Their Eyes Were Watching God

In the early twentieth century, black women were being held back almost as much as they had been during slavery and not only by white people, but by black men as well. It was difficult for these women to accomplish things in life that they wanted to. In fact, they almost had to live with a "take what you can get" attitude on life. Being the protagonist of the novel, Janie is a beautiful black mulatto woman and had anything but a submissive view on life. Janie spends the novel searching for fulfillment of her life goals. These goals include finding her voice, discovering passionate and true love, and gaining spiritual fulfillment. As a child, Janie is abandoned by her mother and brought up by her grandmother, Nanny. Nanny, a slave woman, yearned for freedom, which she perceived as attained through marriage to a man with land and a farm. When Nanny pushes her, Janie listens and marries a man of Nanny's choosing, Logan Killicks. "De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see. Ah been prayin' fuh it tuh be different wid you. Lawd, Lawd, Lawd!" (14) said Nanny, which shows her sole reason for sending Janie off. Logan may have been the answer to Nanny's quest for freedom, but he is not the man for Janie and she realizes this very soon after their marriage. "Tain't Logan Killicks Ah wants you to have, baby, it's protection," (15) explained Nanny, but there is no passion or love in their marriage, which is what Janie looks for most in her young years. Logan however was looking for someone to help him on the farm in his old age. When Joe Starks enters her life, he seems to offer the ideal alternative to the dull and pragmatic Logan. He is good looking and charming, and he tells Janie, "You ain't got no mo' business wid uh plow than uh hog is got wid uh holiday," (29) which Janie finds particularly appealing. Janie leaves Logan and marries Joe, a man with nothing material in the present but huge dreams for the future. Joe envisions having a big voice, and at first, Janie hopes that she can find her voice through Joe. "He had a bow-down command in his face, and every step he took made the thing more tangible" (47). The townspeople had a different kind of respect for Joe than they did for anyone else, and with his ambitious talk, Joe convinces Janie that he will use his thirst for power to help her realize her dreams, whatever they may be. Unfortunately, Janie is wrong; Joe squelches her individualism instead of allowing Janie to develop her voice. While at first, Janie appears to have everything she could possibly want; she soon realizes that her marriage is not what she thought it would be again. Janie spends most of their marriage living as Joe wants her to, rather than as she had seen her life. Janie, after years of living life in a rut, finally finds her voice and speaks out against Joe. He is so unnerved by Janie's thoughts about him (primarily that he is a self-centered, power-absorbed shell of a man), finally vocalized after years of silence that he dies