preview

Zora Neale Hurston

Decent Essays

The Great Depression, Segregation, and the Harlem renaissance were all undeniably important parts of our country’s history, and Zora Neale Hurston was one extraordinary woman who lived through all three. Hurston was a successful author during the peak of her career, and is today considered to be one of the most important African American writers ever, but she had to go through a great deal to get to where she was. Hurston’s effects on the writing community and the world show the struggles she had to go through throughout her life. In 1883, the Jim Crow laws were banning African Americans from public places like hotels, restaurants, and stores. The African American population saw political and social progress slipping backwards, until …show more content…

Around the time she was writing Their Eyes Were Watching God, women still faced not having the same rights and standards as men. The protagonist, Janie, stands up for herself against male dominance, which she faces a lot of. However, while this novel definitely contained a lot of female empowerment, especially considering the time in which it was written, it is not about feminism. Janie is forced to marry a certain man, and she stands up for herself and leaves him. She then ends up married to another man, but then leaves him as well because they do not respect each other, again standing up for herself. Her final husband is the reason why many people say that this novel cannot be considered feminist. Her husband still abuses her, but she finds herself respecting him, which she decides makes them equal (enotes). Hurston showed a lot of female empowerment in her writing, and it helped inspire other black women who were facing the same difficulties as she was during her life. Hurston provided a much needed female voice in a period dominated by …show more content…

When men of that time, such as Langston Hughes or W.E.B. Du Bois, talked and wrote about the “New Negro”, they were actually talking about the “New Negro Man”. Hurston provided an answer to the question “Who was the New Negro Woman?” She represented the women of the time period, with her strong personality and writing. However, Hurston could not represent every African American woman in the Harlem Renaissance, let alone the world. She was more interested in expressing her own individual style and personality, not wanting to be seen as a tragic ex-slave (Shmoop Editorial Team). While Hurston wrote about race and segregation, she did so in a subtle way, making race an underlying motif in her writing rather than a theme, wanting people to focus on her writing rather than her skin color

Get Access