Go Janie Go

            Janie, the protagonist of Their Eyes Were Watching God, represents a strong, straight-backed feminist character. This being the first novel that we have read in class this year that is both written by a woman and starring one as well, I really appreciate her strength compared to that of Bessie or the ever-seducing female members of Ellison's Brotherhood. Not only did she feel that she had the right to carve out her own fate when she left Logan Killicks, but she later changed even that decision by finally standing up to the insecure Joe Starks who once treated her so nicely. Mr. Starks is the man who promised her the world and more and made her a figure to be admired around town as the mayor's wife, isolated her from the entire town by painting her as this aloof, conceited woman. It seems as if he is doing this on purpose, not only to enure that others see them as a power couple, but to discourage anyone from befriending Janie, and thus keeping her reliant on him. He keeps her under a lock and key; no allowing her to speak her mind in social discussions on the sore porch, rather asking her to fetch him things, such as his black shoes, because according to Joe Starks, that is a woman's job. His control complex becomes even more obvious as they both age, and he makes continuous negative comments about her looks: putting her down so that he can feel better about his receding hairline and large saggy stomach.

           This all comes crashing down on him when it builds up to a breaking point for Janie, so that she can either retain an ounce of pride or submit to him entirely, and due to her strength she chooses the first option. Her comment of retaliation, which insulted a part of his anatomy that he formerly took pride in, had me as a reader egging her on and rooting for her entirely. In fact, this display of fiestiness reminded me very strongly of Zora Neale Hurston herself. It was not surprising to find a lot of herself in her character because there are obvious parallels between her life and Janie's, (such as both of them living in a tiny all-black town in Florida called Eatonville). In "Jump at the Sun" they mentioned that Zora could do tricks with the way she spoke, going from the accented, typically African American dialect to practically professorial English and back again. This is also evident in her novel, because the narration does exactly the same thing.

 There were some people who expressed the idea that because Janie disregarded "all" that Logan Killicks had done for her and ran off with Joe Starks, she was spoiled (thereby agreeing with Killicks). I disagree, mainly on the point that she never really agreed to marry him, and she wasn't happy there. Her life living in the back yard of a white family's house was not what you would call idyllic, but, like most girls of her age, she wasn't used to doing hard physical labor every day in addition to house chores. Her disgust for Logan may not have been entirely warranted on his half, but Janie deserved to be happy, and by her definition, not just her well-meaning Nanny's.

To anyone who thinks Janie is spoiled: when was the last time you worked all day behind a plow?