In the novel, Janie Crawford Killicks Starks Woods is an attractive and cheerful young black girl. Janie’s voyage begins at sixteen, when her dying grandmother marries her to Logan Killicks, an older man with sixty acres, a mule, and a bump of fatback on his neck that Janie hates. Rebelling against Logan’s efforts to turn her into a drudge, Janie runs away with Joe Starks, a man with big dreams. Joe marries Janie and takes her to Eatonville, where he soon becomes a mayor and primary landowner. The kind of man with “uh throne in de seat of his pants,” (TEWG 58) as one character puts it, Joe Starks is clearly modeled on Joe Clarke, the mayor of Eatonville during much of Hurston’s childhood there. Frightened by Joe’s chauvinism, Janie becomes
