Female Elements in \"Their Eyes

Female Elements in "Their Eyes Were Watching God"

Abstract Das brauchst du nicht!

The research paper explores the female elements in the novel "Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neal Hurston. It is the story of Jane, a black woman who was born when her mother was raped by a teacher. The story revolves around Jane's struggle for identity and self-esteem. . The novel represents the desire for autonomy, in particular under a banished community which relies on an individual's maintenance of common bonds. In such a society the women's demand of autonomy is perceived as a threat to the fabric that sustains said community's sense of identity, purpose, and viability.

Through such tropes as a diasporic woman's labor, her rhizomatic pursuit of desire, and the fallacy of authentic blackness, it demonstrates how an African-American woman can achieve salvation by successfully negotiating the status of her body. The point at which these three tropes intersect, the body is a key source of knowledge and empowerment. Accordingly, reclaiming the body from patriarchy's ideas about the type of work that women should do and the manner in which they should express their sexual desires becomes the means by which Janie achieves salvation. In order to represent this particular form of physical redemption through her narrative, Hurston invokes an archetype of post-Edenic labor, in which reclaiming the body in this way requires self-rescue in the form of one's labor and sacrifice

Table of Contents Durchnummerieren!

Introduction

Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God" depicts a sense of ambivalence about black women's limited opportunities to assert them in a male dominated and commodity-obsessed world. True to this conflicted outlook, placing blame is not within the purview of this work. Instead, it depicts one of the central tensions that define the diasporic experience as lived by women of color in America, thereby critiquing the distinctly American privilege of individualism that forces these women to negotiate the rift between individual and communal aspirations. This research paper discusses the female elements in "Their Eyes were Watching God" by Zora Neale. The author has focused on the aspects of the novel related to femininity. The novel is a depiction of a woman's desire for autonomy, especially within an exiled community reliant upon each person's upholding of common bonds, is perceived as a threat to the fabric that sustains said community's sense of identity, purpose, and viability.

Literature Review

Story of Women Struggle

"Their Eyes Were Watching God," is no doubt the life story of the author Zora Neale Hurston. Despite the novelization and ancestral biography, the main character lives a similar life as Zora. Finding the perfect match, failing several times, the efforts, the regrets and the achievements, tells us the story of an African-American woman in a society that discriminates her not only on the basis of male chauvinism but also white racism. The author in real life is well-known for her work in the field of female rights. Having a chance to observe the historical Harlem Renaissance, she well understood the importance of equality and justice despite creed, color, cast and gender. Being the granddaughter of a preacher and the daughter of a mayor, she was genetically a political and social reformist. During her graduation at Howard University, she co-founded Hill Top the student's newspaper. She was a born writer and her most critically acclaimed piece, "Their Eyes Were Watching God" is under our consideration today. (Jones Sharon, 2009)

Their Eyes Were Watching God tells us the story of Janie Crawford who was born when her mother was raped by a teacher and her mother had a similar birth history. While her mother runs away, her grandmother does not want Janie to have a similar fate. So she reacts very strictly when she sees Janie kissing a neighborhood boy. Feared to see history repeating itself, Nanny arranges her marriage with an older farmer, who requires her to be a co-worker and helper for his home and farm more than a wife. Janie, who was disappointed by the absence of love and respect and being treated like a slave, runs off with Jody Starks to Eatonville. Starks is smart enough to buy land there and establish a store. Soon he was elected as a mayor. Janie realizes soon that Starks is just treating her as her trophy wife as he asks her to take care of his business but forbids her to take part in social activities. When Starks passes away, Janie finally finds herself independent enough to live her life the way she always wanted. At this point of her life she decides to marry a man with no higher social status as she had enough of them. She selects a drifter and gambler who go by the name Tea Cake as her life partner.

Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God depicts a sense of ambivalence about black women's limited opportunities to assert themselves in a male dominated and commodity-obsessed world. True to this conflicted outlook, placing blame is not within the purview of these works. Instead, it depicts one of the central tensions that define the diasporic experience as lived by women of color in America, thereby critiquing the distinctly American privilege of individualism that forces these women to negotiate the rift between individual and communal aspirations. The novel illustrates this rift and depicts how a woman's desire for autonomy, especially within an exiled community reliant upon each person's upholding of common bonds, is perceived as a threat to the fabric that sustains said community's sense of identity, purpose, and viability. (William M. Ramsey, 41)

Taking into account the Edenic imagery in the novel that delineates a corrupted world, readers can see how Hurston establishes parallels between the redemption narratives of their respective protagonists and that of the archetypal wanderer-laborers, Adam and Eve. The author conveys within the texts the prospect for the same hard-won salvation that God makes available to Adam and Eve. In accordance with the felix culpa view of the fall, mankind's disobedience enables this salvation to be earned in the sense that the introduction of the priority to labor is a painful yet fulfilling consequence of self-assertion

