“Ah done lived Grandma’s way, now Ah means tuh live mine…She 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 up on the high stool lak she told me, but Pheoby, Ah done nearly languished tuh death up there.” (114)

The quote above is from Ch. 12, when Janie is talking to Pheoby about her relationship with Tea Cake and telling her what she plans to do next in her life. The quote is significant because it clearly shows Janie’s finally deciding to part with what Nanny had wanted for her. After being forced marry Logan when Nanny was still alive, Janie has striven to get herself closer to her ideal way of life with each subsequent marriage: she left Logan for Joey because she fell in love with Joey for his big dreams and ambitions; she realized later that Joey was just as (or even more) domineering and controlling a man as Logan had been, and her dream of having a romantic relationship deteriorated as years passed by; seeking a truly romantic relationship where she had the freedom to be the person she wanted to be and do the things she wished to do, she decided to go off with Tea Cake. The quote is also significant because it shows a fundamental difference between Janie and Nanny and what they want in their lives: having survived through the terrible conditions of slavery, having enough wealth to be able to sit in a high chair doing nothing was more than Nanny could want in her life. However, having been born after slavery ended, Janie didn’t have the same value Nanny had: knowing that being free (of forcible labor by whites) was a guaranteed right, she wanted so much more in life than Nanny did. She didn’t want others to have any control over her and her life in any way whatsoever, and thus resented at being told what to do by her husbands.

As tension grows between Joe and Janie (and also between Joe and the townspeople) in Ch. 6, Janie feels more and more distant from Joe and become increasingly unhappy of her second marriage. The quote below marks a definitive moment in the marriage:

“Dat’s ’cause you need tellin’,” [Joe] rejoined hotly. “It would be pitiful if Ah didn’t. Sombody got to think for women and chillun and chickens and cows. I god, they sho don’t think none theirselves…They just think they’s thinkin’. When Ah see one thing Ah understands ten. You see ten things and don’t understand one.” (71)

Again in this chapter, we see that the main issue of the story isn’t race (as we may have assumed at the beginning of the story), but it is gender and one’s perspective on what a woman or a man should do and be. What Janie wants in her life is so different from what society (imposed by Joe) expects of her, and this is the main reason for the tension between the two (as well as between Janie and Logan in her first marriage). I found it very interesting how in Eatonville, it is mostly the men who sit around, gossip, and don’t do anything of value. This made a great contrast to how the old women were gossiping about Janie in the very first chapter. This goes on to show that neither gender can be defined by absolute stereotypical characteristics, just as Janie’s personality isn’t entirely feminine.

In Ch. 4, Janie meets Joe Starks, a very ambitious black man with huge, exciting dreams. In the passage describing him and explaining his motives, Hurston writes:

He had always wanted to be a big voice, but de white forlks had all de sayso where he come from and everwhere else, exceptin’ dis place dat colored folks was buildin’ theirselves. Dat was right too. De man dat built things oughta boss it. (28)

This quote reminded me of a comment Ishmael made in Moby-Dick when he was talking about the ethnic backgrounds of his shipmates and of people in the whaling industry in general:

As for the residue of the Pequod’s company, be it said, that at the present day not one in two of the many thousand men before the mast employed in the American whale fishery, are American born, though pretty nearly all the officers are. Herein it is the same with the American whale fishery as with the American army and military and merchant navies, and the engineering forces employed in the construction of the American Canals and Railroads. The same, I say, because in all these cases the native American liberally provides the brains, the rest of the world as generously supplying the muscles. (107)

In our class discussion on Friday, we discussed whether or not Hurston’s use of the southern black dialect in the character’s manner of speech can be considered offensive and insulting. Having read the first two chapters of the book, I don’t find her use of the dialect contemptuous in any way. Rather, I feel that it is an important element to the story: the story takes place in rural Florida and the characters who have been introduced to us so far are all African-Americans, and therefore dialect adds a sense of reality to the story, making the characters more easy to grasp and envision. Had Hurston not used the dialect in the characters’ speech (but instead written them as she did the narration), the story would have been very awkward, and the characters would have appeared fake. For example, Nanny’s story of her youth (”Ah was born back due in slavery so it wasn’t for me to fulfill my dreams of whut a woman oughta be and to do…”) would have made no sense at all if it were told in normal speech.