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Zora
Neale Hurston
THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD New York. HarperCollins. 2006. 256 pp. ISBN:
0060838671
Reviewed by Patrick Killough work in earliest progress 12/20/2010 (1) biblio.com 12/20/2010 Would you recommend this book to other readers? Yes. * * * * * review: Janie Crawford, heroine of THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD (1937), had a white grandfather and a black grandmother. The latter was a slave in 1864 when Janie's mother was born; the former was the owner of her plantation. Atlanta fell to Sherman. Ole Massa rode off to drive the Yankees back into Tennessee. Ole Missus came to cuss out Granny for birthing her blond haired baby. There will be a flogging tomorrow. Instead, Granny and baby hide out for weeks in the swamps. Then the Civil War ends and both are free. Around 1882 that baby born in slavery is old enough to be seduced by a (white?) teacher and gives birth to Janie Crawford. Somewhere around 1902 Granny (who has raised Janie) arranges her granddaughter's marriage to a north Florida black man with 60 acres. The rest of the story sees Janie running away from this husband. Later she runs away from a second and finds happiness in the arms of husband number three, Vergible Woods, known to one and all as Tea Cake, 11 years her junior. Janie joins him in Jacksonville. Soon enough they decamp for the Everglades to pick beans and are caught up in a great hurricane, during which Tea Cake, while saving Janie's life, is bitten by a rabid dog. By this time Tea Cake has also taught Jamie to use both rifle and pistol as an expert. Tea Cake is a life-loving gambler who adores Janie and makes her very happy The novel is very vague as to time. I don't recall a single date being mentioned. Part of the fun of reading is therefore to construct a timeline. Autos abound by noveI's end and Jamie is around 40. So we are talking the early 1920s in Florida The narrator writes crisp, elegant standard English. The other characters, all Southerners, mainly Negroes, speak a thick dialect of English that is most expressive. Sample: "You was twice noble tuh save me from dat
dawg, Tea Cake, Ah don't speck you seen his eyes lak Ah did. He didn't
aim tuh jus' bite me, Tea Cake. He aimed to kill me stone dead. Ah'm
never to fehgit dem eyes. He wuzn't nothin' all over but pure hate"
(Ch. 18). ***
The novel is astonishingly good and convincing. A beautiful young, barely black woman finds ways to define herself in a world that wants to define her as a member of an inferior, segregated race, with no identity other than through her husband. Janie is no genius, but she is a canny learner and by tale's end is mistress of her fate. *** In 2005 THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD was made into a film for TV, starring Halle Berry as Janie. Oprah Winfrey was producer. *** -OOO- http://www.biblio.com/books/190096835.html =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (2) lunch.com 12/20/2010 name of review: "Aw, don't make God look so foolish -- findin' fault wid everything He made" rating: * * * * * review: This is the story of Jamie Mae Crawford. Her mother had been born on a plantation near Savannah in 1864, "with gray eyes and yaller hair" (Ch. 2). Jamie Mae's grandfather was Marse Robert and his son, her half-uncle, had fallen at Chickamauga. As soon as the Master rode off to drive Sherman back from Atlanta into Tennessee, the Mistress threatened to whip Mae's grandmother ("Granny") for bearing a baby that looked white. Slave mother and daughter then fled into the woods and a few months later were freed by Union armies. Granny went to work for "some good white people" and moved with them to West Florida. They were fond of and very kind to Granny's child, saw that she was educated and well cared for. At age 17, this girl was raped by a school teacher who may have been white. So around 1882 Janie Mae entered the world. Her raped mother soon went to pieces and disappeared from Janie's life forever. She was raised by Granny until close to the end of the 19th Century and then pressured by failing Granny into marriage with very black Logan Killicks, owner of 60 acres and a house. Janie waited for love to begin, but it never did. She explained to Granny: "His
belly is too big too, now, and his toe-nails look lak mule foots. And
'tain't nothin' in de way of washin' his feet every evening before he
comes tuh bed. ... Ah'd ruther be shot wid tacks dan tuh turn over in
de bed and stir up de air whilst he be in dere. ... She began to cry" (Ch.
3).
