Today is another review for the Literary Wives blogging club, in which we discuss the depiction of wives in fiction. If you have read the book, please participate by leaving comments on any of our blogs.
Be sure to read the reviews and comments of the other wives!
- Kate of booksaremyfavoriteandbest
- Naomi of Consumed By Ink
- Rebecca of Bookish Beck
My Review
Their Eyes Were Watching God is another reread for me. I looked over my original review and still agree with it. I can make one more comment. This time around I really tired of the dialect and was happy that it became less as the work went on. Writing novels in dialect was popular between the late 19th century and the early 20th, but it is sure hard on the reader. You can find my original review here.
What does this book say about wives or about the experience of being a wife?
Janie’s journey is a search for both love and selfhood, and it involves three marriages.
When she is a naïve 16, Janie’s grandmother arranges a marriage for her with Logan Killick, a much older farmer. Janie believes those that say married people learn to love each other, but very soon she finds this isn’t always so. Keeping house isn’t enough for him. He wants her to do heavy work around the farm. The last straw is when he announces his intention to buy a second mule so that Janie can plow, too. For Logan, a wife seems to be someone who can save him from hiring a farmhand. Janie puts up with a few months of this and then walks off with flashy Joe Stark.
Joe is a guy fall of ideas and ambition who becomes a powerful force in the all-black town of Eatonville. (On a side note, I didn’t understand until I read Dust Tracks on a Road what a big deal this town was.) Unfortunately, a trait Joe shares with Logan is that a wife should do as she’s told, so he doesn’t allow Janie to take part in any of the pleasures of living there. She must bind up her beautiful hair, mind the store but not take part in the conversations in it, and act stately, because she is the mayor’s wife. Both these husbands treat Janie more like a symbol of what they want than a person. There is also the issue of Joe’s verbal and sometimes physical abuse of her.
After Joe dies and she’s been a widow for nine months, she takes off with the much younger Tea Cake. She’s in love. When he takes her $200 and loses it gambling, she is only worried that he left her. He does consult her on plans and lets her do what she wants, and certainly he provides opportunities for fun, but he is also jealous and beats her once just for show. It’s a different culture and time, but I was fairly appalled at everyone’s reaction to the beating.
In the Afterword, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., points out that Hurston wanted to show characters who are real, not all good, not all bad. I guess that’s my way to understanding why Janie remains so in love with Tea Cake. And he does treat her as a person. But it seems to me that in the search of love and selfhood, Janie only gains selfhood once Tea Cake is gone.
What? Me Read? 
I agree that Janie isn’t looking just for selfhood – she’s also looking for love. I wonder if, because it’s taken her so long to find it, she’s more willing to forgive Tea Cake’s flaws, even though we see them as pretty significant. It’s the price she’s willing to pay for finally being with someone who treats her like a person. But maybe one of the reasons Tea Cake was killed off so soon after their marriage was because Hurston knew it would have been unrealistic for Janie to have remained happy with someone like Tea Cake. Being with him for a while, though, gave her experiences she probably would never have had otherwise.
That’s a thought (about Tea Cake being killed off). Maybe she didn’t view Tea Cake’s flaws the way we do. It’s clear from everyone’s reactions to the beating that we don’t think the same way about that as they did.
I struggled with the dialect, too. I think Naomi made the right choice to listen to the book. It would be interesting to ponder what Janie might do next in the town … hopefully not be tempted to marry again!
I agree!
Ha! I was reading a Scott novel over the summer and thinking exactly the same about the dialect – enough already! The reaction to the beating in this book is appalling. Intriguingly I came across something similar in No Mean City, about Glasgow in the 1920s, where again women seemed to be enthralled by men who were violent towards them. Most odd!
Yes, it just seemed awful.
I remain hopeful for Janie – it seemed that her ‘gains’ might be lost after Tea Cake’s death but there was also an element of ‘what next’ as she was recounting her story to Pheoby.
That’s absolutely true, and even though she is sad, she seems like she’s in a good place with herself.