Their Eyes Were Watching God combines poetic narration and vernacular dialogue to tell the life story of Janie Crawford, an African-American woman in 1930s Florida. It took me some time to get used to the dialect-heavy speech but once I familiarized myself with the patterns it got easier and quicker to read.

Janie is definitely a strong woman with a mind of her own, but she spends a lot of time being passive and silent. Rather than Janie herself, the story often focuses more on the men in her life and the people around them, portraying black folk life of the era. This probably reflects the author's other work as an anthropologist who studied black oral traditions. There are also conflicting depictions of violence against women. When Janie's second husband Jody — a domineering older man — hits her, it represents a point of no return in their deteriorating marriage. But when her third husband Tea Cake — a younger man who is her true love — hits her, it's described as "No brutal beating at all. He just slapped her around a bit to show he was boss." Despite these issues I felt for Janie and was moved by the heartbreaking ending.

My copy of this book, which I discovered amid a pile of secondhand imported books at a mall a few years ago, is complemented by a foreword, an afterword and a chronology of Hurston's life and work. The novel is made more remarkable by how it gained renewed attention decades after Hurston's fall into obscurity and subsequent death, ushering a revived interest in her books.

 

“She had an inside and an outside now
and suddenly she knew how not to mix them.”

― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

There's a reason this is on virtually every "classic" list you can find. I could fill a hundred pages with nothing but gloriously human quotes and still not convey the beauty or truth found between the covers of this book.

I've set a goal to both read more "classics" and reread the classics I encountered when I was far too young to appreciate them as I enter my older years. I first read Their Eyes Were Watching God when I was ten (I think. I didn't keep a reading journal in those days, but my old copy seems to indicate something like ten.) I read it then because my neighborhood friend, Becky, who was a few years older than me, told me it was "great." I don't know if she really thought that or just was parroting someone older than her, but I wanted to be Becky, so I read it and readily agreed. I didn't let on, but I didn't really get why it was so great.

Luckily my own plan to reread classics coincided nicely with one of my book clubs. So I reread this in January. Coming back forty years later, I can now agree wholeheartedly with Becky. But it's so much more than great.

The most special part of Zora Neale Hurston's writing is that she takes subjects our society wants to segment into "good" or "bad" and shows us how they are simply human ― thereby complicated. Subjects like infidelity, domestic abuse, killing for self-protection, killing as an act of mercy, colorism, white savior complex, poverty, female pride, female submission, moral relativism... You name a tough topic, and Hurston handles it in this book with a deft touch rarely found in today's world. Luckily we find it in more literature than regular life.

She handles all of these topics and more with a grace and kindness in her writing that comes off the page. Reading this book has, I think, made me a more generous person. (Perhaps I should schedule it in regularly.)

I can't go through all of the situations portrayed in the book. I'm not as good a writer as Zora Neale Hurston, so it would just be ugly. All I can do is implore everyone to read this book, probably more than once. You may find it hard to get past the phonetic dialect. I got past it quickly by reading aloud to start. Within a few passages, I could hear the words without needing to read aloud, and I had no problem with the phonetic spellings. (This is a trick I learned years ago when I read Trainspotting.)

One sad note about this novel and all of Ms. Hurston's writing is because it didn't fall within the political standards of the time, her works all went quickly out of print and stayed that way until the 1970s when thanks to the concerted efforts of Alice Walker and others, including her biographer Robert Hemenway, her books came back into circulation. Zora Neale Hurston died in poverty and was buried in an unmarked grave, despite two Guggenheim awards and a prize-winning autobiography among her many other literary and artistic feats. Alice Walker found her grave and marked it.

Recently, upon another reread of another classic, Wuthering Heights, I commented to someone one a GR group that while I don't have to like every character to enjoy a book, I do reserve the right to judge them. What's so amazing about this story and nearly every character in it is no matter what they do, they are so fully realized that I could empathize with and understand nearly everything they did and said. So while I may not respect the choices of every woman who walks away from marriage into another, I felt no animosity or judgement when Janie walked out on one man to marry another. I felt no moral outrage at anything anyone did, and this includes some very touchy subjects.

I hurt for the characters and felt the angst that must have accompanied their actions or choices, but I never found myself truly upset with any of them for long. Zora Neale Hurston must have been a remarkable woman to be able to write these very real, very strong, very fallible and very sympathetic characters.

This one is definitely worth a read or ten.

Is this novel really about Black people?

Can a Black person write a novel whose novel about a character who happens to be dark-skinned, and make it about things other than the Experience of Living as an African-American? It’s pretty racist to expect every book written by a Black to be about this. They have more in their life than just being dark-skinned. Women can also write about things that are not Being a Woman.

