Their Eyes Were Watching God Literary Analysis

In Zora Neale Hurston’s, Their Eyes Were Watching God, the story illustrates a biracial African American woman, Janie, who is returning to her home in Eatonville. The novel is told in the form of a flashback and gives an account of her early teenage years all the way through her mature adulthood when she returns to her home. During her journey through life Janie is confronted with many different conflicts. She fights both internal and external conflicts, such as her search for true love, gender roles, and racism. When Janie is a young girl she sits under a pear tree which is where she finds her ideal image of love and marriage. Janie undergoes three different marriages with each having their own conflicts that in the end would be beneficial
In this time period women were expected to stay inside of the house, and complete feminine duties. In her first marriage with Logan Killicks, she was expected to cook and help around the house. This marriage was not in line with the vision of marriage that she had recently had as a young teenager. When Janie ran off with her second husband, Joe Starks, she was promised the world.. After Joe became mayor of Eatonville, Janie quickly realized that he was changing. Joe began to notice that the men of the town payed close attention to Janie. He went as far as giving her orders of how she was to wear her hair after another man admired it, “Her hair was NOT going to show in the store...That night he ordered Janie to tie up her hair around the store” (Hurston 55). Janie also enjoyed listening to the men talk on the porch and watching them play games, but anytime that she tried to participate she would be chastised by Joe and even beaten. This conflict benefitted Janie in the end because it caused her to be more cautious when she had thoughts of another relationship. Her vision of what was ideal to her came into direct conflict of what was real, but eventually allowed her to find happiness and contentment in the