Their Eyes Were Watching God

Their Eyes Were Watching God, novel by Zora Neale Hurston, published in 1937. It is considered her finest book.

In lyrical prose influenced by folk tales that the author heard while assembling her anthology of African American folklore Mules and Men (1935), 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 dialect. Whereas her first two husbands are domineering, Janie’s third husband, Tea Cake, is easygoing and reluctantly willing 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.