Janie Crawford's Their Eyes Were Watching God

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Their Eyes Were Watching God, is a both a novel that covers themes of marriage, and carries a mouthful of a name. Following Janie Crawford as she tells the story of her life to her friend, we see her childhood and the three lovers she had. Varied in the types of relationships it shows, it offers a good display of the different romance styles displayed in marriages. One of those novels where it can be a mere story to some, and a eye opener to others. Let us begin our delve into this story without further ado.

The story itself, ignoring the themes which will be covered later is a bit interesting to me in the structure. From the start, since we know Janie is a old woman telling the story there isn’t really stakes to the plot. It genuinely does feel like you’re being told a story from a real person. This novel, relies a lot on the lessons and themes of marriage that the plot by itself isn’t gripping. You know since there …show more content…
Now, despite the title featuring god this is not a particularly religious story. There is a title drop mid way through, but only at that one point is a higher being really mentioned in focus. Rather, we look at different marriage structures. The first partner Logan Killicks looks into arranged marriage. As depicted in the novel, while they rely on each other for work love isn’t really there. This leaves Janie unsatisfied due to her image of unconditional love. This leads to her running off with our second partner Jody Starks. This is very much showing the trophy wife situation, while she technically runs a store she very much only exists to legitimize Jody Starks as a “successful” man. This too, is shown to leave her even more unsatisfied. We soon reach our third and final partner Tea Cake. This looks more towards the idealized marriage most people want, while they have their scrapes it is founded and holds to a core of genuine affection for the other
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