Domestic Abuse in their eyes were watching god
Shawnee Osborne
In her 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston shows her audience what domestic abuse can look like through her protagonist, Janie. Janie marries three times. Two of these marriages demonstrate domestic abuse. I will be discussing how Janie’s first two marriages to Logan and Joe are ridden with abuse through textual evidence.
According to Marks, Janie’s pleasant relationships allow her to play and to explore her community, while the controlling men prevent her from integrating into her community, and therefore contributing to her loneliness (Marks 1985).
Before Janie marries, her grandmother notices Janie kissing Johnny Taylor, a boy from the neighborhood, over the fence. The sight panics her because she knows Janie has officially become a sexual being, and to prevent her from marrying the wrong type of person and making mistakes with the wrong men, her grandmother marries her off to an older man who possesses sixty acres of land. This, she feels, will ensure Janie’s happiness and security.
Her first marriage is to a man named Logan Killicks. From the beginning of her union, her ideals of marriage, primarily love, are challenged. Her family keeps telling her that love will come as she becomes better acquainted with her husband, but months pass with little improvement.
Before she goes to marry Logan, she thinks to herself, “Yes, she would love Logan after they were married. She could see no way for it to come about, but Nanny and the old folks had said it, so it must be so. Husbands and wives always loved each other, and that was what marriage meant. It was just so… She wouldn’t be lonely anymore” (Hurston 21). Her outlook begins to change as soon as they ride to his property, but she holds onto hope. Hurston writes, “But nobody put anything on the seat of Logan’s wagon to make it ride glorious on the way to his house. It was a lonesome place like a stump in the middle of the woods where nobody had ever been… But anyhow Janie went on inside to wait for love to begin.” (21, 22).
The whole dynamic of her marriage changes after some time passes, and the love never begins for Janie. Logan becomes similar to a dictator. He verbally and emotionally abuses her, comparing her to his former wife by putting her down when she refuses to take the same role he pushes on her. Janie also realizes that this marriage has little to do with affection. “Long before the year was up, Janie noticed that her husband had stopped talking in thymes to her. He has ceased to wonder at her long black hair and finger it” (Hurston 28). However, when she meets Joe Starks, who asks her to come away with him and be his wife, she decides to talk to Logan about their marriage that night. Logan hurls the insults.
“Considerin’ youse born in a carriage ‘thout no top to it, and yo’ mama and you bein’ born and raised in de white folks back-yard. […] Ah thought you would ‘preciate good treatment. Thought Ah’d make somethin’ outa yuh. You think youse white folks by de way you act” (30).
The next morning is no better. Logan demands she come and help move a manure pile, to which she responds, “You don’t need mah help out dere, Logan. Youse in yo’ place and Ah’m in mine” (31). He retorts, “You ain’t got no particular place. It’s wherever Ah need yuh” (31). Janie talks back to him, still refusing to do the work outside, and he becomes furious. “Ah’ll take holt uh dat ax and come in dere and kill yuh” (31). Janie, recognizing that most of Logan’s language is abusive, decides to meet Joe Starks and start a new life with him.
The marriage between Joe and Janie starts out nicely for a time. He buys her nice things and they settle down in Eatonville, an all-black town in Florida. Joe becomes the mayor of the town and improves the area by adding roads, buying land and selling lots to new families, and establishing a general store (Hurston 41-43). Although he is a visionary, he begins to mistreat Janie.
The first sign of abuse is when a man of the town, Tony, asked Janie, now Mrs. Mayor Starks, to give a short speech to encourage the town when Joe became the mayor. Instead of allowing her to talk, however, Joe stepped up instead and said, “Thank yuh fuh yo’ compliments, but mah wife don’t know nothin’ ‘bout no speech-makin’. Ah never married her for nothin’ lak dat. She’s uh woman and her place is in de home” (Hurston 43). The closeness she felt to him in the beginning slips away and is replaced with her role as the Mayor’s wife. Joe tells her, “A told you in de very first beginnin’ dat Ah aimed tuh be uh big voice. You oughta be glad, ‘cause dat makes uh big woman outa you” (46). The isolation begins here when Janie narrates, “A feeling of coldness and fear took hold of her. She felt far away from things and lonely… She slept with authority and so she was part of it in the town mind. She couldn’t get but so close to most of them in spirit” (46).
Joe also makes Janie tend to the store. Although she did not like working in the store, she narrates, “But Joe kept saying she could do it if she wanted to and she wanted her to use her privileges. That was the rock she was battered against” (54). Joe becomes obsessed with controlling Janie, and he even makes her cover her hair out of possession. He does not want other men to wallow in it in their own minds (55).
Joe believes he does Janie a favor when he marries her and isolates her. “She had no right to be [sullen], the way he thought things out. She wasn’t even appreciative of his efforts and she had plenty cause to be. Here he was just pouring honor all over her to sit in and overlook the world and she here pouting over it!” (62). Although Janie is on a pedestal, she has little freedom. According to Tyson, pedestals allow little room for which women can move, as they are restricted to the men’s desires for them. Additionally, pedestals can easily fall over and figuratively break a woman (2006). Janie’s pedestal wavers when she comes to the realization that their marriage is in shambles.
“He wanted her submission and he’d keep on fighting until he felt he had it. So, gradually, she pressed her teeth together and learned to hush. The spirit of the marriage left the bedroom and took to living in the parlor. It was there to shake hands whenever company came to visit, but it never went back inside the bedroom again.” (71)
However, her pedestal topples when he strikes her over an ill-prepared meal. Physical abuse finally sends her image of him past the point of no return, when “something fell off the shelf inside her” (72).
Although Janie is not shattered from her first two marriages, she has been mistreated by the both of them. Logan Killicks, though a prosperous man, insists that she fill his late wife’s roles by helping him around the estate. When she stands her ground, he threatens to kill her, so she runs away to make a new life with Joe Starks. However, this new life is not free from abuse, either. They remain married for years until his death, but she suffers from his constant need to control her. He does so by isolating her from her community and by keeping her in the role he prescribes her as the Mayor’s wife.