by Bridget N. Watts

Created on: January 25, 2010

Their Eyes Were Watching God is the 1937 coming-of-age novel by African-American writer Zora Neale Hurston. I picked up this book by chance a few years ago while browsing through a book sale at my local library. Their Eyes Were Watching God is Hurston's most well known, as well as her most controversial novel. It tells the story of the life of Janie Crawford, an African-American woman living in the black town of Eatonville, Florida. In 2005 Their Eyes Were Watching God was made into a TV movie by Harpo productions, starring Halle Berry.

The story of Janie’s life, which is far from a happy tale,  is told by Janie herself to her best friend Pheoby, via a number of flashbacks corresponding to three distinct periods of her life in which she was married to each of her three husbands. Janie is born after her mother is raped by the local school teacher and becomes pregnant with his child. Janie’s mother is unable and unwilling to take care of her daughter, and therefore Janie ends up being raised by her grandmother. Her grandmother arranges for Janie to marry Logan Killicks, an older farmer who is looking for someone to help him out on the farm.

However, Janie does not want to be someone’s domestic helper, but dreams of a husband who loves her. She ends up running off with Joe Starks to the town of Eatonville. Her second husband has big plans for himself, and he gets the residents of Eatonville to build him a store that he ends up running and owning. He even declares himself the mayor of the town.

Even though Joe does not make Janie work as hard as her first husband did, he does expect her to portray the image of the perfect wife. This means he tells Janie exactly what she can and cannot do in order to maintain the illusion she is a wife worthy of the mayor. When Starks dies, Janie is left with enough money to be financially independent.

This of course attracts a lot of men who are interested in making her theirs, including some very rich and powerful men, but she is not interested and instead she falls in love with a poor gambler named Tea Cake. She ends up selling the store, and the two of them get married and move to the Everglades region, where Tea Cake finds work planting and harvesting beans. Even though their relationship is far from perfect and has its up and downs, Janie finally has a marriage that is based on love.

Will Janie finally live happily ever after? You will have to read the book yourself in order to find out. Even though it's not a light read, I very much enjoyed reading Their eyes were watching God, and I recommend it to anyone who finds the subject matter appealing.

Learn more about this author, Bridget N. Watts.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.