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Kaitlyn VanWay

ENG 455

Dr. Rich

22 April 2020

Their Eyes Were Watching Hurston: Criticisms Then and Now

During the Harlem Renaissance, most famous authors thought that Black artists had a

duty to create “social protest fiction” that “exposed racism and changed racist attitudes in the

process” (Spencer 113). When Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God was

published in 1937 without explicit social commentary on racism in the United States, it was met

with criticism by her contemporaries. Eventually, Hurston fell into oblivion; her book went out

of print, she died, and she was buried in an unmarked grave (Cairney 121). Hurston reentered the

literary stratosphere in the 1970s when Alice Walker erected a headstone for her and began

writing about her work (Spencer 111). Once Walker ignited Hurston revolution, the majority of

criticism about the novel changed from claims that the book “‘deserves to be better’” (Cairney

121) to being “vitally alive today in the…hearts…of all who treasure thinking, feeling, and

imaginative literature” (121). Despite initial criticisms of “regression” and “primitivism”

(Spencer 116), Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God provides a complex

representation of gender and race, an interpretation that modern criticism of the novel echoes.

Many literary critics do not regard Hurston as a feminist writer. Her novel’s

“ambivalence to…gender issues” has sparked many debates between feminists (Cairney 123). A

frequently cited criticism of both 1930s and modern readers, Hurston was not blatant about

condemning social problems or promoting radical ideas. To some, the “‘notion that the novel is

an appropriate fictional representation of the concerns and attitudes of modern black feminism’”
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is “‘unsupportable’” (Ramsey 38). The novel is seemingly ambivalent on issues of gender; and

critics have pointed out that, unless a reader is intentional about seeking out feminist messages

within the novel, it is devoid of any definitive position. Feminist literary critic Jennifer Jordan

explains that readers “‘often view the text through ideological prisms’” which, in turn, “‘color

their conclusions’” (38). Any notion that Their Eyes Were Watching God is a feminist novel, she

argues, is biased by the reader’s own ideology. She goes on to say that because Janie never sees

herself as “‘independent’” or “‘intrinsically fulfilled,’” she “is not a hero figure” (123). This

criticism is a more modern one; and it is based on the notion that because Janie desires marriage

and does not want to be alone, she cannot be a feminist.

However, other critics take fault with this theory. Feminist literary critic Tejumola

Olaniyan notes that the novel was “‘visionary’” for the time it was written; and in 1937, a

“questing hero” like Janie probably was already not well-received by the “male-dominated

literary world” (123). Just because Janie values companionship and marriage does not mean that

she is not independent. In fact, Janie’s “oppositions of self to community” and “of female self to

male control” reflects Hurston’s own “drive toward autonomy” and “extraordinary

individualism” (Ramsey 38). Janie frequently dismisses criticism by the gossiping townspeople

and advises Pheoby to do the same. “‘An envious heart makes a treacherous ear,’” she warns

(Hurston 5). Janie is not concerned with how others perceive her because she knows that people

with hear what they want to, and Janie is not interested in that. Literary critic Geneva Cobb-

Moore argues that this “sets Janie…apart from the other women in the book”; “other female

characters mask their pain,” by gossiping, she says, but Janie pays them no mind (32). In this

way, Janie is fiercely different from the rest of the women in town who sit on their porches

talking about nothing significant.

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If anything, Janie’s growth as an individual through her three marriages shows her

independence. Her first marriage to Logan Killicks was not even decided by Janie but by her

Nanny. Critics note that “Nanny waits for generations to reach her destiny,” unable to reach it

within her own or her daughter’s lifetime (Washington). So, when Nanny sees Janie kissing a

boy, Nanny thinks her dream is being threatened. For the women in Janie’s life, men have been a

constant source of disappointment and ruined dreams. Both Nanny and Janie’s mother were

raped; they had been exposed to the realities of the world for Black women. To Nanny, Janie

represents “‘freedom,’” a chance to “‘expound what [Nanny] felt’” (Hurston 16). Nanny could

not speak out or break the cycle of dissatisfaction and violence for her daughter, but she is

determined that Janie will not have the same fate.

