Onto the next book -- wow this year is going fast. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston has been a new kind of book in context of this class so far. The language is more phonetic, the perspective is from a woman and feels like it’s claiming a feminine portrait in a way, etc. As we were talking in class today, I couldn’t help but think about my own views on marriage and how they tie into what Janie has felt throughout her two (failed?) marriages.
Janie’s grandmother, Nanny, recounts the stories of her earlier life. She was raped by her master in slavery, and ran away with her child, Leafy, so that they could live a better life. Leafy ends up being raped by her school teacher, and runs away from home eventually. It seems that after all this hardship, it is so natural for Nanny to be skeptical about love or marriage or truth. What role do men have in her life so far besides to rape her or the people she cares about. And even if that is an irrational fear she has, it is all she knows.
From the generational pattern of events that Nanny describes, it seems inescapable that Janie will suffer from the men that she encounters or marries. False hope is prevalent; first in that she thinks after her marriage to Logan, their love will come naturally, and second in that she sees Johnny as a positive get away from a deteriorating life. This is like Nanny’s life -- running away from a rape to only find another rape. I think Hurston gives us these plot patterns to show the type of place a black women is in. Their role may not be invisible, but it seems to carry much less hope than a black man’s plight does.
I think you're right in that Janie will end up experiencing hardship- there is hardship in every relationship and marriage no matter who it's between. The thing you kind of allude to that I don't really agree with, though, is that Janie will end up like Nanny. Janie isn't Nanny. Yes, Nanny did raise her, but Janie isn't nanny- Janie is Janie, and she'll endure her own hardships in her own way (inevitably, as you said).
ReplyDeleteI think that going into Janie's marriages she had an unrealistic expectation. She should have seen that both her mother and grandmother were raped and abandoned, but she still chooses to think positively, which although admirable, is unrealistic. She sits under a blooming pear tree and thinks happy thoughts, but when she is asked to work by her husbands, she rejects it. People, both men and women, are expected to work. Even the richest people had to work to get where they are and to maintain it. I think these expectations of easy life and happy marriages are what get in the way of being content with what she has
ReplyDeleteThe thing with Nanny is interesting--it seems shocking when, after Joe dies, the narrator starts telling us about how Janie "hates" Nanny and seems to blame her for putting her in a bad position w/r/t marriage. Nanny is of course a sympathetic character, and the narrator/author allows her to tell her whole "sermon" in her own voice. We can see where Nanny is coming from, as you say--her experiences have indeed supported the thesis about the black woman being the mule of the world, and she came of age in a time when a black person owning property of any kind would have been fantastical. So when she urges Janie to take Logan and his 60 acres, we can see why she thinks this way.
ReplyDeleteBut there's a strong generational conflict here, and Janie has an independent vision. Some in class seem to think that she should have acquiesced to her grandmother's view of the world, and of the profoundly limited prospects for someone in Janie's position. But Janie isn't having it--as Simone put it, she chooses "story" over stagnation, and she goes after the "horizon" instead of staying put. This makes her a gender nonconformist, and for many contemporary readers, it makes Janie heroic and highly admirable. But it also creates this complicated, uncomfortable posthumous conflict with her grandmother.