Thus an act of self-assertion, although potentially self-interested, can open the opportunity for redemption. This is because self-assertion is both a form of labor and means of growth. Elaine Scarry explores this paradox in her book, the Body in Pain: "[work] has been repeatedly placed by the side of physical suffering yet has, at the same time and almost as often, been placed in the company of pleasure, art, imagination, civilization -- phenomena that in varying degrees express man's expansive possibility, the movement out into the world that is the opposite of pain's contractive potential" (Elaine, 169)

Jane as Radical Model of Women's Self-assertion

Within the critical discussion of Their Eyes Were Watching God, these views range from the belief that Janie is a radical model of woman's self-assertion who rebels against the institution of marriage to the felix culpa, or fortunate fall, interpretation of the fall extends the idea that the fall enabled mankind to be redeemed by Christ. The parallel with feminine agency is that an act of seeming disobedience could, in fact, bring about an opportunity for a woman to exerts herself and acts upon her desires. (Scarry 205)

Elaine Scarry (1985) explores this paradox in her book, the Body in Pain. She states that "work has been repeatedly placed by the side of physical suffering yet has, at the same time and almost as often, been placed in the company of pleasure, art, imagination, civilization -- phenomena that in varying degrees express man's expansive possibility, the movement out into the world that is the opposite of pain's contractive potential" (p.169).

The perception that Janie made selfish choices stands in contrast to the more evenhanded analysis that she, at times, just submitted to easy choices, yet eventually recognized that she must make a deliberate effort to perform an act of self-rescue. Some critics share the opinion that she is just a willing participant in the subjugating roles of wife and obedient lover. For example, Pearlie Mae Fisher Peters (1998), focusing on how Janie harnesses "the law of verbal authority," equates Janie's "talking and fighting" with survival and "gaining self-respect" (p 127, 148).

These points of contention aside, the novel seems most interested in objectively depicting consequences, both positive and negative, of a woman's so-called disobedience in the context of humanity's fallen condition. As we see, this disobedience takes the form both of defying the expectations of others and, more significantly, of being untrue to one's authentic self. The consequences of this disobedience, then, are what prompt the painful process of self-discovery and self-rescue.

Familial Connection with Black Community Values

The source of this reading of Janie is that her novel depicts her as believing her sole means of establishing agency is to forsake the familial connection that underpins the black community's values. For example, Janie admits to hating her grandmother and having "no interest in that seldom-seen mother at all" (Hurston 89). This renunciation, depending on one's perspective, represents either a willful act of sacrifice or a selfish act of disobedience. Sandra Pouchet Paquet, however, frames this problematic deed in neutral terms in her analysis of the text, which focuses on its ambivalence toward the role of ancestral knowledge in identity formation. Paquet (2009) asserts that Janie "repudiates the values of her surrogate parents in her conscious quest for selfhood" (p.501). She also suggests that ancestral knowledge operates merely as a means to "psychic wholeness" in the novels and argues that the text is successful in exploring "the divorce from ancestral roots that accompanies conventional notions of success" (p. 500) Indeed, this tension between ancestral knowledge and individualistic goals is why Janie has to grapple with interpreting the nature of the knowledge imparted in her moments of coming to consciousness. Specifically, she wants to interpret the mystery conferred to her through the lens of satisfying her personal desires for autonomy instead of accepting the sacrifice, pain, and labor required to achieve self-fulfillment within the demanding circumstances of both Diaspora, in specific, and mankind's fallen condition, in general.(yes own words)

What distinguishes this text from others that explore any of the numerous and varied diasporic communities across the world are the opportunities available to Janie to effect upward mobility in a way that is wholly unavailable to her elders. Indeed, the novel foregrounds the tension that arises between older, underprivileged blacks and the protagonists, who at first take their privileges for granted. Chief among these newfound privileges, which result from social and cultural shifts between generations, is the freedom to venture away from the false home (the plantation) to which African-Americans were traditionally bound -- Janie signifies to her grandmother the hope that the abolition of slavery (which she experiences firsthand) will provide the chance for blacks to move from under the shadow of whites' brutality and subjugation. Thus, a positive, deliberate form of mobility, one that stands in contrast to the forced mobility of slavery and that affirms a woman's ability to choose her own path in life is a defining trait of the diasporic experience as lived by Janie. Paul Gilroy (1993) in the Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness argues for a lens through which to interpret this manner of diasporic experience. In specific, Janie's less rigidly defined social and cultural conditions shape their understanding of the opportunities available to them, such that they exemplify what Gilroy terms the "rhizomorphic, fractal structure" of the diasporic identity (Paul Gilroy, 1993. p.4)

