The modern social implications of Janie's rhetorical situation cannot really be confined to one scene in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Rather, Janie's relationship with the world in general is defined by the fact that she is a child of rape: The dog did his business, and the bitch did hers, and her business was Janie--alas. Janie must understand above all that she was not a wanted child. Nanny's disclosure reveals that Janie is not equipped to cope with primal knowledge. Janie experiences an innocent, virginal, rather sweet kiss, and because Nanny sees it, nothing will do but Janie must marry "decent like" (Hurston 28). All of a sudden Janie must understand what life is like for "de nigger woman" (29). What that means is that Janie must know that she is not meant to be loved in the ordinary way. To put it differently: Janie must understand that she cannot experience relationships in the ordinary way either.
As a whole, Their Eyes Were Watching God is structured around Janie's relationship experiences in four periods of her life. First there are her childhood and teen years when she lives with her grandmother Nanny. Out of that evolves her first marriage, to Logan, who is perhaps inevitably too old for her. From that dour experience evolves her elopement with Joe Starks, who represents an all too conventional notion of the marriage relationship. His character is summed up in his view of women in general and his own wife in particular. Women, he explains, cannot even think: "They just think they's thinkin'. When Ah see one thing Ah understands ten. You see ten things and done understand one" (Hurston 111). The 15 years of marriage are 15 years of psychological cruelty, which is more or less "life" for "de nigger woman."
That does not prevent Janie, however, from making decisions that will alter her experience of life--and that lend stature to her character. Thus there is major significance in the scene of her...