Bees and Pear Trees: Janie’s Unchanging Concept of Love

Love is different for each and every person. For some, it comes easy and happens early in life. For others, such as Janie in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, it happened much later in life after two unsuccessful marriages. Janie’s grandmother, Nanny raised Janie to be attracted to financial security and physical protection instead of seeking love. Nanny continually emphasized that love was something that was bound to happen after those needs were met; even though Nanny never married. Janie formulates her ideal of love while sitting under a pear tree as a teenager; one that fulfilled her intellectually, emotionally, spiritually and physically. She was then informed that she was to have an arranged marriage to an older man, Logan Killicks, who offered the very security and protection Nanny emphasized. After the marriage failed, looking for change, Janie ran off and married an ambitious, rich and unromantic man named Joe Sparks. Her marriage to Joe quickly became monotonous, and soon enough, Joe died of kidney failure. Later in the novel, Janie meets a poor, young and lovable man named Vergible “Tea Cake” Woods. Tea Cake surpasses her ideal of love. Janie’s view on love did not change throughout the course of the novel; instead her first two marriages engrained her wishes and desires further; all of which were fulfilled in her marriage to Tea Cake. Janie’s relationship with Logan was exactly the opposite of her ideal type of relationship; not only did he treat her as if she was worthless because she refused to work for him, but the overall marriage was totally devoid of all emotion. Initially, Janie believed that her arranged marriage to Logan would eventually bring love, echoing her Nanny’s views in her statement “husbands and wives always loved each other, and that was what marriage meant” (21). However, she quickly learns that Logan, finds her useless, “spoilt rotten” and compares her to his old wife, who did manual labor for him without many

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