Consequently, Janie has had a relatively happy childhood, and she dreams of “marrying

and giving in marriage” (11). Janie believes that all marriages are built on a foundation of

mutual, symbiotic love. This dream is diminished slightly, however, when Nanny tells Janie that

“‘de white man is de ruler of everything’” and “‘de white man throw down de load and tell de

n----- man tuh pick it up.’” She continues, “‘He pick it up because he have to, but he don’t tote it.

He hand it to his womenfolks.’” This means, Nanny concludes, “‘De n----- woman is de mule uh

de world…’” (14). This commentary on the social order was relatively revolutionary for a Black

woman to write about in the 1930s, and Hurston’s willingness to write about sexism within a

marginalized group was bold, considering most of her contemporaries were male. Nanny

explains to Janie that Black women are at the very bottom of the societal hierarchy, and they

must do things they do not want to for protection—like marrying much older men that they do

not love. So, Janie marries Logan reluctantly and prepares for the love she so craves.
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But that love does not come in her first marriage. Though Janie “wants things sweet wid

[her] marriage lak when [she] sit[s] under a pear tree and think[s],” she finds that with Logan,

this will not be her reality (24). Janie comes to realize that, for Black women, marriage often is

borne out of necessity rather than desire. She comes to believe that “marriage [does] not make

love,” and, in turn, her “first dream [dies], so she [becomes] a woman” (25). Janie continues to

be unhappy in her marriage until she decides to leave when the opportunity presents itself. She

meets Joe Starks and runs away to get away, knowing that “even if Joe was not there waiting for

her, the change was bound to do her good” (32). By including this sentiment, Hurston shows

readers that Janie was not running away to a man but rather running away from a man.

But this new marriage is no better for Janie. Joe tries to silence her voice—exactly what

Nanny feared would happen. Joe “wanted her submission” and would “keep on fighting until he

felt like he had it” (71). He is the antithesis of Janie’s dreams, and she does not sit back and take

it. In one instance, Joe and other men in the town are laughing “at the expense of women,” and

Janie gets fed up and speaks out. Janie tells everyone that can hear that, though Joe thinks he is

manly, “when [he] pull[s] down [his] britches, [he] look[s] lak de change uh life” (78-9). Hurston

included a woman insulting her husband in public, something that was controversial. Realizing

that Joe “limit[ed] her development…[to] fulfill [his] own needs” (Washington), Janie “robbed

him of his illusion of irresistible maleness that all men cherish” (Hurston 79). She pays greatly

for this; Joe hits Janie—an action reminiscent of the violence other women in her family have

suffered.

Soon thereafter, Joe dies; and Janie realizes that she has “the rest of her life to do as she

pleased” (89). Janie is in no hurry to get married again; that is, until she meets Tea Cake, a man

that critics note “encourages her self-development” (Cobb-Moore 31). Tea Cake is not like the
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other two men Janie married. He is someone with whom she can “talk…right off” (Hurston 99).

Unlike with her other husbands, Tea Cake does not silence Janie. With Tea Cake, Janie finally

“finds romantic love” (Ramsey 42). Here, she finally gets the marriage she dreams of; one built

on “‘personal, unpossessive, mutually-affirming love’” (39). But this love is cut short when Janie

is forced to shoot Tea Cake in self-defense when he tries to attack her after he is infected with

rabies.

For this act, Janie faces a trial that made literary critic and teacher Gorman Beauchamp

assume the worst: a “black defendant before an all white [sic], all male jury in the 1930s South”

was reminiscent of historically racist trials—Plessy v. Ferguson, which helped create the Jim

Crow South; the Scottsboro Boys, where Black boys were falsely convicted of raping white

women who later admitted they made up the whole story—justice for Black defendants in the

Jim Crow South was rare (78). However, by acquitting Janie, Hurston chooses to make another

subtle social commentary: there is a hierarchy within the Black community due to colorism, a

form of discrimination within marginalized groups where those with lighter skin are considered

better.