Janie Mae Killicks did more than cry. She up and ran off with Joe Starks, "a cityfied, stylish dressed man with his hat set at an angle that didn't belong in these parts." Joe was passing through from Georgia into the new part of Florida to make something of himself in an all Negro community. So off the couple went down south and were married without Jamie bothering with a divorce. In a short time, Joe got Eatonville incorporated and became its mayor, postmaster and major property owner. When he died years later he left his widow, Janie Mae Starks with a house, a store and $1,200 in the bank. Still he had not made Janie happy. He excluded her from social gatherings with his dark friends and put her on an exalted social pedestal. She made only one good friend during her 20 years in Eatonville, her neighbor Mrs Pheoby Watson. The nub of THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD is the story that Janie tells Pheoby on the evening she returns to Eatonville in the early 1920s from not very many months in the Everglades near Lake Okeechobee. Jamie Mae is now Mrs Vergible Woods, widow of an irrepressible black man known to one and all as Tea Cake. With Tea Cake, eleven years her junior, Janie finally found happiness and equality in marriage. They went through a hurricane together, during which Tea Cake was bitten by a huge rabid hound. Tea Cake taught Janie to shoot pistols and rifles. Whenever they were short of ready cash, Tea Cake won what they needed by shooting dice or playing cards. In the Everglades they joined other migrant bean pickers and made a good living. The only serious irritant in the married life of very dark Tea Cake and very light Janie came from Mrs Turner, a neighboring colored woman who ran a very good restaurant on the edge of the Everglades. She hated black skins, worshipped everything white and found fault with everything that blacker people than she did, especially Tea Cake. She wanted Janie to leave Tea Cake and marry her brother. Once when Mrs Turner was reviling black folks and their carrying-ons at the local juke, Tea Cake snapped: "Aw,
don't make God look so foolish -- findin' fault wid everything He made"
(Ch. 16).
Beyond the bare story just sketched, THEIR EYES WERE ON GOD is linguistically exciting. It is also a partnership between distinguished New Negro/Harlem Renaissance author and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston and fictional Janie Mae and her equally fictional friend Pheoby Watson, who draws out and hears the story of Janie's lifelong search for contentment and love. At novel's end Janie shares important conclusions with her best friend: "Pheoby,
you got tuh go there tuh know there. Yo' papa and yo' mama and nobody
else can't tell yuh and show yuh. Two things everybody's got tuh do fuh
theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about
livin' fuh theyselves" (Ch. 20).
To which I can only say, "Amen, Sister!" If you would rather find Janie Mae on screen rather than on pages, you can watch THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD via netflix.com. Produced by Oprah Winfrey and released in 2005, this made for TV film stars Halle Berry as Jamie. What more needs saying? -OOO- http://www.lunch.com/ubergizmo/reviews/d/UserReview-Their_Eyes_Were_ Watching_God-64-1485771-197568-_Aw_don_t_make_God_look_so_foolish _findin_.html =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (3) bn.com. 12/21/2010 title of review: "Love is lak de sea. It's a movin' thing, but still" rating: * * * * * review: In THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD, heroine Janie Mae Crawford seems to have been born in West Florida in 1882. By novel's end Janie is about 40 and the year is around 1922. The basic question is: how does a woman find happiness with a man? Janie's white plantation owner grandfather had forced himself on Janie's black slave grandmother. A school teacher, very likely white, had then forced himself on Janie's 17-year old mother. Mother never recovered her loved status in the broad family circle of "good white people" for whom Granny worked. One day Mother simply disappeared. Moral: non-consensual sex with a man puts a woman way, way down. Granny never married, despite proposals. But she knew that her days were numbered, and one day she saw late teen Janie flirting with a man. Granny's solution was to marry Janie off against her will to Logan Killicks, an adoring older black man with a house and a 60 acre farm. Without Granny to protect her, only marriage would give Janie security and protection. Love would come, Granny said. But it did not come. Initially Logan put Janie on a pedestal. Granny told her that for equality a man needed to kiss a woman's lips, not an idol's feet. But Logan would not wash his feet before crawling into bed at night. So Janie ran away with a flashy, ambitious traveling man, Joe Starks. He took her to new Florida, Eatonville, an all colored town. Joe caused the town's incorporation and became its mayor, postmaster and largest property owner. He protected Janie from all pleasant social contact with townspeople. When he died, quite estranged, Joe left Mrs Janie Starks a well off widow who owned a store and had money in the bank. Her first two marriages left the widow Starks unfulfilled, dull and despairing of happiness. Moral: if woman accepts being her husband's inferior, she cannot be happy. Then along came happy-go-lucky champion dicer and card player Vergible Woods aka Tea Cake. And for the not very many months remaining to Tea Cake, Janie was deliriously happy. Together they went south to the edge of the Everglades and Lake Okeechokee to pick beans and peas. During a terrible hurricane, a rabid dog attacked Janie but was killed by Tea Cake after himself being bitten on the face. Janie's tale is told on the evening she returns to Eatonville, having given Tea Cake a magnificent, ten-limousine funeral in Palm Beach. Her auditor and interlocutor was her only woman friend, and that of twenty years standing, Pheoby Watson. When Janie finally fell silent, Pheoby said: "Lawd!
