutual commitment. A satisfied Janie tells Tea Cake, "Clerkin’ in dat store wuz hard, but heah, we ain’t got nothin’ tuh do but do our work and come home and love" (Hurston 127). Here Janie’s opinions matter and she has a voice, even getting "so she could tell big stories herself" alongside the men who come to their house to talk every night (Huston 128).

The relationship takes a turn, however, when Janie and Tea Cake become jealous of each other. Janie, watching Tea Cake with the flirt Nunkie, "feels [a] little seed of fear . . . growing into a tree. Maybe some day Tea Cake would weaken" (Hurston 130). With her insecurity and jealousy flaring, she hits Tea Cake and tries to fight him. Tea Cake’s anger and jealousy are aroused when the racist Mis’ Turner starts talking to Janie about "marrying a man as dark as Tea Cake" and hanging around with "all them common niggers" (Hurston 134). As "jealousies [arise] now and then on both sides," we will have to see if Janie and Tea Cake have the inner resources and skill to get through this challenge to their relationship (Hurston 140).

We may be shocked by the passions and storms we encounter in the last chapters of the book. I suppose we could look at them this way: the tensions that have been building need an outlet. Like the earlier parts of the book when elements of nature, such as the pear tree and the mule, symbolize important aspects of human nature, in the last chapters the hurricane that sweeps through the ‘Glades and uproots all life represents more than a simple natural disaster. I will leave it to you to see how the themes of jealousy, domestic violence, community, and internalized racism play out in the final chapters of the book.

Work Cited

Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Harper & Row, 1990.