A Lacanian Analysis Of Their Eyes Were Watching God

Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) was a black female writer, anthropologist and folkloristand she became famous during the Harlem Renaissance. Her second novel Their Eyes WereWatching God was composed under internal pressure and was finished in Haiti in about sevenweeks. When published in1937, this novel didn’t draw as much attention from the public as ithas done nowadays. It was not until1970that Hurston became the focus and her works werereevaluated. Generally regarded as Zora Neale Hurston’s masterpiece, it embodies theawakening of black women from the practice of Janie’s strugglings for voice and therefore istaken for the cornerstone in black feminist literature. In the novel, Hurston portrays theprotagonist Janie Crawford as an internally feminist heroine who seeks liberation from maleoppression and racial hierarchy and who finally realizes self-fulfillment. There are abundantresearches and profound studies about Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, most ofwhich are from the perspective of feminism, post-colonialism, cross-culture, folklore andnarrative strategies. But so far there has been no exploration of it from Three Orders of thedistinguished psychoanalyst and psychiatrist Jacque Lacan.Based on Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory, this thesis aims at analyzing Their Eyes WereWatching God from the Three Orders and finally reveals the formation of the wholeness of theSubject. Besides Introduction and Conclusion, this thesis consists of four chapters.Introduction gives a brief account of Zora Neale Hurston’s life experience and thecomments of the critics to Their Eyes Were Watching God; the significance of a Lacanianpsychoanalysis of the novel. Chapter One is the theory of Lacan’s Three Orders.Chapter Two is an analysis of Janie’s formation of the self in the mirror stage. Accordingto Lacan, the average infant experiences what he calls “the mirror stage” until about the sixthmonth to the eighteenth month. The Subject takes shape when it looks at itself in the mirror.Janie is a girl without mother or father. She is brought up by her grandma in a white yard. Thewhite child is her mirror in which she sees her ideal-ego, so she identifies with it andconsiders herself as a white girl. The identification is actually a mis-recognition. In the photo taken when she was six, she recognizes her being a black through the guidance of peoplearound. But this ideal-self is ridiculed by people in her community. The blossoming pear treeis her second mirror image, which leads to her awakening of a female and the formation of anideal relationship between female and male.Chapter Three mainly focuses on the discussion of Janie in the Symbolic. Lacan holdsthat the Symbolic is a realm of law which is operated in the name of the father. When Janie’sideal ego is denied, she realizes her grandma’s desire for the female in her community. Janieenters a marriage under the influence of slavery. Her husband Logan wields his power onJanie, which results in her castration. Then she chooses another marriage which resembles awhite one. Again her husband Joe castrates her through his male power. She rebels againstsuch kind of oppression marriages imposing on her, which causes her being caught in theSymbolic.Chapter Four illustrates Janie in the Real in detail. When something can’t be symbolizedin the Symbolic order, it may return to the Real. The blossoming pear tree is the scene Janiedesires to reach. So driven by the original desire to enjoy the jouissance, she wishes to enterthe real to intoxicate herself in the joy of her marriage with Tea Cake. On the other hand, theReal can’t be approached nor reached, so Tea Cake’s death is inevitable.Based on the analysis and discussion above, Conclusion points out that Janie’s personaldevelopment in the Three Orders are her desire for an ideal-ego in the patriarchal society. Itexpresses Hurston’s genuine wish for the female repressed by the male-authority. Herdescription of the perfect relation between Janie and Tea Cake is set in an unrealisticeconomic background. Maybe it just reflects Hurston’s attitude: She doesn’t think that menand women will be completely equal. In a society manipulated by the male, women won’tdevelop to the fullest through marriage. Hurston’s work is multidimensional, capable ofseveral levels of meanings, the psychoanalytic reading of it is with certain practical meaningto the society, like how to achieve the freedom of each race.