Teara Peeples
Univ 200: Section 052-2014 Fall
Emily Williams
September 20, 2014
Unit 1: Critical Analysis Essay
In the book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, the roles of men and women of the 1930’s
were highly emphasized. The main character Janie Crawford returns back to Eatonville, Florida
after many years. She begins to recall her story to her friend, Pheoby Watson. She is forced by
her grandmother to marry an older man named, Logan Killicks. Janie is miserable with Logan.
She leaves Logan for a man named Joe Starks, who becomes her second husband. He takes her
to a town called Eatonville. He becomes the mayor. Throughout the whole relationship Janie was
verbally, mentally, and physically abused. Janie and Joe were married for 20 years until his
untimely death. Living the happily single life, Janie meets a young man named, Tea Cake. She is
instantly intrigued by him. She starts dating him. They run off and get married in Jacksonville,
Florida. The marriage starts off rocky, but they find happiness working together in the
Everglades also known as the muck. Trying to flee a hurricane, Tea Cake saves Janie from a wild
dog, but gets bit and catches rabies. His jealousy quickly turns into suspicion over Janie. Janie
has no choice but to shoot her husband to protect herself. In the end, she is put on trial for
murder, but is proven innocent. Zora Neale Hurston’s commentary on the inequalities between
men and women and what their roles should be according to society are shown throughout this
book.
The first quote that I will analyze reads, “Thank yuh fuh yo’ compliments, but mah wife
don’t know nothin’ ‘bout no speech-makin’. Ah never married her for nothin’ lik dat. She’s uh
woman and her place is in de home” (43). In the quote Joe is talking about his wife Janie. He is
saying that she doesn’t know anything about speech making and he never married her for that.
He’s saying that he didn’t marry her for her brains. Joe married her because of how she looked.
He thinks just because Janie is a woman that she is not capable of speech making, any woman
for that matter. Joe is insulting the intelligence of a woman and her capabilities. The woman’s
place according to Joe is only in the home. The second quote reads, “Uh woman and uh knife –
no kind of uh knife, don’t b’long tuhgether.” (78) Steve Mixon took a misunderstanding situation
and turned it into a joke. The downside of the “joke” was that it was an insult to Janie and
women as a whole. He is teasing her not knowing how to use a knife correctly. Janie not
knowing how to use a knife but trying anyway can be seen as a women stepping into a man’s
stomping ground. Knives are said to be associated with men not women. It’s a part of their
masculinity. The joke shows that men think that women cannot do what men do.
Those two quotes show the significance of what some men thought and still think women
roles should be. It is obvious that gender roles or gender stereotypes have evolved from what
they used to be in comparison to those in the 1930’s. Jody thought that the woman’s place was
only in the kitchen, which is not true in today’s society. There are more women at work than at
home. There is a higher percentage of working women than in the 1930’s.
Works Cited
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, September
18, 1937. 43 & 78. Print.