Leonitha Francis

Defining Womanhood According to

Janie Crawford

 

 

     “The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says: 'It's a girl.” is a quote taken from American politician, Shirley Chisholm, a congresswoman from New York. She became the first major party black Presidential candidate in 1972. Championing many feminist principles and sexiest stereotypes in her career, she exceeded the stereotypical limitations of the female political involvement, often challenging the status quo of the male dominated industry. The American classic, “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston, introduces the main character, Janie Crawford as a subtle renaissance woman of her time. A time when society held strict views of womanhood morally and ethically, we meet Janie Crawford, a girl in transition to womanhood wanting to experience life -- regardless of what stereotypes of womanhood exist. In “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, Janie discovers her voice in her lifelong quest to define womanhood.

 

     During the early 20th century of which this story takes place, women have very little privileges and an even smaller voice to express themselves. Voice is what gives representation to a person that allows them to express their views, emotions, opinions and thoughts. When one does not have a voice to use, it is easy to be overlooked, dismissed or forgotten. One can easily loose their voice if never taught how to use it, when to use it or that they even have one. Janie’s voice was lost in more ways than one – amidst tradition and in others. 

 

     Lost in the stereotypes of southern traditions as it pertains to the role of the woman, Janie’s voice is muted early in her life the perpetuation of these ideals by her grandmother. Ideals of womanhood, particularly in the South, at that time were domestication, submission and femininity. Janie’s grandmother had these grand visions of life for her granddaughter epitomizing the ideal southern woman. Consequently because of Nanny’s life and the road she had to travel, she did not want to forfeit that freedom of ideal womanhood for Janie. Knowing all too well how the burden she had to take on as a provider was a more masculine role to, Nanny did not want that for Janie, rather she feared that becoming her granddaughter’s plight in life if she had not left her protected and properly looked after. Nanny was not fortunate to ever take a man for a husband to care for herself out of fear he might bring harm to her daughter, Janie’s estranged mother.

 

     Nanny is submissively immersed in the custom of the time and orchestrates an arranged marriage for her granddaughter to a significantly older gentleman, Logan Killicks. Logan has inquired of young Janie and her grandmother sees him as the man capable of fulfilling the traditional husband role with the provisions to guarantee her granddaughter the lifestyle of an ideal southern woman. Logan has a home he owns, sixty acres of land along the main road and protection. Nanny was born during slavery, a time where her womanhood could not be fulfilled to the dreams she had for herself and now Janie. Not only will her marriage to Logan satisfy Nanny, it positions Janie to have some stature to herself, far more than she could’ve inherited from her grandmother, a former slave.

 

     Rather than allow Janie to venture into the world alone to discover her voice, especially on the horizon of her anticipated passing, Nanny muted her voice in favor of the tradition she had come to know as life, regardless of how obscure it seemed to anyone, especially Janie. “…us colored folks is branches without roots and that makes things come round in queer ways.” (16) is how Nanny begins to validate her reasoning to Janie in the hopes of consoling her through this obscure, arranged rite of passage. It is in this dialogue we learn how slavery silenced Nanny’s own voice and her views of traditional ideology pertaining to how a woman ought to be has muted Janie’s voice in order to fit into the stereotype of a well kept woman; sitting on high and supporting her husband while abiding in the safety of his protection and provision.

 

     Janie’s obedience to Nanny’s wishes begins the fading of Janie’s voice in others, in addition to the traditions of the time. Janie’s voice is ignored by Nanny in the arranging of her marriage to Logan Killicks for the sake of becoming a woman and meeting the societal status quo of womanhood of the time. Logan seeks to provide for Janie in exchange for her obedience as his wife and executor of his estate, as his days are closer to ending than hers. In spite of her reluctance to marry Logan, Janie possesses a tiny hope that love will come eventually and as time progresses; marriage to Logan proved not to be full of love as she hoped would come. I agree with Bealer, that Logan fails to provoke sensory pleasure or physical desire in Janie, “desecrate[ing] the pear tree” (Bealer 316). Under the pear tree was where Janie experiences the intoxicating euphoria of womanhood in the most orgasmic way she’s ever known. Her oneness with nature entices her appetite for this burgeoning womanhood she has embarked on. Janie seeks to replicate this feeling by kissing a neighbor only to have her first attempt of womanhood on her terms, revoked and dictated to her. A dictation that comes from a place she herself is not familiar with but alters her embrace of this newfound womanhood. Albeit, fulfilling of Nanny’s hopes for Janie, it is all but fulfilling for her, especially once Logan begins to share his intentions for her to work more on the farm and not provide her this love she so desperately sought out in a marriage. Not fond of the idea of becoming the work ox Nanny feared for her, Janie fled the marriage to Logan and married the ambitious and charming, Joe Starks.

