Intersection Of Race And Gender In Their Eyes Were Watching God

Although Zora Neale Hurston emerged during the Harlem Renaissance as one of the most notable figures, she was by the time of her death in 1960 a neglected and marginalized literary outsider. Until the 1960s and 1970s, the confluence of black feminist thought and feminist literary criticism brought Hurston back to the center. Their Eyes Were Watching God which was published in 1937 is always considered as Hurston's masterpiece. The novel focuses on the protagonist—Janie's three marriages, which establishes the novel as a love story when it appeared. In the context of the Harlem Renaissance, Their Eyes Were Watching God appeared to be a romance inappropriate and irrelevant to political and social issues. As a result, Hurston was condemned by her contemporary black critics as a social climber who did not fulfill her social responsibilities as a black writer but exploited black culture to flatter her white patrons.The converging black feminist and the emergence of black feminist critics help foster new interest in and scholarship on Hurston. Increasing recognition of Hurston's contributions to American and African American literature has lent her work—most obviously Their Eyes Were Watching God—canonical status. It is no longer a romantic story but a story canonized by feminists as the one which celebrates a woman coming to self-discovery and finding her own voice in a male-dominated community. In racists'view, the novel explores the color prejudice, especially the hurt of racial discrimination imposed on the black women. Although most critics acknowledge that race and gender have been examined in the novel, they often treat the two aspects in isolation from one another.Following the thought of black feminism,the present study is intended to prove that both race and gender are engaged in the subject and stylistic choices of Their Eyes Were Watching God. Within the context of a love story, Hurston embedded the constructions of race and gender. She repeatedly addressed intra-racial aspects of black women's oppression and criticized traditional notions of masculinity. It is main and foremost a story of Janie's search for spiritual enlightenment and a strong sense of her own identity in the double jeopardizes of race and gender..Facing the difficult position of black female writers during the Harlem Renaissance, Hurston has to disguise her subversive treatment of gender and racial issues. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston cloaks this more daring exposure of female resistance in lush unique structure, naturalistic imagery and rich narrative techniques to create a novel in which racial and sexual conflict was so carefully masked that it was read by most of her contemporaries as one merely celebrating the spontaneous primitivism of black life. A closer reading of the novel reveals the complexity of issues related to race and gender.