Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Historical fiction
Have you ever revisited a book years after your first encounter with it only to realize the story is much more powerful than you remember? That, without the book, you may have been wandering along a path without realizing how aimless that wandering was?
I was a late-80s baby, an elder millennial born to a tomboy of a woman who taught me how to despise housework and throw myself into hard labor, preferably in nature, for personal satisfaction and development. When I was growing up, women no longer needed their fathers or husbands to approve of or co-sign their bank accounts. I already had the rights to vote and work and purchase property and choose whether to have a family of my own.
In fact, for the longest time, I was privileged enough not to need feminism. I felt equal, I thought I knew my worth, and I didn’t share in the socio-cultural grumblings of the women who led the feminist revolutions decades before my time.
That is, until my daughter was born.
Laboring for childbirth will show you your very soul and, at 10 in the morning the day my daughter was born, I got to see mine, a fiery thing, bright white and yellow and orange, like the middle of a bonfire.
That day, I felt the most powerful I had ever felt — and the most feminine.
The ring of fire in childbirth set my soul ablaze, and it hasn’t stopped burning since. Re-reading Their Eyes Were Watching God added another ever-burning log to my soul-fire, and this is one story I can’t wait to share with my daughter.
Historically, there were many folks who disliked Their Eyes, vehemently in some cases, as Janie’s story is so far outside cultural norms that, at the time, readers found suspending their disbelief difficult or even impossible. They were unable or unwilling to see what could be apart from the way things are. And this persisted such that the book fell out of print for a while and Zora herself never got to see how powerful her story truly was and still is.
Here are a few quotes from the book that spoke to my fiery soul, along with some reactions and thoughts. I hope they ignite a spark in yours:
“Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman.”
The idea that to become a woman one must allow their dreams to die is a powerful and pervasive historical truth. Women have traditionally been the “lesser” sex. We were expected to bear and raise children, give ourselves over to our husbands. Most of the women I know have an intrinsic “female guilt” that arises anytime we dare do something solely for ourselves, as if we’ve stolen from our children or partners. But we must push back against this narrative, because when we tap into self-care and live with purpose, live for our dreams, we can better provide everything our families need from us without depleting ourselves into dust.
***
“[L]ooking at it [Janie] saw that it never was the flesh and blood figure of her dreams. Just something she had grabbed up to drape her dreams over. In a way she turned her back upon the image where it lay and looked further. She had no more blossomy openings dusting pollen over her man, neither any glistening young fruit where the petals used to be. She found that she had a host of thoughts she had never expressed to him, and numerous emotions she had never let Jody know about. Things packed up and put away in parts of her heart where he could never find them. She was saving up feelings for some man she had never seen. She had an inside and an outside now and suddenly she knew how not to mix them.”
I was married once, and it didn’t go well. When I encountered this piece in Their Eyes about holding oneself back from one’s partner, I knew what Janie felt, deeply. My ex-husband, like Janie’s, didn’t know all the parts of me. He knew only the parts he wanted to know and discounted or declined to acknowledge the rest.
I, too, saved up a well of emotion for my partner today, and I did it before knowing he would be mine. It’s a rare gift to find the person who wants to know the whole, unfiltered, imperfect you. And before you find that person, you learn to tuck away the parts that aren’t suitable for others, which leads back to that pernicious female guilt.
***
“Uh woman by herself is uh pitiful thing,” [Janie] was told over and again. “Dey needs aid and assistance. God never meant ‘em tuh try tuh stand by theirselves. You ain’t been used tuh knockin’ round and doin’ fuh yo’self, Mis’ Starks. You been well taken keer of, you needs uh man.”
My partner and I effectively turned the 1950s gender roles on their heads in spring of 2020 when he became a stay-home dad and homeschool educator, and I became the sole breadwinner for my family. I only wish I could leap into fiction, make a pitcher of sun tea, and tell Janie what will be possible for women because of stories like hers.
***
“[My grandmother] was borned in slavery time when folks, dat is black folks, didn’t sit down anytime dey felt lak it. So sittin’ on porches lak de white madam looked lak uh mighty fine thing tuh her. Dat’s whut she wanted for me—don’t keer whut it cost. Git up on uh high chair and sit dere. She didn’t have time tuh think whut tuh do after you got up on de stool uh do nothin’. De object wuz tuh git dere. So Ah got uo on de high stool lak she told me, but Pheoby, Ah done nearly languished tuh death up dere.”
This quote stilled my breath momentarily, as I worked to collect and organize my thoughts. Most parents set the initial trajectories for their children’s lives. I know mine did. My dad was a laborer; my mom worked in an office building. I wasn’t fit to be on my knees ruining my body, so when it was time for me to find a job, I was pushed toward clerical and office work.
I didn’t know starting a business was something I could easily do. I didn’t learn that lesson until I’d been working for more than 15 years . . . and languishing because of that soul-crushing work. I reached that coveted white-collar position and was making almost six figures when I left my corporate role to go be poor while I built a business from scratch to feed my dreams before I ended up with cardiac issues from all the stress. (Thank you, acupuncture, for saving me.)
***
“They had to give it to her, [Janie] sho looked good, but she had no business to do it. It was hard to love a woman that always made you feel so wishful.”
I’m going to let this one stand on its own.
***
“Ah know all dem sitters-and-talkers gointuh worry they guts into fiddle strings till dey find out whut we been talkin’ ‘bout. Dat’s all right, Pheoby, tell ‘em. Dey gointuh make ‘miration ‘cause mah love didn’t work lak they love, if dey ever had any. Then you must tell ‘em dat love ain’t somethin’ lak uh grindstone dat’s de same thing everywhere and do de same thing tuh everything it touch. Love is lak de sea. It’s uh movin’ thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore.”
Before I married the wrong person, I had read an article about lopsided love. The article, which I’ll never find — it’s been a decade, y’all — posited that, in a relationship, one person always loves the other more, that there is no such thing as equal reciprocation of love.
My ex told me often that he loved me more than anyone else could and far more than I loved him, and after reading that article, I thought our relationship was normal. It took a lot of unlearning to realize that 1) I was being gaslit into staying in an unhealthy and unfulfilling relationship; and 2) that’s fucking false. Reciprocity in love is possible . . . in healthy relationships.
Through Janie, Zora expressed a deep reverence for femininity and the quest for something more, the quest for wholeness and purpose and love and respect at a time when women had to fight particularly hard to earn those things for themselves.
Their Eyes isn’t just about the post-slavery world in which Janie grew up, one where black folks start taking control over their lives rather than taking orders.
Their Eyes is also about the ways cultural expectations, for something as immutable and happenstance as biological sex, can become insidious soul-crushers that suck the life and vitality and dreams away from the very women they purport to help.
If ever you need permission to go and be your whole self, authentically and with integrity and self-love, read this book.
When it comes to voice-driven works, Zora is cruising fast into my beloved authors list, and I can’t wait to immerse myself in more of her stories.
If you’ve read this novel and saved similar quotes, I’d love to hear your takes. Similarly, I’d love for you to share other quotes from the book I didn’t offer here with your musings.
♥ Fal