Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is one of the best known and acclaimed novels, a classic of black literature. This novel is a story about the awakening of a black woman’s soul, about her search for selfhood, and about her evolving character through her three marriages. This is a story about Janie Crawford and her journey in the pursuit of life, liberty, and most importantly, in the pursuit of happiness.
The main character of the novel is Janie Crawford, a strong, articulate, self-reliant black woman, who drastically stood out from the crowd, surrounding her in the novel. She started her journey as a young, innocent, romantic girl, in the search of a beautiful and happy world. She was a dreamer, and she had a dream “to be a pear tree – any tree in bloom!” (p.11). At sixteen, she already “searched as much of the world as she could from the top of the front steps …to the front gate” (p.11). Janie grew up in the home of her grandmother, Nanny, who loved her with all her heart, but with the broken heart of a former slave. Within Nanny’s past, there were many great hardships and sorrows. Therefore, Nanny eventually began to look towards financial security as being the primary importance in life for Janie. Nanny was afraid of Janie’s beauty and her romantic nature, and when Janie began to discover her sexuality, Nanny arranged her marriage to a wealthy farmer, Logan Killicks. And that was “the end of her (Janie’s) childhood” (p.12).
For the first year of their marriage, Janie felt if not happy, at least hopeful, that “she wouldn’t be lonely anymore” (p.20). She still had illusions about her marriage. “Husbands and wives always loved each other, and that was what marriage meant” (p.20). She still had her dreams about her marriage. “Ah wants things sweet wid marriage lak when you sit under a pear tree and think…” (p.23) But with time, her illusions and dreams about her love for Logan vanished, and Janie came to the conclusion, that “some folks...