Finding Her Voice in Their Eyes Were Watching God :: Their Eyes Were Watching God Essays

Janie Crawford, the main character of Zora Neale Hurstons Their Eyes Were Watching God, strives to buzz away her own voice throughout the novel and, in my opinion, she succeeds even though it takes her over thirty years to do it. Each one of her keep ups has a different effect on her ability to hazard that voice. The first time Janie had noticed this was when he was appointed mayor by the towns people and she was asked to give a few run-in on his behalf, but she did not answer, because before she could even accept or decline he had promptly cut her off, Thank yuh fuh yo compliments, but mah wife dont know nothin bout no speech-makin/Janie made her demonstrate laugh after a short pause, but it wasnt to a fault easy/the way Joe spoke out without giving her a find to say anything on way or another that took the bloom off things (43). This would happen many times during the course of their marriage. He told her that a cleaning lady of her kin and caliber was not to hang aroun d the low class citizens of Eatonville. In such cases when he would usher her off the front porch of the hold on when the men sat around talking and laughing, or when Matt bunglers mule had died and he told her she could not attend its dragging-out, and when he demanded that she soak up up her hair in head rags while working in the store, This business of the head-rag irked her endlessly. But Jody was set on it. Her hair was NOT to record in the store (55). He had cast Janie off from the rest of the federation and put her on a pedestal, which made Janie feel as though she was trapped in an emotional prison. Over course of their marriage, he had quieten her so much that she found it better to not talk okay when got this way. His voice continuously oppresses Janie and her voice. She retreats within herself, where still dreams of her bloom time, which had ended with Joe, This here and now lead Janie to grows out of her identity, but out of her division into inside and outside. conditioned not mix them is knowing that articulate language requires the co-presence of two manifest poles, not their collapse into oneness (Clarke 608). The marriage carries on like this until Joe lies depressed and dying in his death bed.