Janie, as a result of her Nanny and mother being raped by white men, is biracial and thus

has lighter skin. Tea Cake, on the other hand, has dark skin. At her trial, when the Black men in

the back of the courtroom are chastised for raising their voices, the white women present stand

around Janie “like a protecting wall” (Hurston 188) to protect her from “the other blacks”

(Spencer 118). This can be attributed to Janie’s lighter skin. As critic Stephen Spencer notes,

“Janie’s light skin prompts the white women to protect her, while Tea Cake’s blackness justifies

the verdict” (118). The white women are more willing to empathize with Janie as she is whiter,

in their mind, than Tea Cake. Spencer argues that “in killing Tea Cake, Janie has protected the
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white women from their worst fear: rape by an animalistic black man” (118). The Black men in

the courtroom acknowledge Janie’s privilege after she is acquitted as well. “‘Aw you know dem

white mens wuzn’t gointuh do nothin’ tun no woman dat look lak her,’” one man remarked.

“‘Well,” another man responded, “long as she don’t shoot no white man she kin kill jus’ as many

n----- as she please’” (Hurston 189). The men expresses the sentiment that Janie is less

threatening in the eyes of the white jury not only because she is a woman but also because she

looks whiter than they do.

Though the novel was criticized in the 1930s for “ignoring the harmful effects of racism,”

Hurston makes it a point to highlight the privilege that lighter skinned Black people hold within

the community. In another instance, Janie talks to Mrs. Turner, a “milky sort of a woman” whose

physical features “set her aside from Negroes” in her mind. Hurston writes that Mrs. Turner

“didn’t forgive [Janie] for marrying a man as dark as Tea Cake.” Mrs. Turner is not subtle about

her own biases; she tells Janie, “‘Ah jus’ couldn’t see mahself married to no black man…. We

oughta lighten up de race’” (140). Mrs. Turner sees Janie and herself as superior to darker

skinned Black people. She expresses her frustration with those with darker skin: “‘Ah don’t

blame the white folks from hatin’ ‘em ‘cause Ah can’t stand ‘em mahself…. Ah hates tuh see

folks lak me and you mixed up wid ‘em. Us oughta class off’” (141). In Mrs. Turner’s mind, she

and Janie are superior to Black people with darker skin. She even blames darker skinned Black

people for the problems plaguing the Black community: “‘De black ones is holdin’ us back’”

(141). Perhaps more astounding than her own biases against those with darker skin is Mrs.

Turner’s belief that “anyone who looks more white than she is justified in mistreating her”

(Spencer 117). Through Mrs. Turner’s values, perhaps Hurston intended to show the deep-

seated biases afflicting the Black community.

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Their Eyes Were Watching God was heavily criticized by other authors in the Harlem

Renaissance for its lack of blatant “social protest” that had “gained widespread acceptance” and

“characterize[d] the literary history of the 1930s” (114). Writers like Alain Locke, Richard

Wright, and Ralph Ellison created much different works than Hurston. Wright, perhaps the

novel’s harshest critic, faulted Hurston for “ignoring the harmful effects of racism” (112). Many

writers wanted Hurston to write about social ills like segregation—the separation of the races.

However, Hurston’s views on race were different from her contemporaries.

At this time, Locke and others hoped that a “‘talented tenth’” would “speak for the…

inarticulate masses,” and James Weldon Johnson argued that “racial justice” would come

“through integration” (115). But Hurston disagreed vehemently. When the Supreme Court ruled

in Brown v. Board of Education that schools must integrate, Hurston criticized the decision.

“‘How much satisfaction can I get from a court order for somebody to associate with me who

does not wish me near them?” she wrote. “I regard the ruling…as insulting rather than honoring

my race’” (115). This sentiment is reflected in the novel. Rather than living among white people,

Janie moves to Eatonville, Florida, an all-Black town. In fact, white people rarely appear in the

novel.

While other artists were trying to “uplift the race by exposing blacks, and whites as well,

to great black art that would prove to be as good…as white art,” Hurston was not trying to define

Blackness in terms of whiteness (115). She believed that Black culture was worth representing.

But her attempts “to affirm African origins, folklore, and slave histories” were criticized with

“charges of regression” and “primitivism” (116). Establishing a Black identity was an essential

focus of the Harlem Renaissance, and Hurston’s attempts were not welcomed.
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Moreover, Locke posited that her characters are “‘entertaining pseudo-primitives’ that

white readers love to laugh with, but that ‘progressive southern fiction’ [has] transcended”

(Beauchamp 73). Many critics accused Hurston of minstrelsy, or the practice of writing Black

characters as caricatures to entertain white readers at the expense of the Black community. Her

use of dialect was particularly criticized for painting Black characters as unintelligent or

uneducated.

