Women's Role In Their Eyes Were Watching God

In both history and modern-day society, there are many roles that women have been and are expected to play, such as the nurturing mother, doting wife, or submissive partner. These roles greatly influence the characterization of literary females by pressuring them into a kind of box that reduces their potential to become complex and well-rounded characters; instead, the presence of women is often trivialized within fiction to merely portray what is expected by society, creating a deficit of strong female characters who have individual personalities outside of their use to the plot. Zora Neale Hurston examines several of these roles through her book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, which follows a black woman, Janie, through her three marriages and her simultaneous personal self-discovery. While Janie begins her …show more content…
Throughout the events of Their Eyes Were Watching God women play the role of a submissive wife as a result of their own misguided beliefs and the influence of others, particularly men, until Janie breaks free from societal expectations and becomes her own independent person.
From the beginning of her life, Janie has been told that the ultimate goal for her should be to find a good husband to marry, which influences her own decisions and development as a person. Nanny, Janie’s grandmother who raised her, has lived a long life of slavery and work, that instills in her a belief that overemphasizes the importance of having a husband to create a safe and stable home environment. Seeing Janie kissing Johnny Taylor elicits a response of fear-driven anger in Nanny because she thinks that Janie’s personal sexual