 

     Taking Joe Starks at his word to treat her like a lady, ensuring she would live well the rest of her life, Janie embraces this union with the hope that she’ll finally enter the feeling of womanhood she always envisioned – a euphoric feeling of love and expression. Initially, Joe provides Janie everything she had believed marriage should entail, love, romance, stimulation and expression all while maintaining the ideals Nanny wanted her to have as well, provision and protection. Every thing Joe promised her, he delivered. He became the mayor of Eatonville, Florida, a small colored town he helped to establish and expand and instantly placed her in a position of perceived authority. Although esteemed highly, Janie had no authority, as many would assume. To accommodate his growing appetite for control, authority and reverence, Janie became subject to Joe’s increasing restrictions of her physical expression, further silencing her voice that she’s never really been able to use. Janie’s anticipated second chance at her journey of womanhood was dissipated steadily throughout her twenty-year marriage to Joe in her submission to his every desire. Joe’s restrictions of Janie begin with her outward appearance and eventually eat at her inner before for affecting her emotionally. After witnessing an admiration of Janie’s hair by a townsman, unbeknownst to Janie, Joe insists that she is not allowed to wear her hair out anywhere outside of the house. This demand is an attempt to diminish the beauty that radiates from her with her hair being her crowning glory. Joe not only removes the expression of Janie’s outward physical expression in this instance, he removes her outward display of her crowing glory.

 

     Joe proudly makes known his true intentions for marrying Janie, not necessarily for the intellect of her femininity when she is asked by a townsman to make a speech, but for her feministic duties as a wife. This was Joe’s response to one time in Janie’s life that someone suggested she use her voice, much less identified with the fact that she had a voice. This opportunity of male privilege and domestic hierarchy was a display made in front of many, the whole of the Eatonville more specifically. Joe belittles his wife to the class-feminism ideology he has for her role in his life and further removes any form of inward expression she possessed. In the submissive nature as she has come to be as a wife and the wife of an authority, Janie quietly succumbs to the desecration of her pear tree yet again, “another that took the bloom off of things.” (43) The coldness and fear of her life under the reigns of submission to Joe begin to grip Janie and force her to feel removed. There is strain on their marriage she addresses but is shot down in response from Joe for being ungrateful for her good fortune as the wife of a mayor. With the disregard of her concerns from her husband, Janie silences her own voice and yields to the submissive wife Joe desires of her to be.

 

     Over the course of time, a subtle shift begins to take place in Janie’s internal self. It is an enlightening and volume-increasing awareness to the muted voice of Janie’s inner being and thoughts that takes place after being physically assaulted by Joe for ruining dinner and verbally abused in public when she messes up a customers tobacco order in the store. For the first time, Janie speaks up for herself having become conscious of the separation of her thoughts and suppressed voice. The narrative addresses this sudden awareness of Janie’s repressed inner self and becomes the defining idiom of Janie’s journey in the novel according to Quashie (336).

 

     Janie’s newfound voice and defense of herself goes to “the heart of Joe’s power, his manhood and the beginning of his decline towards death.” (Quashie 335). The discovery of her voice aids Janie in the journey of who she is and what she wants from her life. Consequently upon Joe’s death, Janie grieves as the town expects of her but she is now aware of how expectations of others are limiting to her expression, desires and opinions – her voice. Janie feels as though the grieving period has lasted long enough and she is ready to embrace life alone and on her terms. She has everything the provision of a husband guarantees, finances and provision, only she doesn’t need the protection her Nanny wanted for her because she is not afraid of whatever is to come next. In agreement with Dilbeck, the death of Joe frees Janie from her grandmother’s words and realize her true power as a woman and a human being, that she belongs to no one but herself (Dilbeck 103). Janie is ready for whatever comes in her quest to experience the longing euphoria of her pear tree interaction from her youth.

