Hello
everyone!
On
November 21st we will be presenting on Zora Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
“Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches” – chapter II, page 8
In
our presentation we will be talking about Janie’s development as a character
and the influence the following characters have on her growing.
- Janie’s Grandmother
- Logan Killicks (1st husdand)
- Joe Stark (2nd husband)
- Tea Cake (3rd husband)
“(…) Years ago, she had told her girl self to wait for
her in the looking glass. It had been a long time since she had remembered.
Perhaps she’d better look. She went over to the dresser and looked hard at her
skin and features. The young girl was, but a handsome woman had taken her
place. She tore off the kerchief from her head and let down her plentiful hair.
The weight, the length, the glory was there. She took careful stock of herself,
then combed her hair and tied it back again” (page 87)
- - What does this passage represent on Janie’s life?
- - What is the symbolism of her hair during the story?
- - What kind of feelings/reactions the three husbands raise on Janie?
We are looking forward for your comments and ideas!!!
Aurea Teixeira
Carla Neves
Tânia Fortunato
I think this passage is very important in the inner growth of the protagonist Janie. It shows how she has made her transformation from girl to woman. the fact that she unravels her hair but then ties it back up again, it is as if she just wants to make sure that she was still HERSELF. Her hair seems to be a symbol of rebellion as well as of beauty. The fact that her second husband, Joe Stark, forces her to have her hair tied in a handkerchief while serving in the store, shows us how he is aware that Janie has the power to do better and he does not want her to discover that power. When he dies and Janie finally finds her true love, Tea Cake, she no longer has to worry about hiding her symbolic hair, she can finally be herself.
ResponderEliminarCélia Raquel Pestana Martins - 44164
I think that the hair symbolizes how oppressed she is. Whenever she's not wearing the "turban", she feels free, and whenever she is she puts on a totally different character. I think that when her hair is untied it symbolizes freedom.
ResponderEliminarOf course, it also represents the beauty, but to me it was more about rebellion as Célia said, freedom.
Annabelle Frérou
47716
Janie was forced by her grandmother to marry young to a man she didn't love, and was told feelings of love would eventually arise in her marriage but this was proved false. She was tied to a man that didn't understand her and made her feel insecure. Then Joe came along and made her a proposal she couldn't refuse: of a better life and freedom, and a society of equals. She accepted this promise and followed him into his dream but soon found the freedom promised to her cut short by her second husband's constant requests. She was forced to cover her hair and pretend to be much older and undesirable to make him feel better about himself. Once again she found her life unsatisfying and too demanding. She was fortunate enough to find Tea Cake in her later life, a man younger than her who respected her as an equal and gave her the freedom she pined after. Janie finds in Tea Cake a man she can love, and thus decides to abandon her village to finally be happy. She was courted by three different man who all promised her happiness, but only in Tea Cake she found this promise fulfilled.
ResponderEliminarTeresa Garrocho
46056
Excellent questions. Forgive me if I don’t bother answering any of them, as I still have to finish the novel. Reading about the author, though, I found that Hurston actually had not only great skill as a writer, but a life and an experience and a perspective that was fascinating. This in itself I find very interesting. I believe there’s a conscientious political choice on Hurston’s part to take the main character, Janie, on a painful flip through the pages of the catalogue of hardship black women of her time were doomed to suffer in their lives. The way the novel was received, even in black literary circles, by her black male peers (if she had any), reeks of condescending criticism to me, as I’m sure some would wish the author could have demurely steered away from some of the themes presented in the novel, glossing over black female tribulations and their history of oppression at the hands of black (not just white) men, even denying them their right to self. This novel, however, wasn’t ever meant to be that sort of tale. Sure, there’s humour in it, because you’ve got to squeeze in your laughs wherever you can, but most of it you read with a clenched heart and exactly this much I can say: Janie’s entered my world. And she’ll never leave.
ResponderEliminarNuno Miguel Lopes