I was considering Hurston's stance on women and the idea of feminism. The complexity of Hurston's stance makes it difficult to easily determine what her message was regarding women's roles in society. I narrowed it down to a mostly positive idea of women. Janie's image as a woman is that of a strong, independent, and freethinking person.
The first instance that comes to mind represents Janie's free thinking abilities. Janie's grandmother has grand plans for her and wants her to marry a significantly older man Logan. But Janie was not going to have any of that. She begrudgingly marries him. But chooses to pursue her own path and leaves Logan for Jody a young man with big plans. Janie imitates the divorce from Logan, which I thought was an extremely independent move and freethinking considering Janie's place as a poor black woman.
I think that Janie's independence is illustrated when Janie is coming back to Eatonville. She comes back in overalls. Which signifies that Janie was a workingwoman and was working alongside her husband. This was seen her community as a representation of poverty since women were not suppose to work unless they had to. But in reality it was a decision that Janie made herself. Which signified independence.
But the biggest lesson to be learned for Hurston's novel was the resilience and strength of women. Janie was a strong woman. Her ability to withstand the criticism from the townspeople is a sign of strength. But the most significant place I see this is when Janie is forced to kill her husband Tea Cake. Even though it was a split second decision how many people could kill their spouse that way? The ability to do so was a way in which Hurston was able to illustrate the inner strength of Janie.
Hurston's Janie was a head of her time and was an example of women as strong people. Her Janie represented what women could become.
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6 comments:
Kyle-
I really enjoyed your ending statement, "Her Janie represented what women could become." I remember in class we brought up the point that Janie really needed to figure things out for herself by experiencing them, not just being told and following orders.
I really like how your whole piece is on the positive things about women the Hurston points out. I especially like the part about how women are strong because if you think about it, it takes a lot of strength to be able to kill your husband if you love him and that was just a ridiculous situation that she had to deal with. So for her to be able to pick up and carry on with her life shows that she has a lot of strength.
Hurston, like Chopin and Porter, is definately emphasizing the construction of this new woman, who carries the traits you wrote about-strength and independence. You used strong examples from the text and I don't see how anyone would disagree that Janie is a new "ideal" woman. We see very few negative traits (if any!) in Janie throughout the book, and I think that is because Hurston is emphasizing a "positive feminine" throughout this story--one who does not give in to societal constraints but rather chooses the much more difficult road of being herself and following her heart.
Kyle,
I feel that you are correct in your analysis of Hurston’s novel. Although it is unclear of Hurston’s intentions, the novel does seem to have a very big feminist touch to it, if in fact people do not believe that it is a feminist book, because of all of the contradictions that are present. Hurston depicts this main character Janie as a “strong, independent, and freethinking person” as you described. I really like the examples that you used to support you opinion. There are many different details that prove Janie’s personality, for example, I also feel that Hurston depicted Janie as freethinking by telling the reader about all of the thoughts that go through her head when she is married to her different husbands (especially Jody Sparks and Tea Cake). Janie is shown as an individual because in the end she is happy living on her own, and she is strong because she walked all the way back to her hometown on the same day that the man that she loved died. I also like the question you posed about her being strong enough to kill her husband. I feel that this is a very valid point, because I do not believe that I would ever be able to kill a loved one.
I agree with you in that this is a positive idea of a faminist novel. She decides what she wants to do, becames very independent. Also with her ideas of love she decided that what her grandmother told her about love, that love is about support, that its not completely true and that she needs to learn for herself through life experience what she belives love truly is.
I also think that Janie was very independent and I liked how you said she had a lot of strength. I think that Janie killing Tea Cake especially shows her strenght. It is quite clear while reading that she is totally in love with Tea Cake and that she wants nothing more than for him to survive. However, she finally lets herself see the truth that Tea Cake is gone. Instead of letting him suffer any longer and risking her own life she is able to find strength in herself and pust Tea Cake out of his miserey and her out of harms way.
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