Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God

"And dey makes me tired. Always laughin!' When somebody talked mah husband intuh comin' down heah tuh open uh eatin' place Ah never dreamt so many different kins uh black folks could colleck in one place. Did Ah never woulda come. Ah ain't useter 'ssociatin' wid black folks. Mah son claims dey draws lightnin'." They laughed a little and after many of these talks, Mrs. Turner said, "Yo husband musta had plenty money when y'all got married."

Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God is the black feminist novel. Stories, plot devices, and themes from Zora's magnum opus appear in many more recent novels by black women, such as Edwidge Danticat, Toni Morrison, Alice, Walker, and others. Moreover, reading Their Eyes for the 2nd time makes me appreciate Zora's use of the black southern vernacular and the formal, 'standard' English through the Janie and the third person narrator. The novel is also interesting since it was rediscovered in the 1970s by black feminist writers after being despised by the predominantly black male critical establishment of literary criticism. Writers and philosophers such as Alain Locke believed Zora's masterpiece wasn't political enough and didnt directly address issues of the 'race' in a political way, which is complete bullshit. Hurston's novel cleverly critiques slavery, racism and sexism through Janie and her family, her grandmother Nanny being raped by her white slave master and her mother being raped by her schoolteacher. Hurston's novel was hated by the male-dominated literary world of the 1930s and 1940s because her story emphasizes female empowerment and independence from male sexual control, and its use of southern black vernacular, which some critics saw as supporting racial stereotypes of blacks.

In truth, Hurston's novel cleverly uses the black vernacular to accurately represent the speech of Floridians of African descent. Furthermore, her story's center is in the small town of Eatonville, an all-black town that Janie's 2nd husband, Joe Starks, establishes control over after leaving, is the same town Hurston had lived in. This all-black world, with no whites, allows Hurston to focus on how black men and women interact within their own sphere, albeit a sphere still subservient to whites who control Florida's government. In addition, the all-black town of Eatonville symbolizes black self-rule and self-sufficiency, with its own post office, a shop owned and operated by Starks and Janie (against her will), and the practice of black rural culture, such as playing the dozens. Her virtually all-black world where whites are only the backdrop of their lives, also relates to the fact that Hurston wrote the novel in 7 weeks while conducting research in Haiti for what would become her Tell My Horse. Haitian peasant culture, like African American rural culture, is also rich with oral traditions, and similar values and practices. As Hurston said in Tell My Horse, women in Haitian society were treated poorly by men, as if they were beasts of burden. The world Hurston takes the reader into in Florida is a similarly patriarchal society, where women were expected to cook and work for men. Janie, the heroine in this novel, must counter these patriarchal tendencies, causing her to rebel against her controlling first husbands, and losing her third husband after fleeing a hurricane in the Everglades, although Tea Cakes also tried to control her at times. Anywho, the image of Haiti likely influences the novel's black world, where blacks can establish their own towns, stores, post offices, and their own mayors/political leaders. Now I will compose a list of themes, literary devices, characters, and plots that owe something to Zora Neale Hurston's great novel.
1. Janie being the daughter of the rape of her mother appears in Edwidge Danticat's Breath, Eyes, Memory, whose protagonist is the daughter of her mother's rape in Haiti.
2. Toni Morrison's Beloved features Sethe's mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, who does deliver a humanizing sermon from the pulpit to the black peoples of the small Ohio town her family relocated to after fleeing Sweet Home. Janie's grandmother, Nanny, was never able to deliver her sermon on the mount, and due to her own hard life as a victim of rape and slavery, no longer believes in love. For Nanny, marriage is for protection and security, nothing more and nothing less. Women are to serve their husbands in exchange for protection.
3. Toni Morrison's Sula also features a character, Sula, who returns to her small town after traveling and living life as an independent woman. After Janie leaves Eatonville to marry Tea Cakes and make a life in another part of Florida, Janie later returns to the scorn and derision of the people. She is perceived as a troublesome woman for marrying a younger man, who had no money, justifying the town's beliefs that Janie should not marry for love and should have chosen a mate from an older, more professional pool of men. In Sula, Sula returns and sleeps with various men of the town. Both women do not follow the expected rules for female sexual behavior, and therefore become objects of scorn.
4. Toni Morrison's Tar Baby is a love story between Son, a lower-class black man, and Jadine, an educated black woman. Her relationship with Son has some similarities with Janie and Tea Cakes, since both men are fall for women with wealth, and survive a series of ordeals in their respective relationships. Of course, in Hurston's novel, Janie and Tea Cakes share a similar love for fun, merriment, etc. Son and Jadine cannot reconcile their vastly different African-American and European-American worldviews.

In summation, read this novel. I must also share a similar story from Haitian history that could've influenced Hurston's story of the dead mule, beloved by the town of Eatonville. After dying, the entire town (except Janie, who under orders from Joe, could not attend because of his bourgeois standards of proper womanhood) attends the pushing of the carcass out of town with much praise. In Haitian history, a president of peasant origin loved his goat so much that he ordered an elaborate Catholic funeral in the national cathedral in Port-au-Prince. The Haitian peasant's love and appreciation for animals could've impacted the funeral for the beloved mule of Eatonville. Once again, Zora's background in Haiti and her own experiences in entirely black towns with rich oral traditions and the belief in black self-sufficiency can be found throughout the novel. Moreover, the novel's use of 'formal' English for the 3rd person narration and the use of the black vernacular also represents the double consciousness of African Americans, and the double consciousness of Zora Neale Hurston herself, since she was both black and a woman. Hurston also highlights internal divisions among blacks besides gender and sexism, such as color prejudice among blacks. Indeed, Mrs. Turner, the light-skinned black women who hates blacks, takes a liking to Janie because of her light complexion and long hair. Janie, however, transcends color prejudice by marrying dark men and defending blacks in conversations with Turner. Turner is so delusional that she believes whites will accept light-skinned, biracial blacks if the darker ones weren't pulling the mulattoes down with them. I think it's obvious that Hurston's novel does address issues facing 'the race.' She highlights the importance of as well as race, in a clever novel that uses folklore, oral traditions such as the dozens, and Ebonics.