| Janie strives for humanity. If we see humanity as is the quality of being human and that a human, by its essence, has free will and intelligence Janie is without humanity for much of this novel. Womanhood - the female derivative of humanity - must be found in the freedom and independence that makes one human. Though Janie begins Their Eyes Were Watching God without possession of womanhood, she does attain it by the end of the story. There are symbols throughout the novel that incorporate several animals by which we can trace Janie's progress and obstacles as she strives toward womanhood. Janie's lack of humanity at the beginning of the novel comes from two sets of roots. One is her sex and the other is her race. As her slave-born grandmother wisely states, "de white man throw down de load and tell de nigger man tuh pick it up. He pick it up because he have to, but he don't tote it. He hand it to his womanfolks. De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as I can see" (p. 14). Janie's grandmother is claiming that black-skinned women do not have a choice about what they do, but follow the orders of others. From this disadvantaged point of view Janie begins her journey. But, Janie does not succumb to this limited worldview as it is pushed on her by her grandmother. Early in the story we see the events, beginning with Janie's witnessing of cross-polination and culminating with her first kiss, that she felt ended her childhood. "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 three from root to tinest branch creaming in ever blossom and frothing with delight. So this was a marriage!" (p. 11) From this vision of fertilization, Janie creates her desire for love. She saw that this bee had the freedom to fly whereever it wanted, but it chose to go to the "love embrace" of the accepting blossom. She felt the natural beauty of the moment and sensed delight. This is what she expected of marriage; this is what she wanted for her life. But, this is the last time that a wild, free creature such as this bee is used to symbolize Janie. The perrennial beast of burden, the mule, symbolizes Janie's oppression. She first considers leaving her first husband when he has gone out to consider buying another mule - of all things - so that Janie could work with him in the field. When she said that she did not want to do man's work, that she would rather stay in the kitchen as that was her place, he responded, "You ain't got no particular place. It's wherever Ah need yuh. Git a move on yuh, and dat quick" (p. 31). This shows that Logan, her first husband, thought of her exactly the way he saw his mule. The mule was to work the fields that Logan wanted him to work. Or, if Logan wanted, that mule was to carry Logan when he went places. Logan held dominion over the mule, and he claimed it over Janie in the same way. Janie does, of course, run off from that oppressive marriage to a new husband. This husband treats her like a lady; he buys her nice clothes and makes a respectable reputation for her in town. But Janie is not happy deep inside and when the town has a controversy over a mule we see why. The mule is stubborn and mean. He won't work and sometimes hurts people who come near him. The men in the town harrass the mule horribly, and its owner doesn't feed it enough to stay healthy. Jody, Janie's new husband, buys mule from his owner. In response the owner says that he had beat Jody for his money because that mule would never work for anyone. Jody replies, "Didn't buy 'im fuh no work. I god, Ah bought that varmint tuh let 'im rest. You didn't have gumption enough tuh do it" (p. 58). Jody gains great respect from everyone in town for this apparent act of kindness. Even Janie says that it was very nice of him and makes him a big man, like George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. But, Jody's treatment of this mule perfectly parallels his treatment of Janie. When Janie was with her first husband she was sometimes mean to him and she did little more work that this mule did. Then Jody bought her up with the currency of charm with the language of romanticism. He promised her a better condition and better treatment, just as he had done for the mule. All he actually did, once he acquired her as he did the mule, was to leave her to be in an assigned area with menial activities with which to find pleasure. Jody clearly groups Janie together with non-humans as he says, "Somebody got to think for women and chillun and chickens and cows. I god, they sho don't think none theirselves" (p. 71). This shows clearly that she was perceived to have no intelligence to figure things out for herself and, in the course of following Jody's orders in the store, she is proven to be unable to exercise her own free will. She was still, during her second marriage, without her sought after