Modernity and Double Consciousness

Modernity and double consciousness argues for a lens through which to interpret this manner of diasporic experience. In specific, Janie's less rigidly defined social and cultural conditions shape her understanding of the opportunities available to her, such that they exemplify what Gilroy terms the "rhizomorphic, fractal structure" of the diasporic identity. Resilient and adaptable in ways that older generations (and other diasporic communities) might view as forsaking vital traditions, Janie embodies both the American ideal of individualism and the necessity within Diaspora of perseverance. (Scarry, 1985. p. 56)

The tension described above indicates the central character flaw experienced by Janie which is her sense of entitlement. Finding she must negotiate this self-imposed obstacle on the way toward self-rescue, epitomizes both the constricting and liberating aspects of framing the diasporic experience in the expectation of a return to the mythological genesis moment. Specifically, Janie subconsciously engages with the narrative of a return to paradise, which propagates the delusion that a sole agent can somehow reclaim an untainted state of being free of both suffering and the ill intentions of others. This means that people within the Diaspora can form meta-narratives around their experiences such that Diaspora itself gets wrapped up in spiritual matters. The outcomes of this association are psychological, in that one's aspiration for spiritual ascendance can foster perseverance while also instilling reverence for hierarchy. It is this reverence for hierarchy that proves detrimental, because this mindset can have negative outcomes like the acceptance of subjugation as inevitable and the willingness of women to subordinate themselves to men. Thus, the aim of this research paper is to uncover how the Diaspora narrative intertwines with the Edenic and post-Edenic narratives -- while the former permits the long-suffering to aspire to reach some higher spiritual level in relation to God, the latter fosters a more humble sense of how labor can achieve spiritual connection in moments rooted in the tangible.

Othered within the Diasporic Community

The troublesome nature of Janie's outright repudiation of cultural values, as acknowledged by commentary and actions within the novel, is that it severs the diasporic lineage that has sustained the black community through enumerable hardships. For example, Hurston depicts many members of Janie's former home, an exclusively black community called Eatonville in Central Florida, as resentful of her return after a year and a half away from the closely- knit town. These people form a gauntlet of judgment that Janie walks before with poise and confidence, yet their spiteful questions -- such as why she does not "stay in her class"(Hurston, p.2) convey their underlying feeling of abandonment and the "hope that [Janie] might fall to their level some day" (Hurston 2). This sense of having slighted the community demonstrates that Janie's actions have severed her from the diasporic lineage that fosters a familial connection within the community. This emphasis on how the community feels spurned conveys Hurston's ambivalent treatment of Janie's chief sin -- as the community perceives it -- of disavowing the need for their approval. Indeed, the community members seem petty as they remember the "envy they had stored up from other times" (Hurston, p.2) upon viewing Janie for the first time since her return from her journey of self-discovery and self-rescue (Scarry 54). She commits an affront on the community by going outside of it to find her sense of worth, which forsakes the priority in diaspora of adhering to the community.

As the text illustrates, these types of judgments arise as the community's defense mechanism against behaviors that threaten the belief in tradition's infallible ability to support and sustain the diasporic individual. In this context, not only privilege a connection to the past but view it as a necessity for survival, a woman who relinquishes her role as a daughter within her own family threatens to undermine the larger, distinctly feminine role -- so crucial within the Diaspora of conferring knowledge from one generation to another. Morrison, in an interview with Robert Stepto, discusses this role of "the black woman as parent, not as a mother or father, but as a parent, as a sort of umbrella figure, [as] culture-bearer" in the context of describing "what [black women's] huge responsibilities have been" (Morrison, 1977, p.488). This depiction of how a woman of color is expected to uphold cultural traditions -- as if responsible for rooting her immediate community in an awareness of the broadly spanning web of diaspora's traumas and blacks' triumphs in spite of these traumas -- contrasts with Morrison's assertion that the traditional way in which black men have functioned is "going from town to town or place to place or looking out and over and beyond and changing" (Morrison, 1977, p.488)

Given these distinctions between women as rooted and stationary emblems of home and men as transient seekers, a central theme in Their Eyes Were Watching God is that a woman's efforts to repudiate her traditional role as culture- bearer and to explore is equivalent to forsaking her community's values. However, despite its distancing effect, this enables her to self-fashion an identity by means of seeking. Indeed, when Janie rejects communal norms, she must create the world anew for herself. This means that the mandate to labor, which is a consequence of the fall, can manifest in equal parts as purely individualistic goals or more community- oriented building. Ultimately, though, Janie becomes reconciled to engaging with the pressures of the diasporic condition, rather than fleeing from it. As evidence of this reconciliation, she concludes her narratives with a gesture that, though tentative, symbolizes her fusing of personal desires with communal desires. (Morrison 290).

