Originally published in 1937, Zora Neale Hurston’s fourth and final novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, has come to be regarded as part of the canon of black American literature, protofeminism, and as being emblematic of a specific type of black American culture.
At a time in which the style was very much one of social or critical realism, Hurston advocated for the black story in and of itself, “not a treatise on sociology,” but, as Toni Morrison later put it, a story which gives a “sense of black people as complete, complex, undiminished human beings.”
Their Eyes Were Watching God follows the story of Janie Crawford, a black woman born and raised in the rural South in the early twentieth century, who, in spite of socially prescribed marriage norms, embarks on a journey of finding true love and fulfillment.
“There are years that ask questions and years that answer. Janie had had no chance to know things, so she had to ask. Did marriage end the cosmic loneliness of the unmated? Did marriage compel love like the sun the day?”
Janie relates her experiences of married and single life to her friend Phoeby; in these recollections, we follow her trajectory from young woman to older, wiser matron. For many women of Janie’s period, legal marriage meant being yoked; while the marital bond was supposed to serve as a protection for women and to provide them with social security, the legal restrictions to which women were subject meant that marriage was as much a fetter as a necessity.
“There are years that ask questions and years that answer. Janie had had no chance to know things, so she had to ask. Did marriage end the cosmic loneliness of the unmated? Did marriage compel love like the sun the day?”
Her first marriage is arranged by Nanny, her grandmother. However, the man himself, Logan Killicks, is an unhappy choice who does not work out for Janie. Janie’s husband sees her more as a source of free labor than as a life partner, and so Janie feels nothing at all for him until she faces so much injustice at his hands that a feeling blossoms in her — contempt.
“She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman.”
There is a shift in tone when Janie leaves Logan for a traveling man with big dreams; it is at this point that Janie’s voice changes from being the voice of a young girl to the voice of a woman. This marriage is hardly better than the last. Jody Starks, her second husband, becomes more and more controlling, especially after he manages to establish a town that once was nothing and so begins to think very highly of himself. Jody embodies the entitled patriarch, ordering Janie around and showing her off like a brainless trophy.
“‘Somebody got to think for women and chillun and chickens and cows. I god, they sho don’t think none themselves.’”
When Jody unceremoniously exits the narrative, shrunken and scorned, Janie is again set free.
“The young girl was gone, but a handsome woman had taken her place. She tore off the kerchief from her head and let down her plentiful hair. The weight, the length, the glory was there […] she starched and ironed her face, forming it into just what people wanted to see […]”
A new independence prevails in Janie’s countenance, manner, and choices. Hurston demonstrates this through the way unapologetic way in which Janie presents herself and in her refusal to “need” a man to manage her house, her store, or her life. Well before the modern feminist movement of the later twentieth century, Hurston’s writing demonstrated a protofeminist take, as evidenced in her depiction of Janie as she begins to shirk traditional ideas of how a woman “should” be.
After some time, a younger man named Tea Cake swoops into Janie’s life like a breath of fresh air. Joyful, nonchalant, and confident, he lightens her grief and they move to the Everglades together. They live and work on a farm until a hurricane uproots everything, and, after a tragic course of events, Tea Cake, Janie’s last love, dies.
“The wind came back with triple fury, and put out the light for the last time. They sat in company with the others in other shanties, their eyes straining against crude walls and their souls asking if He meant to measure their puny might against His. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.”
A new independence prevails in Janie’s countenance, manner, and choices. Hurston demonstrates this through the way unapologetic way in which Janie presents herself and in her refusal to “need” a man to manage her house, her store, or her life.
The movement in Their Eyes Were Watching God is from constraint and dependence to freedom and independence. Janie’s various living arrangements inversely reflect the state of her freedom, with the mansion an isolating psychic prison and the farm shack a communal gathering place of friendship. With scenes of front porch chats and gossip between women, Hurston beautifully illustrates community in the South.
In terms of voice, Hurston leans into traditional idioms, black vernacular, and cultural regionalisms through an omniscient narrator. Cast throughout the story are also examples of racism (some internalized) and misogynoir that would have been prevalent at the time, painting a well-rounded picture of the world Janie is navigating. The writing comes off as forgiving, a warm wisdom pervades the narration that can only be attributed to Hurston’s own struggles in life outside her work.
“[Janie] didn’t read books, so she didn’t know that she was the world and the heavens boiled down to a drop.”
Within the larger genre of psychological or Afro-American fiction, Their Eyes Were Watching God immerses the audience into a similar world — in both setting and characters — to that of Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Richard Wright’s Native Son, and Crystal Wilkinson’s Water Street. If you enjoy these kinds of stories, those that spotlight a lovable yet misunderstood protagonist in the Black American diaspora at the turn of the twentieth century, Their Eyes Were Watching God will be a wonderful addition to your TBR list.
