Their Eyes Were Watching God - Predictions and Questions

Their Eyes Were Watching God begins with Janie sauntering into town and the gossip that lingers after her steps. Yet the story is Janie’s and before she begins the narrator comments that she is “full of that oldest human longing – self revelation.”

Chapter 2 begins when Janie retells the story of how and when she first discovered she was black.

In chapter 3, Nanny tells Janie that she is a woman because her “womanhood” is “on her” and now that she is a woman she must get married.

The rest of the chapter focuses largely on Nanny as she rocks Janie and explains to her the need for marriage. Nanny describes a hierarchical system with white men at the top, black men, and black woman at the bottom. She compares black woman to mules. Unlike Black Boy, Nanny’s suggests that within the racial system there exists a subordinate group based upon sex. Her argument continues when she explains to Janie that she is all Janie has and she will soon die and that Janie can’t “stand alone by [her] self.” Nanny tells Janie the story of how she was raped by her master and how Janie’s mother was raped by her school teacher. When Janie confesses to Nanny that she is unhappy in her marriage Nanny finds it ridiculous that she would be unhappy if her husband is not beating her.

Chapter 3 ends with the following “Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman.”


The story of Janie discovering that she was black and the story of her grandmother and mother suggest to me that Janie’s story of “self revelation” will be about her understanding her race and her sex and just as Janie sees her life “like a great tree” the metaphor of nature seems to push the story of her life along.


At the end of chapter 3 the narrator comments that Janie becomes a woman as the result of one of her dreams dying. Yet, the beginning of the book reads “his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.”

Questions:
1. What do you think of the above? I have no idea!
2. Both in Black Boy and in Their Eyes Were Watching God we have read accounts of a black person discovering they were black. I have never heard of or read any account of a white person discovering they were white. Have you? Probably be not. Why do you think that is? What does this suggest about our perception of race even today?
2. Before we continue to read Eyes, how do you think sex and race are connected?