Narrative Progression

Janie at first rejects the obligation to become guardians of the diasporic experience in favor of pursuing her conflicting desires for love and independence. However, she eventually engages with some mythic entity the tree of knowledge of good and evil in Their Eyes Were Watching God that initiates them into a journey of self-discovery and self-rescue that is emblematic of both the displacement and hope of the diasporic condition. During these respective moments of coming to consciousness, Janie become aware of how this mythic entity represents the mysterious and alluring knowledge of mankind's formerly pure and untainted condition, which can no longer be reclaimed because of the fall. This newfound awareness is the catalyst for action in the novel, for it motivates to undergo journeys of self-discovery that conclude with some small gesture of reconciliation.

Aligned with Eve's act of disobedience, Janie disobeys as a symptom of her rebellion against convention, though she eventually learns that some sort of sacrifice is unavoidable in the fallen world. Janie, as established earlier, disobeys in terms of defying the expectations of others and being inauthentic to the self. Janie defies others by repudiating the need to sacrifice her spiritual and sexual desires in order to survive, which she demonstrates by leaving her first husband, Logan Killicks, in order to pursue the "far horizon," the "change and chance," represented by the man who will become her second husband, Joe Starks (Hurston 29). Likewise, Janie's grandmother (referred to only as Nanny in the text) is guilty of advocating a similar necessity, which is for Janie to reconcile herself to the inevitability of being broken of her dreams. In specific, Nanny conveys during her soliloquy in the second chapter of Their Eyes Were Watching God that sacrificing spiritual desires is what she was forced to do as a younger woman, (Hurston 16) and yet this is what she tries to inflict upon Janie. (Hurston 13). The result of Nanny's influence is that Janie chooses to rebel and thus makes a string of rash decisions that are inauthentic to her central motivation; she becomes deluded by her motivation to pursue "sun-up and pollen and blooming trees" and eventually settles on pursuing the horizon as the means by which she can live in perpetual springtime (Hurston, 29). Hence, this is why she admires the "high, ruling chair" of Joe, for it at first symbolizes the access permitted for those with the privilege of power, whereas it eventually comes to symbolize the isolation of a woman made subordinate to, and yet an emblem of, a man's power (Hurston, 32).

Accordingly, these impetuous acts of self-assertion are just the first on her journey of self-discovery, for she eventually must sacrifice the bond of romance -- with the transient Tea Cake, for a spiritual affirmation of the self. Before Janie arrives at her concluding gestures of resolution, her story reaches its climax as she commits some severing act of closure that rescues her from an immediate circumstance that threatens her either physically or emotionally. (Weathers 201). Janie is forced to kill Tea Cake as he aims a gun at her and then must submit to the judgment of both a jury of whites and a gallery of resentful blacks. For Janie, this severing act represents their newfound ability to conquer her feelings of longing and want. As Deborah Orr asserts, Hurston depicts "the reintegration of the spiritual and the sexual"( Deborah 35) in Janie's character progression, which concludes with Janie relating to her best friend, Pheoby, the two things "everybody's got tuh do fuh theyselves": "They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin' fuh theyselves" (Hurston 192). The paradox in this statement suggests that one's conceding lack of control does not interfere with one's empowerment to shape life for oneself -- or at least to explore the limits of what is available to the self, both sexually and spiritually, through the painful process of self-making. In reconciling herself with the constraints of the made world, Janie not only becomes more confident and self-possessed (so poised as to react quickly in shooting Tea Cake), but also makes peace with her grandmother and confers knowledge to her best friend, Pheoby. Janie, in fact, embodies the diasporic narrative, even though she at first rejects this formative identity. Indeed, the very fact that her journey participates in the same metaphoric journey as the diasporic narrative suggests that the character herself assumes some facet of the diasporic identity. Although this does not mean that they fully reconcile with the African-American community or accept its pressures, it does suggest that Janie and Jadine acknowledge diaspora is an unavoidable circumstance that shapes the conditions of their lived experiences. Although this does not mean that they fully reconcile with the African-American community or accept its pressures, it does suggest that Janie and Jadine acknowledge diaspora is an unavoidable circumstance that shapes the conditions of their lived experiences.

As stated above, Janie's gestures of reconciliation symbolizes the fusing of personal desires with communal desires, which is a smaller and more personal act than somehow reconciling completely with the pressures to conform to the traditional roles expected of the diasporic woman. Rather, Janie accepts that pain is inevitable, thereby resolving feelings of family angst and confronting personal demons, respectively.. In specific, Janie makes peace with the painful constriction she associates with the memory of her grandmother, Nanny, and with the legacy of pain inscribed in the diasporic identity. Thus, she fulfills her yearning for agency by choosing to accept the compromised circumstances of the fall.