Their Eyes Were Watching God

Their Eyes Were Watching God
by Zora Neale Hurston
read: 2013
Time 100 Novels, Guardian 1000 Novels

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been reading books on being black in America for Black History Month. The first two books I read dealt with slavery, and after reading those and books like Beloved and Black Boy, I had a conclusion: "Novels on the black condition," I told wife, "are all depressing."

Their Eyes Were Watching God is arguably depressing also; certainly protagonist Janie is beset by misery throughout her life. But the tragedy is different than in the other books I mentioned; it's not tragedy brought on by being black, it's the universal tragedy of love and death and loss and sacrifice and pain. This isn't a book where a black protagonist is oppressed by whites throughout her life. White people and white society exist outside the narrative, as a boundary condition almost, a natural force like the hurricane provides the novel's climax. Their Eyes Were Watching God doesn't ignore racism - we can see it in Tea Cake getting conscripted to bury bodies and in Mrs. Turner's contempt for those with darker skin - and the legacy of slavery still has ripples in the lives that the protagonists create. But those are just parameters within which the characters are trying to build a life and find happiness. Black culture has a life all its own. The guitar-picking, singing, dancing, cooking beans and cornbread, gambling, and other cultural affects aren't reactions to white society, even in spite of white society. They have nothing to do with it.

I think the male / female relationship in the story parallels the black / white one. Janie pretty much goes along with her husbands even in the face of mental and sometimes physical abuse, and she never really considers breaking out of traditional gender roles. She dislikes her second husband Jody and likes her third husband Tea Cake, but she is mostly subservient to both. Janie never transcends societal gender roles, but that is no barrier to her finding peace and fulfillment in her life. Her quest is apart from the constraints society puts on her.

The courtroom scene towards the end of the book, where Janie stands trial for murder, makes more sense in this light. From a narrative perspective, this is one of the book's most pivotal scenes, with Janie's life hanging in the balance, but Hurston relates it in just a couple pages. This seems out of proportion, but Their Eyes Were Watching God isn't the story of what happens to Janie; it's the story of her finding herself despite happenstance. Ultimately, the white women who assume her innocence and the black men who assume her guilt cannot judge her. The (all-white, all-male) jury - "Twelve strange men who didn't know a thing about people like Tea Cake and her were going to sit on the thing" - is even more incapable of judging her. Only God can judge, and in this life only Janie's own opinion of herself really matters. In that sense, the courtroom scene is given only the ink it deserves.