... Ah done growed ten feet higher from jus' listenin' tuh you, Janie.
Ah ain't satisfied wid
mahself no mo'."
Henceforth, Pheoby would make her husband share his joy in fishing, take her with him. Janie's basic message is: marriage must make a woman a man's equal. No one but yourself can teach you about love. "Pheoby,
you got tuh go there tuh know there."
Local married women have no right to insist that Janie's marriage to Tea Cake must be just like their own. Finally: "... mah
love didn't work lak they love, if dey ever had any. ... love ain't
somethin' lak uh grindstone dat's de same thing everywhere and do de
same thing tuh everything it touch. Love
is lak de sea. It's a movin' thing, but still and all, it takes its
shape from the shore it meets, and it's different with every shore"
(Ch. 20). ***
Moral: Love is out there for every woman. But every woman plays shore to love's ocean. And every shore is different. -OOO- recommended reading: -- James Weldon Johnson - GOD'S TROMBONES -- Jeffrey Ogbar, editor - THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE REVISITED -- Wallace Thurman - THE BLACKER THE BERRY (1929) -- Carl Van Vechten - NIGGER HEAVEN (1926) http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Their-Eyes-Were-Watching-God/ Zora-Neale-Hurston/e/9780060838676/?itm=2&USRI=their+eyes +were+watching+god http://my.barnesandnoble.com/communityportal/review.aspx? reviewid=1499106 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (4) amazon.com 12/21/2010 itle of review: "Like all the other trembling mud-balls, Janie had tried to show her shine" rating: * * * * * review: THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD moves on many levels, at various speeds and in curious twisty, sometimes sluggish currents and eddies. One current might be called "the education of Janie Mae Crawford Starks Woods." Education in what? In what it means for a man and a woman to love each other as equals. Her first two husbands would never let Janie Mae join them in whatever pleasured them socially: fishing, chatting with friends around a stove, hunting. The dark women around her in Florida were jealous of her first two marriages and the locally exalted status they gave her, first as wife of a prosperous farmer, then as virtual creator and ruler of Eatonville, Florida. Both husbands began by idolizing Janie Mae and offering her kindness and luxury. But first she had to accept them as bosses, as lords and masters. Not Janie! She was made for grander, more restless things. And this lowered Janie in husbands' eyes from idol on a pedestal to being compelled to serve her masters, like all other married women. Her genealogy was not promising: product of two generations of rape. Naturally the one-time slave Granny who raised her thought it would be more than enough if Janie could marry and then have the leisure to sit on her porch evenings like a lady and be protected by a well-off farmer with 60 acres. Years later, when Janie had finally found the love of her life, eccentric, happy go lucky, hard gambling Vergible Woods aka Tea Cake, the veil fell from Janie's eyes. She grasped that Tea Cake had treated her as his equal, the first man to do so. How? In simple ways: he had let her share his joy in hunting and fishing. He had taught her how to be a crack shot. Tea Cake had also relished seeing Janie shine before his friends. Now pushing or beyond 40, Janie realized that she hated long dead Granny, who had made her wed farmer Logan Killicks at age 17. Suddenly, looking back, Janie realized that she had long ago sensed a divine spark within her. She had always, albeit unconsciously, wanted to spend her whole life looking for other people with the same spark. She would not settle for money, possessions, status. What Janie wanted was man-woman love pointing to God. As the novel's narrator summed things up: "...
