The Eyes Were Watching God

1525 Words7 Pages
Unfair Representation During the formation of my essay on Zora Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, I will examine the foundation on which the novel explores the representation of sex of an individual. Some questions kept in thought during the progression of the novel were why Hurston portrayed the representation of women in such an under mining way. Though she herself could not be taken as a sexist person rather a writer connecting her characters to a time when women weren’t considered as self-dependent or dominant. The representation of gender in a part of the novel comes back to the idea that men are the superior breed and women should just follow their dominance and not voice their opinions. The representation of gender in the novel represents how the cultural antics were back in those days, it was custom for a woman to marry, bear children and take care of the house, while the man was out providing for his family “bringing home the bacon”. The history of slavery however shows how far Joe had come for him to be able to buy the land and become mayor of a town as a black man. The novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God” is a guide through a woman’s perspective of right and wrong and how much women had to endure and deal with to survive the gruesome time. The representation of gender, male being the dominant figure, in the novel is clearly demonstrated from the beginning of the novel when Janie Starks’ grandmother, Nanny, sells Janie to Logan Killicks. Her actions are meant to be beneficial for Janie it is not because there is no chemistry between the too. Grandma Nanny’s actions demonstrate how the younger woman in the environment was not able to make her own decisions but is to follow the lead of her superior at the time, Nanny. She is traded off to this middle aged man because he is considered, by Nanny’s standards, well-off. He could provide a

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