Out Of Gender Shackles Into Great Harmony

Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) is a great novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist in American literary world, acknowledged as the foremother of Black Female Literature. In her masterpiece Their Eyes Were Watching God Hurston depicts a totally different black female protagonist, Janie. She is tormented not only by the whites but by the black men in the white and male dominated society. But in order to achieve her self-identity, she pays a lot and eventually liberates herself. The novel fully represents the black women with female consciousness. It is a milestone in molding female image in an age of protest literature.Marriage, as stepping stones of her individual quest, plays an important role on Janie's way to realize self-identity. As she goes from one marriage to another, Janie rebels continually against oppressions, pursues self-identity, and finally gains the equal status with men. After three marriages, Janie has grown into a mature woman with female consciousness from a diffident and naive little girl by fighting against various oppressions.In this thesis, the author applies Alice Walker's womanism approach to analyze Their Eyes Were Watching God. By analyzing Janie's life experiences to show the misery of the black women, the author tries to make readers realize her way of awakening, her black identity and how she gets survived in a white-male dominated society to influence the lives of other black women. The purpose is to make more Chinese people get familiar with Hurston and her works and provide a new angle to understand other black writings. What's more, the universalist spirit of Womanism echoes Hurston's attitudes towards gender, race and self in the novel. And the womanist spirituality of humanism and fraternity also brings out a new perspective for the study on domestic violence, women liberation, and harmonious relationship between men and women in today's society.