Janie's Three Marriages in Hurston's There Eyes Were Watching God

Despite cultural pressures, individuals will instead follow their own moral compass. Their Eyes were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, follows Janie’s path of self-discovery. When she in a relationship with her second husband, she is given the label of a “skank”, someone who goes around to several men instead of settling down. The novel took place in the late 1930’s in the South, the time was a male-dominated society and stereotypes of women limited the options of a female’s future. Janie has been placed under the category of being a bad person because the community, her husband, and family’s ethics clash with her own morals. Janie reflects to her friend Phoebe on how her grandmother restricted her future by forcing her first marriage: “...had

Joe is power hungry and seeks to dominate Janie, who cannot be held back and craves the freedom to manage her own life. With such caustic tension, it seems odd that Janie would stay with Joe until his death. Clearly, she was not afraid to walk out on a husband, so why did she choose to stay? Though Joe was frequently an oppressive dictatorial husband, he still offered more love to her than the cold, quasi-emotionless Logan Killicks. Only after finding love with Tea Cake, however, would Janie realize one of the major themes of the novel: in order to gain true happiness, you cannot sacrifice one desire for another, in her case freedom from oppression for love.

In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie has allowed us to better understand the restraints that women in society had to deal with in a male dominated society. Her marriage with Logan Killicks consisted of dull, daily routines.  Wedding herself to Joe Starks brought her closer to others, than to herself.  In her final marriage to Vergible Woods, also known as Tea Cake, she finally learned how to live her life on her own.  In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie suffered through many difficult situations that eventually enabled her to grow into an independent person.

Janie's marriage to Logan Killicks was the first stage in her growth as a woman. She hoped that her obligatory marriage with Logan would

In the first marriage Janie was a 16-year-old girl who was forced into marriage with a man in his 50’s. She lives with Logan on his potato farm, where Logan is very set in his ways and does not care what Janie has to say or think. Being that Janie is only 16years old she allows her outer personality to submit to whatever Logan wants even though her inner self, her true self is miserable. She believed that because they were married that just being married would bring love. So she continues to submit to Logan’s

Janie’s love life was not always the (Perfect Love Story) in all three of her marriages something was always missing. Zora Neale Hurston,Their Eyes Were Watching God Janie,Tea Cake,Killicks,Jody Starks In this novel Janie marries 3 different men and she faced many difficulties in each of her marriages she married Logan Killicks first then Janie’s first love Jody starks and her second love Tea Cake.In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God Hurston uses symbolism to illustrate difficulties through Janie’s marriages.

Janie’s first husband is Logan Killicks, an old, unattractive man whom Janie marries while trying to appease her grandmother. Logan is a farmer with 60 acres of land and a comfortable house. Nanny believes in marrying for financial stability, not for love: “Tain’t Logan Killicks Ah wants you to have, baby, it’s protection” (Hurston 15). Instead of following her heart and insisting on not marrying someone she doesn’t love, Janie consents due to the pressure and marries Logan. He wants to keep her firmly under his control so he forces her to work in the field with him and clean the house. In addition to physically oppressing Janie, Logan also mentally oppresses her by showing Janie no affection during their marriage. Due to

Janie’s first marriage to Logan Killicks was an arranged marriage by her Grandmother Nanny. One day Nanny caught Janie kissing the neighborhood riff raff Johnny Taylor, and Nanny becomes convinced that Janie has entered her womanhood, and needs to marry.

Janie’s quest begins with her grandmother forcing her to marry Logan Killicks; her compliance demonstrates her need to follow what others expect of her. Although she believes "[Logan] look like some ole skullhead in de graveyard", she marries him, simply because her grandmother tells her she will love him with time (13). She compares him to a “skullhead”, literally likening him, and subsequently their relationship, to death. Although she knows she wants to find love, and that she does not love Logan, she marries him to appease her grandmother. This shows how much Janie cares about what other people think of her, and what lengths she is willing to go to keep others pleases with her.

In Janie’s marriage with Logan, Janie came to a couple of realizations and she learned the goals she wanted to achieve out of life. In her first marriage, the man she was with was everything that Nanny Crawford wanted him to be. Logan Killicks was a farmer

In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, a young woman travels through difficult life experiences in order to find herself. Hurston portrays the protagonist as an adventurous soul trapped in the binds of suppressing marriages. Janie experiences three different types of marriage learning from each one what she values most. From these marriages she learned she values love and respect, finally achieving them in her last marriage. Each new marriage brought something new to the table for Janie and no matter the situation or the outcome of the relationship Janie grew into her own independent individual because of it.

In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, she sets the protagonist, Janie Mae Crawford as a woman who wants to find true love and who is struggling to find her identity. To find her identity and true love it takes her three marriages to go through. While being married to three different men who each have different philosophies, Janie comes to understand that she is developed into a strong woman. Hurston makes each idea through each man’s view of Janie, and their relationship with the society. The lifestyle with little hope of or reason to hope for improvement. He holds a sizeable amount of land, but the couple's life involves little interaction with anyone else.

In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Lora Neale Hurston, the main character engages in three marriages that lead her towards a development of self. Through each endeavor, Janie learns the truths of life, love, and the path to finding her identity. Though suppressed because of her race and gender, Janie has a strong will to live her life the way she wills. But throughout her life, she encounters many people who attempt to change the way that she is and her beliefs. Each marriage that she undertakes, she finds a new realization and is on a never-ending quest to find her identity and true love. Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and Tea Cake each help Janie progress to womanhood and find her identity.

“Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston, written in 1937, is about a African american girl named Janie Crawford who grew up in a white household. Through her transition to womanhood she wanted to experience true love, which set her on a quest to do so. Her grandmother arranged a marriage for her, which Janie wasn't so happy about. The story follows her growing as a person and her many experiences with her marriages. Each impacting her emotionally and making her the woman she becomes at the end of the book. Towards the ending of her book, after being harmed emotionally, and sometimes physically by her past husbands she meets a man named Tea Cake, much younger than her. She fell in love with him and

Throughout a fair part of Zora Neal Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie’s low class create problems when it comes to men. She lives with men she does not love because they give her the financial stability she cannot have yet on her own. Janie marries Logan Killicks at a young age even though she does not want to