I’m not American, so I may have missed the part where it revealed truths about the African-American Experience. Then again, I didn’t miss it in that Chinua Achebe novel. What drives the story, the grand theme that connects it is love.

People often ask what is love (no references to the song please). The novel is an examination of that idea. It’s not an easy question. A Jewish proverb claims that not disciplining your son equals hate. It’s often a defense of hitting your kids.

Nanny thinks that mere survival is enough for happiness. She’s the mom who pushes her son to make sure he’ll have enough money to survive, which she defines as ‘rich’. The problem is, humans often need some sort of reason to survive. There are also other ways to survive other than being rich.

Some think love is protection. Yet protection can often slip into prevention. We all know these protective parents who think keeping their children away from things is good parenting. Then their kids reach their 20’s with depression and having no idea where to go. Joe Starks had good intentions. He did love and tried hard to make Janie happy, yet how could she happy if she’s being kept away from life?

This examination ends with Tea Cake. Tea Cake is a character whose role often feels like wish-fulfillment. He’s almost an ideal. There’s a wifebeating thing going on, but it’s addressed and then pushed away. Whether it’s pushed away because they didn’t take it seriously back then, or because Zora forgives Tea Cake is unclear. He doesn’t have a major flaw, but the pushing away goes in Janie’s head. She pushes it away because she was raised in a society where women are second class and she can’t think in any other way.

Janie is a little better. This is where Zora resembles other feminist writers. Then again, race is a pseudoscientific idea while sex is biological, so it’ll be harder to escape it. Janie isn’t a 3rd-waver who travelled back in time. She wants the ordinary dreams of loving husband who’ll define her world.

You can’t expect her to want anything else since that’s all she knows. What Zora recognizes is that you can still give this character an agency. Janie’s life may revolve around husbands, but she never gives up on looking for the husband that suits her. There’s a reason behind every action she does, even if she realizes it was wrong.

This adds some realism, but Zora doesn’t do enough with it. When Tea Cake appears, all development stops. The romance scenes are well-written but the only conclusion is a tragedy that comes out of nowhere. Too many realist authors add a surprising disaster for the climax. Something is happening, but it’s disconnected from what the story is about. Since Zora doesn’t deal with the randomness of tragedy, the climax only exists to be climatic.

It’s weird to see Zora descends into this cliche. Up until then she’s a talented author. The dialect prose takes some time to get used to, but it’s not used to obscure the dialogue. She manages to give different characters their own speech patterns. The men’s ‘I love you’ monologues are dead-on. Every time a character explains themselves, even when they’re obviously wrong their dialogue makes it clear they see themselves in the right. No one comes off as a caricature.

Zora’s prose is also pretty. It’s poetic, but precise. Her description of the disaster are a highlight. The disaster may have been pointless, but the scene is powerful enough because Zora’s description focuses on how it feels like, rather than give a shopping list of what happens. All her descriptions rely on pointing out the unique details that define a scene. The prose also has a great rhythm. The title comes from a paragraph in the novel, not a poem. If this is supposed to be an influence from the oral tradition, it’s more convincing than Chinua Achebe’s novel.

It’s an enjoyable novel. It’s well-written and realistic enough. Zora avoids the main pitfalls of realism – structurless events and dull characters most of the way. Her poetic prose is pretty and helps to emphasize the reality, rather than exaggerate it too much. She fails in conclusing her ideas, and only her good prose carries the ending. It’s good, but not very remarkable.

3 eyes on God out of 5

Also posted on my blog

A woman finds her own power after decades of being under others' control. How can anyone not like that plot?

Janie was raised by her grandmother—who then married Janie off, at age 16, to a middle-aged man. Because she caught her kissing a "no-good" boy. And because she wanted Janie married before she herself passed on.

So off Janie went. And she hated it. Sixteen and married to an old (to her!) man who wanted her to cook, and clean, and work in the field. Not a bad man, but a dull old man.

So Janie ran off with a man who came by one day. He offered her an out, and she took it. Jody was still at least 15 years older than she. And again, not a bad man. A man who wanted Janie to be his showpiece mayor's wife and to clerk in his store.

And she did. For 20 years, more or less. And then Jody died. For the first time in her entire life she is free. She has the store, she has friends, and she can just rest and think for awhile.

And from there Janie finally gets to spend some years living and loving life.

——————————

Much of the book is written in dialect. Which I struggled with, as I always do. I had to read a lot of it out loud, because hearing it meant I could understand it.

But I admit it—I was over halfway through before I realized that "I god" meant "My god".