Their Eyes Were Watching God: Character Analysis

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equal. Janie suffers under Joe's iron rule and is forced to keep silent, refrain from associating with the locals, hide her beautiful hair, and work around the store.
Janie’s alienation in Eatonville and the Everglades to show the contrast between Janie’s weak actions as a protagonist and her authoritative voice after she returns to Eatonville. The men’s stories show how they view women as objects, meaning they see Janie as Jody’s possession, rather than a person with her own emotions. During her time in Eatonville, Janie also faces exclusion based on her high social class. Janie’s excluded status within the town causes her to lose authority over how the townspeople portray and interpret her life. When Janie and Tea Cake move to the Everglades, Tea Cake develops insecure feelings about how the rest of the town views Janie. Tea Cake worries that they will assume Janie believes that she has a higher social status than the rest of the community because of her mixed race. ...

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is a middle-class, mixed-race woman. Because of this exclusion, the townspeople only observe Janie’s silence and make harsh judgments about her; they have not developed a relationship with her, as the reader has. Janie’s character progresses greatly as she moves from Eatonville to the Everglades, but the beating incident with Tea Cake shows Janie’s separation because of her skin color. Because Janie does not have relationships with the townspeople, Tea Cake fears that the townspeople will misinterpret his and Janie’s relationship and assume that Janie is the one with authority. Tea Cake feels he must assert his dominance to show that Janie’s mixed race doesn’t give her the ...

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