Create Your Own Writing Prompt #1

THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD


Some novels use female hystericsto show how society has become prone to believing a stereotype about the common day woman. Use Their Eyes Were Watching God and show how the author does this in this novel make sure to relate this thought to the meaning of the work as a whole.


In Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston uses the bad characteristics of her main character, Janie, to show how the common lifestyles are corrupt. Janie is depicted as an attractive, confident, middle-aged woman that returns to her home town of Eatonville with a mysterious background that has the whole town talking. As Janie unfolds her life to her friend Pheoby the reasons why women throughout history have been looked down upon by men as the softer gender becomes clear to the reader.

Janie being raised by her grandmother, who's mind was corroded by slavery and her own daughter, was forced in to the first marriage of her's that shows how women in society have been made to look bad. Her marriage was bad and she should not have married that man in the first place however running away with another man made her look even worse. After Janie and Jody leave for Eatonville and Jody becomes a "big voice" in the city Janie really starts to discover again that this is not the life that she really wants either. It seemed in the novel that Janie's life was ok while she was with Jody the only thing missing was really the love. This shows how women have become what they are seen as; by Janie running from a marriage that she knew there was no love to another marriage where there was no love shows the stupidity of some women and how many of them doing this around the same time creates an epidemic for women. Janie's marriage to Tea Cake is also something worth highlighting. It was an event that seemed rushed and also if Janie had not have shot him she could have found herself wrapped up in yet another loveless marriage where her stupidity would have had to taken control of her situation.

Janie is one of those stereotypical women that are seen as hysterical. Women like this seem to blow most situations way out of control and are very dramatic. Hurston's depiction of Janie was to show how women were ruining the way that they were seen in the public eye. Janie would do many things that were seen as societal no no's that would go on to hurt the following generations of women. Because of women like Janie most women are seen as dramatic creatures that blow things way out of proportion. This novel is explaining how women are viewed. The community in Eatonville that was discussing Janie's return represents how society now-a-days views women as a whole.

Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God had the dramatic Janie Crawford as the main Character, that show how women as their own society, have made themselves look foolish. The women of society over the years have made it so that the less foolish women of today have already started their lives off with crappy reputations.