Already in the first few chapters of Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston provides readers with a very detailed, nuanced depiction of Janie's marital history through her use of free indirect discourse, narrating through Janie's voice as she tells her tumultuous story of her past relationships with Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and Vergible Woods—better known as Tea Cake. From a young age Janie is restricted by her grandmother, Nanny, with respect to her romantic and sexual freedom. Nanny, having herself experienced the trauma of rape and the later horror of learning that her own daughter had fallen upon the same fate, acts extremely over-protectively of Janie's natural adolescent endeavors in love, causing Janie to feel confined to her grandmother's wishes. While she at first abides by Nanny's desire for her to marry into a wealthy, stable relationship in the farmer Logan Killicks, she eventually expresses her discontent with her limited freedom, building it up within her for several years before finally revealing her feelings to Killicks. It seems as thought Janie is happy after her initial withdraw from her marriage when she meets Joe Starks, a man who she will again appear to be content with at first but later express her frustration of. From these essentially failed marriages with Logan Killicks and Joe Starks, the question arises, can we really sympathize with Janie after her abrupt actions in her first two marriages, or should we rather sympathize with those men who had Janie stolen from her, whether by another man or by death? On the surface it may seem obvious that Janie's selfish actions in both of her marriages prevent her from deserving any sympathy, but we can see by understanding Janie's circumstances—*namely the corrupt nature of both relationships—and by observing the pity she expresses for Killicks that Janie is in fact worthy of the sympathy we are initially reluctant to give her.
The first instance of corruptness in Janie's marital life comes with her first marriage to Logan Killicks, a middle class, wealthy farmer. Janie's ultimate decision to leave Killicks for another man at the end of the relationship force us to question the validity of sympathizing with Janie. Although the relationship seems fairly normal at first, this is largely due to Janie's inexperience as a 16 year-old girl, and Janie's problems with the relationship surface over time. She goes to her grandmother to ask her why she has experienced no love yet in the relationship, as she believed that love would develop over time, again exhibiting her naivety. Hurston narrates through Janie using free indirect discourse: "The familiar people and things failed her so she hung over the gate and looked up the road towards way off. She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie's first dream was dead, so she became a woman" (24). Her we see Janie's initial realization of her dislike for her grandmother's way of confining her, as she realizes that her love for Killicks will never come as she expected it to. As she has never been in a legitimate relationship before, in part due to Nanny, this is earth-shattering for Janie's happiness and patience in the relationship. When Janie understands that this means her arguments with Killicks over her lack of desire to aid him in his work will never cease, likely getting even worse over time, she become miserable. Understanding her current unhappiness and foreseeing this unhappiness exaggerated in her future, Janie decides to run away from her marriage will Logan in favor of a fresh change of pace who comes in the form of Joe Starks. It is important to stress Janie's still maturing attitude while facing relationship struggles in this time period. This is Janie's first real relationship in the novel—*arranged for her almost forcefully by her grandmother—and even herself expresses how she "became a woman" after this first shock regarding her lack of love for Killicks.
Janie's relationship with Joe Starks starts out well, as she admires his ambition and aspirations in becoming mayor when the couple moves to Eatonville, Florida. Joe slowly gains influence in Eatonville, and seeks to establish a sense of superiority between him/Janie and the rest of the Eatonville community through acts such as showing off his purchase of land and buying a two-story house. While Joe's ambition to succeed and appear as a leader in Eatonville are both genuine, they eventuate to having the side effect of constricting Janie's freedom. Joe believes that Janie shouldn't interact with the other members of the community, as it would reflect poorly on them if the mayor's wife was constantly interacting with laypeople, diminishing the status rift between the Starks (Joe and Janie) and the rest of Eatonville. As a result of Joe's philosophy of appearing superior, his restriction of Janie's freedom extends as far as to not even letting her converse with the customers who sit at the front of her store. Janie eventually expresses her discontent with Joe constantly confining her to the store and her desire to interact with others more. Joe completely shuts Janie down, forcing her to keep her true feelings pent up once again, while at the same time Janie starts to realize Joe's old, sluggish nature, and eventually learns of his impending death. Janie expresses her feelings about Joe's death after her failure to speak to him one last time: "She was sorry about the root-doctor because she feared that Joe was depending on the scoundrel to make him well when what he needed was a doctor, and a good one. She was worried about his not eating his meals [...] So she bought him a beef bone and made him some soup" (78). Despite Joe's heavily restricting behavior towards Janie throughout the years of their marriage, Janie still finds the sympathy to express her sorrow for him, and do anything to alleviate his suffering despite how he acted towards her in the past. She even goes to the effort of getting him a new doctor in spite of his stubbornness to stick to miracle workers, showing the genuine care she still has for Joe even though she condemns the relationship. Considering the circumstances, Janie could just leave Joe and go off to live a new life with Tea Cake, and we would find that understandable as she would finally have done something to escape her constricted environment and express her freedom. The fact that she still shows even the slightest sympathy for Joe, even if she appears happy after he dies, shows her compassion at the most basic level, a trait that encourages us to sympathize with her at this point in the novel.
*I apologize for the weird formatting following some of my sentences. This is my first time trying to insert em dashes into Blogger...
In part, Janie's failed marriages are a result of her setting the bar too high. In her youth, she believed that love was necessary for marriage, which her long cohabitant relationship with Joe Starks proved isn't correct. In both of the cases, upon marrying her Logan and Joe make sure she is well provided for but also supports her role in the marriage. In some way, in their eyes, she is an investment of their time and money. In Logan's case, he calculated that the money invested in a wife would be less than the profit of having an extra pair of hands on the farm (and without paying an actual wage), while Starks develops the need someone to help establish his societal superiority and uses Janie to that end. Neither of the men believe it is her place to care about the status of their relationship, thinking of it as a business transaction rather than the expectation of a loving marriage that Janie carries with her throughout her life.
ReplyDeleteI definitely sympathized with Janie throughout both of her marriages. I think that the men that she was with were prideful and disrespectful to her as their partner. I do think that her naivety and immaturity did in part lead to the failure of both of her marriages. I also think that each one of her partners had some deep-seeded insecurities, which only further preyed on the tension and fragility of their relationships. Logan and Joe were cruel men to Janie in their own ways. And you bring up a really good point that Janie still managed to show compassion for Joe, specifically, while he was dying. This definitely led me to fully side with her.
ReplyDeleteI suppose her treatment of the Joe situation does show how good of a person she is, though her words might not suggest it. For a marriage that she absolutely did not want to sustain, and a husband that sucked most of the time, I guess her perseverance could be seen as admirable. One might question why exactly she let herself take all the pain she did in that marriage for so long, but it's possible that leaving would only create more problems than it would alleviate knowing Joe's own issues with others deviating from expectations.
ReplyDeleteI think it is important to take Janie's situation into context. You did a good job of covering both sides of the issues with her marriage. She is 16 and has had no background on marriage. She was raised by her grandmother and did not grow up around a healthy marriage. The effect of this is evident when she forms her idea of marriage pretty late, in her teenage years.
ReplyDeleteI really like the way that you see through the narrator into Janie's character and read her more as a person than as a character. It really brings more life to the story. I agree with the way you took Janie's actions and emotions in context. Janie is a very complex character, but also a very believable and relatable person for many people. She is someone we can understand and connect to, unlike most of the characters we have discussed in class. Nice post!
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