Zora Neale Hurston, the author of Their Eyes Were Watching God, is an African-American Alabama native born in 1891, who was a daughter of two slaves (Biography.com). She lived when slavery was still prominent in colonial America, and she gathered many of her ideas from her own experiences growing up- she would later become a writer and anthropologist who fixtured her work on the Harlem Renaissance in the 1900s (Biography.com). Throughout Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston there is a misconception amongst male and female characters that affect their everyday lives through the cult of domesticity.
At the beginning of the novel, there is a moment of insight towards how the social hierarchy works, starting from the white Anglo-Saxon …show more content…
By not letting her use her voice and be natural, he confines her from the town folk whom she would have, most likely, chosen to spend time rather than acting above them as the Mayor’s wife. "Time came when she fought back with her tongue as best she could, but it didn't do her any good. It just made Joe do more. He wanted her submission and he'd keep on fighting until he felt he had it. So, gradually, she pressed her teeth together and learned to hush." (Hurston 71). At times Janie would declare her opinion, but it never did her any good. “I must say that I never dreamed that I would be standing up in front of a group like this telling them anything, let alone women” (Bird). Joe was brisk in setting her back into her place, using whatever means necessary to do so. "Aw naw they don’t. They just think they’s thinkin’. When Ah see one thing Ah understands ten. You see ten things and don’t understand one" (Hurston 180-182). From this, you can see that Joe is comparing women with children and animals, conveying that they are on the same intellectual level as one another- which he then applies to Janie. Despite the fact, Janie does not speak out a sizeable amount of times throughout the novel since she knows it is not in her place to do so and, the few times that she does, Joe protests against her voice. “So when the bread didn’t rise, and the fish wasn’t quite done at the …show more content…
Janie was a very strong willed character whom wanted to break these social norms and constraints, but was scared to use her voice to do so. Throughout her various marriages, there is different evidence of the varying levels of the cult of domesticity- whether it be how she was treated, what she was expected, or not expected, to
At the beginning of the novel, there is a moment of insight towards how the social hierarchy works, starting from the white Anglo-Saxon …show more content…
By not letting her use her voice and be natural, he confines her from the town folk whom she would have, most likely, chosen to spend time rather than acting above them as the Mayor’s wife. "Time came when she fought back with her tongue as best she could, but it didn't do her any good. It just made Joe do more. He wanted her submission and he'd keep on fighting until he felt he had it. So, gradually, she pressed her teeth together and learned to hush." (Hurston 71). At times Janie would declare her opinion, but it never did her any good. “I must say that I never dreamed that I would be standing up in front of a group like this telling them anything, let alone women” (Bird). Joe was brisk in setting her back into her place, using whatever means necessary to do so. "Aw naw they don’t. They just think they’s thinkin’. When Ah see one thing Ah understands ten. You see ten things and don’t understand one" (Hurston 180-182). From this, you can see that Joe is comparing women with children and animals, conveying that they are on the same intellectual level as one another- which he then applies to Janie. Despite the fact, Janie does not speak out a sizeable amount of times throughout the novel since she knows it is not in her place to do so and, the few times that she does, Joe protests against her voice. “So when the bread didn’t rise, and the fish wasn’t quite done at the …show more content…
Janie was a very strong willed character whom wanted to break these social norms and constraints, but was scared to use her voice to do so. Throughout her various marriages, there is different evidence of the varying levels of the cult of domesticity- whether it be how she was treated, what she was expected, or not expected, to