humanity. Janie does gain her womanhood, though, through the course of her third marriage. We find this humanization in a flurry of symbolism that Hurston gives us in the setting of the southern marsh land with an oncoming hurricane. Tea Cake, the third husband, and Janie are fleeing the low ground of the field where they work to escape flood waters. After trying to shelter Tea Cake from the wind, she is blown into deep water. She cannot swim well enough, but there is a cow swimming nearby on its way to the safety of the shore. On the cow's back is a large, mean, frightened dog. Tea Cake tells Janie to grab the cow's tail for buoyancy. Janie achieved the tail of the cow and lifted her head up along the cow's rump, as far as she could above water. The cow sunk a little with the added load and thrashed a moment in terror. Thought she was being pulled down by a gator. Then she continued on. the dog stood up and growled like a lion, stiff standing hackles, stiff muscles, teeth uncovered as he lashed up his fury for the charge. Tea Cake split the water like an otter, opening his knife as he dived. The dog raced down the backbone of the cow to the attack and Janie screamed and slipped back on the tail of the cow, just out of reach of the dog's angry jaws. He wanted to plunge in after her but dreaded the water, somehow. Tea Cake rose out of the water at the cow's rump and seized the dog by the neck. But he was a powerful dog and Tea Cake was over-tired. So he didn't kill the dog with one stroke as he had intended. But the dog couldn't free himself either. They fought and somehow he managed to bite Teak Cake high up on his cheek bone once. Then Tea Cake finished him and sent im to the bottom to stay there. The cow relieved of a great weight was landing on he fill with Janie before Tea Cake stroked in and crawled weakly upon the fill gain (p. 166). As the hurricane closes in on the muck, Janie and Tea Cake find that the elements and wildlife all around them are hostile. It is an active embodiment of the passive agressiveness of all the townsfolk that they came to the muck to get away from. Janie tries to shelter Tea Cake from the storm as she tried to shelter from all those people in Eatonville, but this brings her to danger; the danger symbolized by her possible drowning represents her vulnerability to being again subdued by a husband. The cow invokes Janie's cattle-like image in the eyes of the men around her, as well as the way she acted around Jody. She grabs on to this cow and the weight of her body causes the cow to get scared and sink a little, just as her slumbering, docile self struggled in emotions of frustration when she added the weight of her independent self - hence her occassional self assertion and arguments with Jody. But, in Janie there was not only a domesticated self image, but also a fiesty, self-defensive spirit of rebellion. It was this spirit that caused her to leave Logan, it was this spirit that caused her to get in fights with Jody, to burn her head rags when he died, and to find an affinity for the respect and activity of her early relationship with Tea Cake. But, this spirit was dangerous for her. When she left Logan it might have turned out that Jody was not there, or that he was abusive and violent. When she burned her head rags she may have been shunned by the community, caused the store to go out of business and had no livelihood. And, when she went off with Tea Cake, again she was somewhat at his mercy as he could have robbed or abused her. The dog represents all of these dangers, and others not thought of, that result from her independent and rebellious spirit. But, this spirit did not hurt her. It did show her, however, that she would not be able to live under the dominion of a husband. The dog killed Tea Cake because her spirit made it impossible for her to live happily under the physical influence of men; and the dog killed him slowly in a way that he could not see coming, and in a way that caused him to be a victim of the juggernaut of his own nature. Janie had no choice but to kill him, for he would have killed her figuratively and literally. After Tea Cake's death Janie went to trial. Simply by going to trial, she was recognized as a person, as a human. She then made the decision to leave the muck and go back to Eatonville. All of these things demonstrate the exorcise of free will and intelligence. The novel ends with her alone, independent and apparently happy - and therefore, having attained humanity and its female derivative, womanhood. Return to Writing Ryan's Feminism page Return to Writing Ryan's Race-related Issues page Return to Writing Ryan's page of Reviews Return to Writing Ryan's main page |
| And His Eyes Were Watching Her Humanity: An Analysis of Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God by Ryan Cofrancesco |