Essay on Equality and Inequality in Their Eyes Were Watching God

After leaving Logan, Janie marries Joe Starks, believing that their marriage will flourish where her marriage with Logan failed, as Janie is the one choosing her partner, not Nanny. However, her initial attraction to Joe blinds her from his flaws and causes Janie to unknowingly enter into a more oppressive relationship than she previously had with Logan. Joe’s controlling nature becomes more apparent when he is around other people, as he yearns for a strong public persona in which he is tremendously respected. He craves to gain the admiration of the people of Eatonville and concludes that keeping Janie quiet is the best way to accomplish this. When the people of Eatonville prompt Janie to offer “words uh encouragement” Joe stops them, explaining that his “wife don’t know nothin’ ‘bout…speech-makin” (Hurston 43).

He thought the only thing she could do was work at home. Tea Cake has a very different idea about women. He thinks that Janie can do anything she wants to do, that she is just as smart as a man and has the capacity to learn and do many more things than what Joe would allow her to do. Throughout their marriage, Janie seems to have taken Joe’s ideas to heart and believes them herself. Tea Cake rejects these ideas and helps Janie begin to feel confident in herself and forget what Joe made her

Even before Joe’s death, Janie “was saving up feelings for some man she had never seen. She had an inside and an outside now and suddenly she knew not how to mix them.”(75) Joe’s influences controlled Janie to the point where she lost her independence and hope. She no longer knew how to adapt to the change brought upon her. When she finally settles and begins to gain back that independence, the outward existence of society came back into play. “Uh woman by herself is uh pitiful thing. Dey needs aid and assistance.”(90) Except this time Janie acted upon her own judgment and fell for someone out of the ordinary. Tea Cake was a refreshing change for Janie, despite the society’s disapproval. “Janie looked down on him and felt a self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from its hiding place.”(128) This was what she had always dreamt of. When she was with Tea Cake, she no longer questioned inwardly, she simply rejected society’s opinions and acted upon her own desires.

From the beginning, Janie’s happiness is abundantly clear in her relationship with Tea Cake. Although she is now a woman in her forties, Janie acts very youthful and unrestricted with him. She wears “new dresses and...comb[s] her hair a different way nearly every day (111)”. Tea Cake allows for Janie to be herself, in stark contrast to misogynistic Joe who constrained her individuality daily. Janie reports that “Tea Cake love[s] me in blue, so Ah wears it (113)”.

He wins her heart with his energy, and willingness to make Janie his equal. Tea Cake is the only husband that actually takes a genuine interest in Janie. He takes her hunting, fishing, and plays checkers with her. She especially enjoys playing chess, the fact that he considers her intelligent enough to learn such a game shows that he thinks more of Janie than Logan or Joe ever did. The town disapproves of Janie and Tea Cake because he is poor and younger than her. They have the impression that he is just after her money. Janie and Tea Cake leave the town of Eatonville and travel to a town called Jacksonville where Tea Cake has work. The sense of gender equality is very important to Janie in a relationship. Tea Cake asks Janie to work alongside him in the Everglades fields. Logan and Joe both wanted her to work, but she resented it. The difference is that Logan wanted Janie to do hard labor because he thought of her as an object like a workhorse. Joe wanted Janie to work in the store, which she also disliked because Joe just wanted to publicly display her as his trophy wife. Tea Cake’s attitude about Janie working is completely different. He gives her the choice of working and doesn’t command her. Janie goes to work the next day, “So the very next morning Janie got ready to pick beans along with Tea Cake. There was a suppressed murmur when she picked up a basket and went to work. She was already getting to be a special case on the muck. It was generally assumed that she thought herself too good to work like the rest of the women and that Tea Cake "pomped her up tuh dat." But all day long the romping and playing they carried on behind the boss’s back made her popular right away.”(133) This is the first relationship that Janie doesn’t care to work. She actually likes working alongside Tea Cake. As time passes the town gets word of a hurricane coming. All the people start fleeing to different places, but the boss

In Zora Neale Hurston’s romantic novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the heroine Janie, a beautiful mixed white and black woman, is on a journey to find someone who will make her feel love to find her own identity and freedom, away from her spouses. Janie’s marriages and quest for love impede her individual search for freedom, but in doing this she has discovered what exactly she wants for herself. Janie’s search for her identity and freedom is very much evident. Being abused and controlled during her marriages has made it clear how she wants to be treated and how she wants to live her life; as an individual who does not have to listen to anyone. The story opens with Janie’s return to town. Janie tells Phoebe Watson the story of her

Janie's attraction to Joe Starks' charisma quickly diminishes when his overdose of ambition and controlling personality get the best of him. Although he is a big voice in the town, Janie only sees him as a big voice. All his money and power have no effect on her when all he does is ridicule and control her. He makes it clear where Janie belongs: "Ah never married her for nothin' lak dat. She's uh woman and her place is in de home" (Hurston 43). This is ironic because when she is with Logan, she wants to be in the house doing her own thing, but Joe is making it sound like confinement. It's as if she has no choice in the matter and Joe intends to make his power over her known. People have different desires and sometimes when we get caught up in our success, we can end up hurting others. Joe's reply to Janie is a great example of the insensitivity that can form from the pride we can possibly inherit when we achieve success: "Ah told you in de first beginnin' dat Ah aimed tuh be uh big voice.

