Their Eyes Were Watching God
Their Eyes Were Watching God, novel by American folklorist and writer Zora Neale Hurston, published in 1937. Initially controversial for its unconventional portrayal of Black Southern life and rejection of racial protest fiction, it later became a classic of African American literature. It is considered Hurston’s finest book. Told through a frame narrative (story within a story) in colloquial prose, the novel explores themes such as identity, autonomy, and the complexities of race and gender.
Summary
In lyrical prose influenced by folk tales that the author heard while assembling her anthology of African American folklore Mules and Men (1935), the protagonist, Janie Crawford, tells of her three marriages, her growing self-reliance, and her identity as a Black woman. Much of the dialogue conveys psychological insight through plain speech written in African American dialect. Janie’s first two husbands are domineering, but her third husband, Tea Cake, is easygoing but reluctant to accept Janie as an equal. Hurston manages to characterize these three very different men without resorting to caricature in the first two instances or idealization in the third. Janie is one of few fictional heroines of the period who is not punished for her sensual nature.
Their Eyes Were Watching God was adapted into a 2005 television film starring actress Halle Berry as Janie Crawford.
Themes
Identity and self-realization
Janie’s journey is shaped by her struggle for independence in a world that tries to dominate her. For instance, her second husband, Joe (“Jody”) Starks, demands that she hide her hair in public and limits her interactions with other men, believing that her beauty should not attract attention. In the moments leading up to his death, there is a tense exchange where she finally confronts him about how he has treated her. She asserts herself by stating:
You ain’t de Jody Ah run off down de road wid. You’se whut’s left after he died.
This marks Janie’s liberation from societal expectations. She had first left home in western Florida to marry Jody and lives in Eatonville, Florida, under his control. With Tea Cake, she leaves for the Everglades, experiencing love and loss. Returning to Eatonville alone, she finally defines herself on her own terms. Hurston demonstrates the theme of emancipation through Janie’s evolving self-awareness, reflected in her experiences and emotional growth.
Did You Know?
Eatonville, Florida, founded in 1887, is the oldest incorporated Black town in the United States. Hurston grew up in the town.
Love, power, and gender dynamics
The novel delves into the power struggles that often exist in love and marriage. Rather than painting Janie’s relationships as purely good or bad, Hurston presents them as complicated. She shows, especially through Janie’s relationship with Tea Cake, that love can be both freeing and controlling. Tea Cake treats Janie with more warmth and playfulness than her previous husbands and encourages Janie to live more freely, yet his possessiveness reflects deeply ingrained patriarchal gender norms. His decision to beat her in a fit of jealousy reveals that he still sees love as ownership.
Janie eventually kills Tea Cake in self-defense after he contracts rabies, suggesting that Hurston rejects the idea that love should require a woman to sacrifice her independence.
Voice and storytelling
Hurston uses narrative technique and voice as tools to distinguish between the narrator’s literary prose and the distinct speech of her characters. The novel’s frame structure, in which Janie recounts her life story to her friend Pheoby, helps show her transition from enforced silence, in which she struggled to voice her emotions, to self-expression. The frame structure also allows readers to see Janie’s growth through her own hindsight; for instance, while she once accepted Nanny’s belief that security matters more than love, she later recognizes it as limiting.
Speech is also a source of power in the novel. Janie’s sharp verbal rebuke of Joe that exposes his insecurities before his death demonstrates her ability to wield language as a weapon against oppression. Moreover, Hurston upholds the oral tradition of Black storytelling by writing Janie’s dialogue in folk speech with liberal use of metaphor. Hurston presents storytelling as a communal act. By entrusting her story to Pheoby (“Mah tongue is in mah friend’s mouf”), Janie emphasizes the enduring power of shared narratives.
Janie’s narration, however, is filtered through an omniscient third-person narrator who provides insight into her thoughts and emotions, raising questions about whether she fully controls her own story.
Reception
The novel initially received mixed reviews, particularly from critics associated with the Harlem Renaissance, who often expected literature to explicitly engage with racial struggles. African American author Richard Wright dismissed Hurston’s work as lacking in serious political engagement, accusing her prose of “facile sensuality” and suggesting that the novel catered to the amusement of white audiences. Similarly, writer and educator Alain Locke critiqued Hurston for failing to address pressing social issues. These dismissals contributed to the novel’s disappearance from mainstream literary discourse, leading to it being out of print for nearly three decades.
In the 1970s scholars and writers such as Alice Walker helped revive interest in Hurston’s work. Walker’s essay “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston” (1975) brought new attention to Hurston’s literary legacy. Her efforts, including locating Hurston’s unmarked grave in Fort Pierce, Florida, and adding a headstone with the inscription “A Genius of the South,” symbolized a broader reclamation of Black women’s voices in literature. The novel’s trajectory—from obscurity to revival—mirrors the larger struggle for the recognition of Black contributions to American culture, reinforcing the necessity of historical recovery and literary preservation.