Their Eyes Were Watching God (vol. I)

In Hurston’s novel, the main character Janie weds three different men at three points in her life. These marriages offer different dynamics and expose Janie to new perspectives through which she ultimately discovers the meaning of love. Janie’s earliest thoughts on marriage were that “husbands and wives always loved each other, and that was what marriage meant” (21). Her first marriage is arranged by her grandmother to a well-off man named Logan Killicks. While financially secure, Janie and Logan were not in love with one another. Their marriage was something which would better be described as co-inhabitance. In search of love, Janie runs off with the ambitious Joe Starks. While Logan treated Janie as less than equal, Joe promises to place Janie on a pedestal. But even though the marriage begins well, Janie soon realizes she has traded on extreme for another. She becomes untouchable to the outside world, a jewel reserved only for Joe to cherish. The type of love Janie experiences in her first to relationships is an unconfident love which seeks to control her lest she run off with someone else. However in her third marriage to Tea Cake, Janie finds the love she had been searching for. Tea Cake treats Janie as an equal and returns Janie’s love equally. Perhaps this is Hurston’s greatest teaching of love: Love does not bind, it does not envy, love seeks the lowest places and raises them to equal footing.