Tea Cake was Janie's third husband.  He was a simple person who returned kindness for kindness.  He saw women as equal human beings and told them that.  He was very passive in thought, but smart in his own ways.  His desire in life was to love and be loved.

Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God tells the story of Janie’s journey towards spiritual enlightenment and her development of individuality, largely through Janie’s relationships with others. Hurston uses the themes of power, control, abuse, and respect, in Janie’s relationships with Nanny, Killicks, Starks, and Tea Cake, to effectively illustrate how relationships impact identity and self-growth.

When Nanny sees Janie kissing Johnny Taylor, Nanny forces Janie to marry Logan Killicks because she claims that Janie needs protection because “[The African American] woman is [the] mule [of the] world so [far] as [I] can see” (12-14). This shows that Nanny gives into the stereotype that women are weak and need protection by a man. This also shows that Nanny does not trust men around Janie and despises men that Janie feels attraction towards. In chapter six, the pugnacious men of Eatonville scold Tony because he refuses to slap his wife when she disrespects him, the men say things like “If [that was my] wife, [I’d] kill her cemetery dead” (74). This proves that men have to assert dominance over women through violence. This also proves that the society wants violence in relationships because that is how the order is kept. In chapter five, Joe does a speech because he is the new mayor is Eatonville. When Janie wants to do a speech, Joe does not allow her, saying that “She’s [a] woman and her place is in [the] home” (43). This demonstrates that Joe wants Janie to live up to her gender role as a woman. This also demonstrates that Joe does not want Janie to have a say in most things, he just wants her to be a quite housewife. Sexism keeps the characters from happiness because their persistence to maintain gender roles does

One of the things Janie learns during this relationship is that she is just as important to society as everyone else. While she was married to Joe (Jody) she wasn’t allowed to participate in public events or have conversations with the guys at the store. This changed when she developed a relationship with Tea Cake. He taught her all the things Jody wouldn’t allow her to do like checkers and how to shoot a gun. “ … He set it [checkers] up and began to show her and she found herself glowing inside.” (Hurston, 95-96). Janie was not only allowed but encouraged to participate in conversations with everybody. Tea Cake listened to her views

In the book, "Their Eyes Were Watching God" the main conflict is shown through Janie's, the main character, quest for spiritual fulfillment and love. Janie clashes with the values that others imposed upon her. Throughout the book she is trying to find love. Love to Janie is not only physical passion but an emotional connection, like the bumble bee and the pear tree, she sat under as a child. Zora Neale Hurston represents this through Janie's three marriages in this book.

In this act of coupling with Tea Cake following Jody’s passing, Janie defies the community's prospects as they gossip about what she does, what she wears, when she does it, or how she does it, and the fact that she’s spending a large quantity of distrustful time with a younger man who is also happens to be of lower class. In this companionship, Janie begins to draw away from compliance to others' ideas of what's appropriate or necessary for social life. As some may refer to Tea Cake as yet another obstacle for Janie to hurl over in her journey to independence, he also can be viewed as a catalyst, as the man who launched Janie towards her final steps in maturation and becoming self confident and self thinking. Although, Tea Cake did throw a metaphorical wrench into Janie’s progression, during the last moments of their relationship. The pent up tension between the expectations of Janie’s own set of standards and beliefs, ultimately shatters in her concluding interaction with Tea Cake, where Janie is forced to choose between dedication, loyalty, and the preserving of her own life.

After all of Janie’s toxic relationships with men who don’t deserve to be loved such as Logan and Joe she finally finds her voice with tea Cake. Dealing with her two past marriages she begins to learn skills with Tea Cake that ultimately save her life and showcase her inner strength in finding herself and inner

Tea Cake is Janie’s soulmate and the first person to truly understand her. Tea Cake cared for and loved Janie, teaching her things and showing her a love she had never experienced before. Their relationship was intimate and loving, which Janie lacked in her first two marriages. While Janie grows and finds herself throughout the story, Tea Cake effects her the most. After meeting Tea Cake, Janie experiences the most growth and finds herself truly happy, thanks to the love he shows her.