On Janie’s Construction Of Black Womanhood In Their Eyes Were Watching God

Zora Neale Hurston is one of the leading characters in Harlem Renaissance. Her identity as a black woman writer and her distinctive writing style were incompatible with the American society at that time. Consequently, she did not receive due attention when she was alive, and her works sank into oblivion after her death. It was not until the1970s that Hurston was rediscovered as the foremother of black women’s literature and later acknowledged as a prominent figure in the canon of American literature. This thesis aims to explore the construction of Janie’s black womanhood in Hurston’s masterpiece Their Eyes Were Watching God from the perspective of black feminism.The Introduction includes a literature review of the studies of Hurston and her masterpiece Their Eyes as well as a brief introduction to black feminist theories. It also comes up with the significance of the study.Chapter One explores the budding of Janie’s self-consciousness including her ethnic and sexual identity. Growing up in the backyard of the white folks, Janie has no idea of her ethnic identity until the moment she finds herself different from others in a photo. Janie’s initial sexual awakening occurs when she witnesses the scene of a bee pollinating a flower. The union of bee and blossom becomes the symbol of an ideal marriage for Janie and also the motivating power of her future journey.Chapter Two discusses the oppression Janie suffers from and her identity crises in her three marriages. In the first two marriages, Janie’s identity crises are mainly caused by the false conceptions of womanhood imposed on her. She is either treated as a working mule or a doll baby in the house by her husbands. In the third marriage, Tea Cake’s fair treatment partly promotes the development of Janie’s self-consciousness. However, Janie gradually loses her self as a result of excessive love for Tea Cake, and ignores his domination in the name of love, thus becoming a subordinate to her husband without realizing it.Chapter Three analyzes Janie’s strenuous efforts to pursue true love and selfhood in her three marriages. She bravely challenges the residue of slavery and assimilation of white male chauvinism as embodied in her first two husbands, never giving up faith in love despite all the frustrations. When realizing her true love is now threatening to destroy her, she bravely takes up a gun for self-defense, thus becoming an independent woman who can take responsibility for herself. The death of Tea Cake also enables her to step out of her reliance on man and initiate a life on her own.Chapter Four investigates Janie’s eventual fulfillment through analyzing her self-revelation after returning to Eatonville and her philosophical vision of life and dreams at different stages of life. Janie’s inner maturity also manifests itself in her conscious efforts to build a bond of sisterhood with Pheoby and success in spreading her black feminist ideas through story-telling.Based on the above analysis, this thesis comes to the conclusion that Their Eyes is a novel ahead of time. In an era when social protest novels prevailed and little attention was paid to black women, Hurston showed her advanced black feminist tendency by probing into the consciousness of black people and presenting a black woman’s continuous journey towards independence and self-fulfillment. In Their Eyes, Hurston not only represents reality in a poetic way but also provides a role model of true black womanhood for black women suffering from intersecting oppressions through portraying Janie’s experiences. After all, black women’s liberation lies not in men or marriages, but in themselves.