that experience with a man she finds worthy.
The fact that Janie experiences her first orgasm alone serves to define her as an autonomous individual even though she will rely on men throughout her life to provide her material comforts. She enters the town alone at the beginning of the novel and she is alone in her room when the novel ends. We see her individual strength in her uncaring attitude toward the townspeople's gossip and her determination to remain with and stand by Tea Cake despite the problems in their relationship. We are, of course, necessarily disturbed by the violence and sometimes passive stance Janie seems to accept in her relationship with Tea Cake, but underlying it we sense that Janie has made the conscious choice to accept these aspects of their relationship. Her refusal to leave could be viewed as a sign of weakness; a sign that Janie is so afraid to live without a man that she will subject herself to an inferior relationship rather than live alone. However, perhaps more in tune with the tone of Hurston's novel, is that Jani
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