Moreover, the novel is ought to read as both universal and particularly a black story because Hurston novel is a bildungsroman where the reader sees Janie’s development to womanhood in the novel. Ralph Thompson’s, Books of the Times, review stated that “Their Eyes Were Watching God is a story of Janie, who marries three times…in the case of Janie, we follow a typical progress from girlhood to middle age”. Not only does Janie’s three marriages portray her search for love, it portrays the stages of a girl becoming a woman through marriage while she searches for the love she desires. The progress of one developing “from girlhood to middle age” is a human development, portraying a universal concept. At first, Janie was at the stage of innocence
…show more content…
Janie did not feel any “blossomy openings” for her man portraying that she was not feeling the love she desired for Joe. After Janie embraces her womanhood and individuality, she allows love in her through Tea Cake, the man that she finds the love she desired. Tea Cake appreciated every aspect of Janie’s character, giving her the freedom and individuality that she had wanted with the love that she desired. Tea Cake is “a bee to a blossom-a pear tree blossom in the spring…He was a glance from God” (106). Being a woman in a male dominant world is difficult but being a colored woman in a world that racial and gender discrimination occurs is even more difficult. Hurston discusses a girl maturing to become a woman throughout the novel, but she intertwines this universal concept of racial and gender discrimination with Janie’s development. For example, Killicks viewed Janie’s actions as the actions of white folks that she should not have when he says “Ah thought you would’ preciate good treatment…You think youse white folks by de way you act” …show more content…
Race and gender oppression are also universal themes that reoccur within the novel. In Latest Works of Fiction review, it was stated that “This is Zora Hurston’s third novel. Again, about her own people—and. It is beautiful. It is about Negroes, and a good deal of it is written in dialect, but really it is about everyone”. Although the novel seems to only tell the story of the “Negroes”, the novel focuses mainly on universal themes such as love, oppression, and maturity and includes race and discrimination in the background. Hurston does not go in depth detail of racial discrimination but she includes it in necessary parts of her writing to notify the reader that racial discrimination exists and applies to the life of the African Americans. For example, Nanny in the beginning of the novel explains to Janie in a passage, the oppression that white race has on the black man and the burden that the black men put on the black women. “Honey, de white man is de ruler of everything…Maybe it’s some place way off in de ocean where de black man is in power, but we don’t know nothin’ but what we see. So de white man throw down de load and tell de nigger man tuh pick it up…he hand it to his womenfolks” (14). The author through this dialect explains that the white man oppresses the black man and the black man hands “de load” to “his womenfolks”. It is indicated that the
Janie did not feel any “blossomy openings” for her man portraying that she was not feeling the love she desired for Joe. After Janie embraces her womanhood and individuality, she allows love in her through Tea Cake, the man that she finds the love she desired. Tea Cake appreciated every aspect of Janie’s character, giving her the freedom and individuality that she had wanted with the love that she desired. Tea Cake is “a bee to a blossom-a pear tree blossom in the spring…He was a glance from God” (106). Being a woman in a male dominant world is difficult but being a colored woman in a world that racial and gender discrimination occurs is even more difficult. Hurston discusses a girl maturing to become a woman throughout the novel, but she intertwines this universal concept of racial and gender discrimination with Janie’s development. For example, Killicks viewed Janie’s actions as the actions of white folks that she should not have when he says “Ah thought you would’ preciate good treatment…You think youse white folks by de way you act” …show more content…
Race and gender oppression are also universal themes that reoccur within the novel. In Latest Works of Fiction review, it was stated that “This is Zora Hurston’s third novel. Again, about her own people—and. It is beautiful. It is about Negroes, and a good deal of it is written in dialect, but really it is about everyone”. Although the novel seems to only tell the story of the “Negroes”, the novel focuses mainly on universal themes such as love, oppression, and maturity and includes race and discrimination in the background. Hurston does not go in depth detail of racial discrimination but she includes it in necessary parts of her writing to notify the reader that racial discrimination exists and applies to the life of the African Americans. For example, Nanny in the beginning of the novel explains to Janie in a passage, the oppression that white race has on the black man and the burden that the black men put on the black women. “Honey, de white man is de ruler of everything…Maybe it’s some place way off in de ocean where de black man is in power, but we don’t know nothin’ but what we see. So de white man throw down de load and tell de nigger man tuh pick it up…he hand it to his womenfolks” (14). The author through this dialect explains that the white man oppresses the black man and the black man hands “de load” to “his womenfolks”. It is indicated that the