But modern critics take issue with this interpretation. Proponents of the minstrelsy theory,

Cobb-Moore argues, are “unfamiliar with West African history and culture” and are thus “not

equipped to understand” Hurston’s literary tactics. She goes on to cite a point in the novel when

a woman named Gold tells “the tale of how God ‘gave out color’” (28). Hurston, Cobb-Moore

argues, intentionally included West African mythology to provide a rich insight to Black culture.

Some read the novel as “the Africana woman’s efforts to recover and create language,” as seen

through West African principles of Àjé (spirituality and Earth) and Òrò (words and language)

(Washington). By including folklore, Hurston was paying homage to African origins and Black

culture; she was decidedly “‘not tragically colored’” and refused to belong to the “‘sobbing

school of Negrohood who hold[s] that Nature somehow has given them a…dirty deal’” (Cobb-

Moore 27). Hurston chose to focus on celebrating Black culture rather than criticizing social ills.

Though initial critics of Their Eyes Were Watching God were reluctant to give it any

praise, its predominant interpretation now is that it includes complex statements on gender and

race. One critic summed up the complexities of the novel: “…Janie defies simple categorization:

she is both dark and light, woman (in references to her hair and beauty) and man (her dirty

overalls, her handling of a gun), rich (she owns property and has money in the bank), and poor

(she has worked on the muck and lived in migrant shacks)” (Spencer 119). Throughout the
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novel, Hurston rejects binaries by writing Janie in “the third space” (122). Janie has an advantage

because of her lighter skin, placing her in a third category between black and white. Her desire

for companionship and her seeming dislike of being alone place her in between modern feminist

and helpless woman. Even the language Hurston uses for the narrator and the dialects of the

characters provides a third space, somewhere between formal writing and folklore. Through

Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston expresses the idea that the Black community is rich,

complex, and uncategorizable, revolutionizing the way Black culture was perceived by both

Black and white people.

Works Cited

Beauchamp, Gorman. “Three Notes on Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.” Texas

Review, vol. 35, no. 1/2, Spring/Summer2014 2014, pp. 73–87. EBSCOhost,

search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?

direct=true&AuthType=ip&db=a9h&AN=99780410&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Cairney, Paul. “Writings about Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God: 1987-

1993.” Bulletin of Bibliography, vol. 52, no. 2, June 1995, pp. 121–132. EBSCOhost,

search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?

direct=true&AuthType=ip&db=mzh&AN=1995050089&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Cobb-Moore, Geneva. “Zora Neale Hurston as Local Colorist.” Southern Literary Journal, vol.

26, no. 2, 1994, pp. 25–34. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?

direct=true&AuthType=ip&db=mzh&AN=1994020550&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. 1st ed., Perennial Classics, 2010.
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Ramsey, William M. “The Compelling Ambivalence of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were

Watching God’.” Southern Literary Journal, vol. 27, no. 1, 1994, pp. 36–50. EBSCOhost,

search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?

direct=true&AuthType=ip&db=mzh&AN=1994020560&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Spencer, Stephen. “Racial Politics and the Literary Reception of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their

Eyes Were Watching God.” Multiethnic Literature and Canon Debates, edited by Mary

Jo Bona et al., State University of New York Press, 2006, pp. 111–126. EBSCOhost,

search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?

direct=true&AuthType=ip&db=mzh&AN=2006401199&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Washington, Teresa N. “Power of the Word/Power of the Works: The Signifying Soul of

Africana Women’s Literature.” FEMSPEC: An Interdisciplinary Feminist Journal

Dedicated to Critical and Creative Work in the Realms of Science Fiction, Fantasy,

Magical Realism, Surrealism, Myth, Folklore, and Other Supernatural Genres, vol. 6, no.

1, 2005, pp. 58–70. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?

direct=true&AuthType=ip&db=mzh&AN=2006300621&site=ehost-live&scope=site.