In Their Eyes were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie, a long-haired beauty, struggled with finding herself in marriages where constant society and personal pressures forced her into certain roles in life she never expected. Throughout the book Janie struggles with being herself versus pleasing the man she is with. When Janie marries Logan she is still an innocent young girl, this innocence is stripped away with the realization of what it means to be married and live under the control of a dominant man. There is a continuation of this within her second marriage when she emotionally detaches herself from the world in order to cope with her dehumanization by Jody. It is not until he dies and she meets Tea Cake that her relationship becomes
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From the beginning, Tea Cake contradicts Janie’s former husbands by physically being close to or as attractive as her and by viewing women as more than simply property or objects. It is also important to note that Tea Cake comes from a completely different part of life than Jody and Logan. “He ain’t got uh dime to cry…. He’s jes after yo’ money – him bein’ younger than you.” (112) having come from a poorer family, it can be argued that wealth determined a woman’s worth at the time. It was necessary for a woman to work if the family had little money and therefore, they had some purpose and significance. Since he is also younger, certain views on women could have changed while he was growing up. Two examples of Tea Cake treating Janie as more of an equal is when he teaches her checkers and how to shoot. “Somebody wanted her to play. Somebody thought it natural for her to play. That was even nice.” (96) By teaching her to play checkers, he thought of her intelligent enough to play a mind game, something Jody and Logan would have never done. He also teachers her how to shoot and she, eventually, becomes better than him. This skill of shooting is what ends up killing Tea Cake, however, it was for the purpose of saving Janie’s own life rather than ending his. Within Tea Cake’s death it is important to note that Janie chooses herself over her husband, something previously, she probably would not have done. She is no longer emotionally dependent on another human being. This lack of emotional dependence does not change her love for him, it simply shows the emotional growth within herself she had made after the death of Jody Sparks. “He drifted off into sleep and Janie looked down him and felt a self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from
From the beginning, Tea Cake contradicts Janie’s former husbands by physically being close to or as attractive as her and by viewing women as more than simply property or objects. It is also important to note that Tea Cake comes from a completely different part of life than Jody and Logan. “He ain’t got uh dime to cry…. He’s jes after yo’ money – him bein’ younger than you.” (112) having come from a poorer family, it can be argued that wealth determined a woman’s worth at the time. It was necessary for a woman to work if the family had little money and therefore, they had some purpose and significance. Since he is also younger, certain views on women could have changed while he was growing up. Two examples of Tea Cake treating Janie as more of an equal is when he teaches her checkers and how to shoot. “Somebody wanted her to play. Somebody thought it natural for her to play. That was even nice.” (96) By teaching her to play checkers, he thought of her intelligent enough to play a mind game, something Jody and Logan would have never done. He also teachers her how to shoot and she, eventually, becomes better than him. This skill of shooting is what ends up killing Tea Cake, however, it was for the purpose of saving Janie’s own life rather than ending his. Within Tea Cake’s death it is important to note that Janie chooses herself over her husband, something previously, she probably would not have done. She is no longer emotionally dependent on another human being. This lack of emotional dependence does not change her love for him, it simply shows the emotional growth within herself she had made after the death of Jody Sparks. “He drifted off into sleep and Janie looked down him and felt a self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from