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Their Eyes Were Watching God

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston offers the portrait of a black woman in the South who chooses to live her life in a way she finds fulfilling regardless of society's expectations or consequences. However, the road to her fulfillment is not an easy one and it is a road that leaves her physically alone at the end. But whether she is truly alone is a question Hurston leaves to the reader's interpretation. What does remain uncontested is that Janie's decision to live with Tea Cake and possibly her decision at the end of the novel to sequester herself with Tea Cake's memory demonstrate her decision to affirm her own liberty by living by her own rules.

Underlying all of Hurston's novel is the intersection of sex, gender, and race in American culture. Hurston appears to be particularly interested in the role of the black woman as sexual object and individual subject. Janie serves as the sexual object of all the men in her life. For Logan Killicks and Joe Starks she serves as a trophy. Only with Tea Cake does the sexual appetite appear to be mutual. However, Janie is always aware of herself as an individual subject even if she only arguably asserts that individuality during and after her relationship with Tea Cake.

At the end of Chapter Nineteen, one of the black men following Janie's trial says: "Well, you know whut dey say `uh white man and uh nigger woman is de freest thing on earth.' Dey do as dey please" (180). The statement refers to a time when black women were allowed a certain amount of physical freedom in return for being required to make their bodies available for white slave masters. The statement ignores the fact that an enslaved woman cannot, by definition, make a free choice. However, it does unconsciously recognize that historically black women have been so politically powerless as to make them one of the most invisible and, thereby,...

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Their Eyes Were Watching God. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 01:24, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1680831.html