Zora Neale Hurston

In “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” Zora Neale Hurston makes it very obvious about what people thought of women at the time. They were trophy prizes. They were meant to sit on porches and observe the world instead of live in it. From the very beginning when Janie’s grandmother finds her kissing a boy, she warns her not to mess around with boys like that. She informs Janie that she should marry, not based on love, but based on financial stability (more or less).

“Honey, de white man is de ruler of everything as fur as Ah been able tuh find out. Maybe it’s some place way off in de ocean where de black man is in power, but we don’t know nothin’ but what we see. So de white man throw down de load and tell de nigger man tuh pick it up. He pick it up because he have to, but he don’t tote it. He hand it to his womenfolks. De nigger women is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see. Ah been prayin’ fuh it tuh be different wid you. Lawd, Lawd, Lawd!”

This whole paragraph ties up Janie’s first two men. Brother Logan Killicks is so old that he has trouble doing his own work. He gives Janie his work and leaves her to finish it. He even leaves several times to do business, and tells her to stay at the house. The next treatment she gets from a man is Joe Starks. He is no better. Even though he starts off treating her well, by the end of their relationship, he is abusing her, emotionally, mentally, and physically. He is making the townspeople think that she is the bad one. He is always expecting her to do all the work and to stay in the house, since all the men think she is attractive. He keeps Janie locked up like a slave. He treats her as though he owns her.

Finally, she finds a man that she loved and that loved her back. The only problem with this relationship was that every once in a while, Tea Cake would abuse her by slapping her. This was not because he was mad at her, but because he had to show her who was boss (I don’t know which is worse).

In all, women in Zora Neale Hurston’s novel are treated as though they are slaves to their husbands. They are expected to have dinner on the table, and are expected to not leave the house unless they are told to do so. They are put on a horrible pedestal.