Themes

Race and Racism

Race and racism are important themes in most of Zora Neale Hurston’s works, as they are for most writers who went on to define the Harlem Renaissance movement. The novel does not take an educating attitude toward racism, but it is nonetheless woven into the narrative fabric of the novel. Hurston’s conscious decision of setting the majority of the novel in all-black townships makes readers privy to the nuances of black communal life. When the novel shifts to Palm Beach, where Tea Cake is coerced by uniformed white men into burying victims of the hurricane, readers get a peek into the larger reality beyond the confines of all-black communities. Mrs. Turner’s character is also important in this regard: she represents the internalization of racism (despite being a black woman herself) and the dangers of doing so.

Gender Relations

Their Eyes Were Watching God is the story of Janie, a black woman who travels across America. Even though she spends most of her life in different all-black townships, these places nonetheless serve as a microcosm of American society at large. Janie comes into her own sexual and intellectual awakening in her experiences with her various partners.

Indeed, Janie’s marital experiences with these men form the basis of the novel. Each of her relationships is unique, but they all reveal the gender codes and roles of the time. When she shares a kiss with Johnny Taylor at a very young age, Nanny becomes extremely concerned; in fact, she arranges Janie’s first marriage as a result.

Janie is deprived of the chance to explore her sexual and romantic feelings for Johnny as Nanny argues that the most important role in a woman’s life is that of a wife. When she marries Logan, a much older man, Janie is struck by the lack of love in the marriage. It is shocking to her when she realizes that Logan, her first husband, only sees her as another worker at the farm. Logan only needs a wife for labor, both on the farm and domestically.

In her second marriage with Jody, she gradually sees how Jody finds it important to control her and stifle her self-expression. He forces her to tie her hair, demeans her intellectually, and repeatedly states that she lacks a work ethic. Jody is praised by the townsfolk for being a man who regulates her wife, thus revealing the societal bias that a woman must always be controlled by a man and not regarded as a complete individual in her own right. It is in her last marriage with Tea Cake that Janie feels recognized as a complete woman, both sexually and intellectually. When Tea Cake physically assaults her for no fault of her own, she realizes that Tea Cake, too, is a product of the patriarchy that Logan and Jody espoused.

Nanny and Janie’s mother’s stories also reveal the tortuous conditions that black women before and after emancipation endured at the hands of white and black men. Both these women’s rape highlight the fact that in those days women were routinely subjected to control and violence.

Love, Desire, and Sexual Awakening

Hurston uses metaphors that evoke nature to describe sexual awakening and desire. It is the fertility and blossoming of a pear tree that coincides with the kiss that Janie and Johnny Taylor share. The ripening of fruits and the blossoming of flowers represent the blossoming of Janie’s sexual identity.

After she meets Tea Cake, Janie finds herself looking at the moon more often and is filled with longing and desire. The rising moon becomes a metaphor for her attraction to Tea Cake and, later when she and Tea Cake go on their late night fishing adventure, it is the moonlight that guides them, metaphorically and otherwise.

Interestingly, metaphors pertaining to the moon and the pear tree appear when Janie is alone and has the independence and time to explore her thoughts and feelings without interruption. These moments are as powerful as the one in which she takes off her head rug and lets her hair flow after Jody’s death. The independence she experiences is unprecedented for her, and this can be discerned in her conversation with Pheoby: she tells Pheoby that she is not wearing a white dress and letting her hair flow to attract other men’s attention, but as an expression of individuality.

Sexual desire also features prominently in Tea Cake and Janie’s relationship in that it is something that makes them secure and trust each other as well as stoking their insecurities. Tea Cake uses sex to placate Janie when she is suspicious and jealous of his playful nature with another young worker. Tea Cake uses sex to reassure her in this instance. However, when Tea Cake is jealous of Mrs. Turner’s brother, he assaults Janie in an act of preemptive violence: for Janie has not cheated nor shown any inclination of doing so.