 

     The pear tree, in some cultures, represents “fertility and femininity” and for Janie, it represented femininity as she embraced womanhood from adolescence. However for Janie, her womanhood experience, as she envisioned, was delayed until she found her voice to articulate her desires as the pear tree had showed her. For Janie, womanhood was a self-sustaining liberation and a fulfilling love. It is not until after the death of Joe Starks, does Janie begin to fully embrace this liberation aided by her relationship with a young suitor by the name of Tea Cake Woods. Tea Cake embraces Janie for who she is as a woman and celebrates everything about her that had been previously ignored. He teaches her the game of checkers, an activity she was only allowed to spectate while married to Joe. He also teaches her the sport of shooting rifles and fishing, all very masculine activities that Janie would have never experienced with her voice still in possession of others expectations. This defiance of gender specific activities gives Janie an authority in her own life that she previously submitted to under sexism. Janie begins to define her womanhood by embracing the belief that there is not a specific way in which a woman must be except whatever is comfortable to her.

 

     This epiphany Janie has, not only enlightens her, but also frees her from public opinion of what her contribution to womanhood should be. To Janie womanhood was everything the pear tree had given her – euphoric feeling of love and expression accompanied by stimulating romance. Janie’s womanhood was never an idea of anyone other than her own, however until the discovery of her voice, she had never experienced this expression of herself. Her relationship with the young, impetuous Tea Cake is her first public expression of the woman she has become. She is a self-sufficient woman who is in a relationship with a man who cannot provide everything she has grown accustomed to having. He does, however, provide the stimulating romance and love that Janie has always wanted and without bearing materialistic gifts, Tea Cake gives Janie more than anyone has ever given her in her life – the experience of her womanhood. In their relationship, Janie is submissive to Tea Cake but she is allowed to use her voice. Her opinion mattered to Tea Cake, “In order to justify his pride, he must constantly consult Janie for approval,…” (Miller 85) as he often sought her approval much like Janie sought the approval of her former late husband, Joe Starks. Tea Cake’s relationship with Janie, albeit unorthodox at the time, not only liberates Janie into a feminist freedom, but validates her as a woman. This relationship turn marriage makes Janie a governor of herself and a willing partner in a marriage, not a work mule as Nanny told her women were. Janie has triumphed the bondage of existing in  a world where her voice was unheard to a woman who has become liberated by the sound of her own voice.

 

      “Janie creates a new code of values to meet her needs…” (Jennings 1), she perseveres through a life of self-denial with an inner hope to be fulfilled by this longing for a stimulating love. By her discovery of her voice, Janie now has a means to express everything she has ever suppressed for the sake of others approval and happiness. Janie’s voice has given definition to the woman she has always envisioned and longed to be and having loved and lost according to societal values, Janie now has her own values as her own woman.

 

 

Works Cited

• Bealer, Tracy L. "The Kiss Of Memory": The Problem Of Love In Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God." African American Review 43.2/3 (2009): 311-327. Academic Search Complete. Web. 1 Dec. 2013.

 

• Dilbeck, Keiko. "Symbolic Representation Of Identity In Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God." Explicator 66.2 (2008): 102-104. Academic Search Complete. Web. 8 Dec. 2013.

 

• Jennings, La Vinia D. "Katie's Canon: Womanism And The Soul Of The Black Community." African American Review 32.2 (1998): 347-349. Academic Search Complete. Web. 10 Dec. 2013.

 

• Miller, Shawn E. "Some Other Way To Try": From Defiance To Creative Submission In "Their Eyes Were Watching God." Southern Literary Journal 37.1 (2004): 74-95. Academic Search Complete. Web. 9 Dec. 2013.

 

• Quashie, Kevin Everod. "The Trouble With Publicness: Toward A Theory Of Black Quiet." African American Review 43.2/3 (2009): 329-343. Academic Search Complete. Web. 8 Dec. 2013.