Nanny had taken the biggest thing God ever made, the horizon ... and
pinched it in to such a little bit of a thing that she could tie it
about her granddaughter's neck tight enough to choke her. ... (But
Janie) had found a jewel down inside herself and she had wanted to walk
where people could see her and gleam it around. But she had been set in
the market-place to sell."
God had originally made man to glitter all over. Then jealous angels chopped man into pieces. They then beat him, still glittering and humming, into nothing but sparks, still singing and shining. The sparks those devils covered with mud. "And
the lonesomeness in the sparks made them hunt for one another, but the
mud is deaf and dumb. Like all the other trembling mud-balls, Janie had
tried to show her shine" (Ch. 9).
At novel's end, twice widowed Janie Mae Crawford has walked back home to Eatonville. She tells her story to her best friend of 20 years standing, Pheoby Watson. Afterwards, Pheoby Watson feels ten feet taller. She will imitate her friend and insist that her husband henceforth take her with him on his fishing jaunts. Simple. But equality, too. That night, after Pheoby left Janie's house, our heroine was joined by her recently dead love. "Then Tea Cake came
prancing around her where she was and the song of the sigh flew out of
the window and lit in the top of the pine trees. ... Here was peace.
She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around
the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life
in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see."
And the story of THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD is finally complete. -OOO- tags: Florida, janie mae crawford, Vergible Woods aka Tea Cake, zora neale hurston, the new negro, harlem renaissance http://www.amazon.com/Their-Eyes-Were-Watching-Paperback/ dp/B003CLAIKQ/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1292146778&sr=8-11 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (5) epinions.com 12/22/2010 Title of review: This is Janie's tune. This is no tune but hers. Reviewer's rating: * * * * * Pros: Glorious English: classical and black. Woman's liberation in marriage. Love: I spark you to gleam. Cons: Unfamiliar Southern black English. Vergible "Tea Cake" Woods: goofy, improbable liberator of downtrodded Janie. The Bottom Line: A plot wrapped in memorable English. Crushed Janie Crawford finds meaning in three marriages over two decades. If you have a spark, let it gleam around! AOHCAPABLANCA's FULL REVIEW: Summon up Homer's ILIAD. Read Stephen Vincent Benet's epic poem of the American Civil War, JOHN BROWN'S BODY. Both Homer and Benet worked in a tradition joined in 1937 by Zora Neale Hurston's non-epic novel THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD. For Homer, Benet and Hurston sing about heroes and heroines and their deeds, mighty or slight, of combat, honor and love. There is a haunting phrase deep within JOHN BROWN'S BODY that seems meant for Janie Mae Crawford, heroine of THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD. Benet writes of young Union soldier Jack Ellyat of Connecticut: "This is Ellyat's tune, this is no tune but his." At some level, THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD is 40-year old Janie Mae Crawford's tune. It is no tune but hers. -- A sad tune.
-- A happy tune. -- A tune of growing old with two husbands, then younger with a third. -- It is a tune of two generations of rape and a third of involuntary marriage, beginning with the white plantation owner near Savannah who had lain with his slave, Janie's own grandmother. Above all, THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD is about Janie and the myth she made up of a divine spark within her which only wanted to free itself from the mud poured on all mankind by bad angels. Janie from an early age wanted to wander out among the sons and daughter of men, go to the world's far, wide horizon and unite that spark within her to the spark that must lie buried somewhere in other people. Janie "had
found a jewel down inside herself and she had wanted to walk where
people could see her and gleam it around" (Ch. 9)
But two conventionally normal husbands over a score of years bury her spark in mud. Improbably, the third husband, a happy go lucky, guitar strumming, piano playing, singing, gambling gadabout, Vergible Woods, better known as Tea Cake, provides the spark that cuts through decades of grime and uncovers Janie's very own spark. How does the novel end? In a paragraph that revisits recurring themes of the novel: sighs, songs, horizons and a fish-net wonderfully evocative of Janie's great metaphor of love between woman and man: sea-and-shores. Janie had just returned from the Everglades to her all-colored town of Eatonville, Florida. After a titanic hurricane, Janie had sent off Tea Cake in style: a grand ten-limousine Palm Beach funeral. Sitting in the comfortable home left her by her second husband, the Mayor of Eatonville, Janie has just told her life's story to her best friend of twenty years, Mrs Pheoby Watson. Janie now retires for her first night back home among the uncomprehending black men and women who had vilified her runaway love for Tea Cake. "Then
Tea Cake came prancing around her where she was and the song of the
sigh flew out of the window and lit in the top of the pine trees. ...
Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled
it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder.
So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and
see." (Ch. 20)
At some level the message of THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD is simple and attractive to 21st century American readers. It is about marriages. -- Marriages work when husband and
wife joyfully and freely accept each other, warts and all, as
equals.
-- They do not work when one partner idolizes the other: kisses the feet rather than the mouth. -- They do not work when a husband reduces his wife to an object, a means to his ends: decoration for his friends, someone to cook his food or plow his field. At age 17, her grandmother insisting, Janie Mae had unwillingly married Logan Killicks, an older man with a nice house on a 60-acre farm. She ran away with her second husband (married without benefit of divorce), Joe Starks, who then made himself a rising politician but forbade Janie to "shine" before his friends. He died estranged but left Janie well fixed. Janie grasped that for the first time in her life she was free. But freedom was not enough. She also needed love and mutual respect. And she found love improbably with sometimes downright goofy Tea Cake, eleven years her junior. He taught her to play checkers. Unlike previous husbands, Tea Cake also treated her as an equal, welcomed her conversations with his friends. Tea Cake taught Janie to hunt, fish and shoot. There was no part of his life that she was not free to share, except his forays into gambling with rough low lifes, at which he was very good. In their love, divine spark recognized and merrily mated with divine spark. Once, working together picking peas and beans as migrant workers in the Everglades, Janie had caught Tea Cake responding to flirtations from a girl named Nunkie. Tea Cake made an honest defense of himself: "What
would Ah do wid tat lil chunk of a woman wid you around? She ain't no
good for nothin' exceptin' tuh set up in uh corner by the kitchen stove
and break wood over her head. You'se something tuh make uh man forgit
tuh git old and forgit tuh die" (Ch. 15).
Later, the couple sits in their migrant labor shack on the bank of Lake Okeechobee. They should have taken the advice two days earlier given by hundreds of Seminole Indians as they trekked out of the swamp for high ground to the east: get out, hurricane's coming. But the couple, like hundreds of others, had stayed put, singing and dancing with pea picker friends, and will soon be nearly drowned as raging Okeechobee bursts its levee. Tea Cake imagines that Janie is sorry she left her big home in Eatonville two years earlier to be with him facing death. Janie replied: "People
don't die till dey time come nohow, don't keer where you at. Ah'm wid
mah husband in uh storm, dat's all."
Tea Cake said: "Thanky,
Ma'am. But 'sposing you wuz tuh die, now. You wouldn't git mad at me
for draggin' yuh heah?"
Janie: "Naw ...
If you can see de light at daybreak, you don't keer if you die at dusk.
It's so many people never seen de light at all."
This hurricane is the work of Ole Massa in heaven. As the wind rose, colored workers all around the lake huddled fearfully in their lightless shanties, "their
eyes straining against crude walls and their souls asking if He meant
to measure their puny might against His. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but
their eyes were watching God" (Ch. 18).
A month later Tea Cup would die of hydrophobia. As they had tramped through the deluge eastward to Palm Beach and safety, a big dog had attacked Janie but been stabbed to death by Tea Cake. That rabid dog had bitten Tea Cake on the cheek and nothing needful had been done for a wound which proved fatal. Newly widowed, back in Eatonville, among clucking tongues that resent her still radiant beauty and Mayor husband-mandated aloofness, Janie Mae Crawford Killicks Starks Woods still has lots of living before her. She has just made her old friend Pheoby feel liberated and ten feet taller and resolved to make her husband take her fishing for the first time ever. Of such simple joy is emancipated, equal-mates-equal married love meant to be made up. Whatever love may be, it is not one size fits all. "Love is
lak de sea. It's a movin' thing, but still and all, it takes its shape
from the shore it meets, and it's different with every shore"
(Ch. 20).
And nobody can tell you in advance whom you will love. Love won't come to you. You have to go look for it. "Pheoby,
you got tuh go there tuh know there" (Ch. 20).
This is Janie's tune. This is no tune but hers. -OOO- Recommended: Yes =-=-=--=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- http://www.epinions.com/specs/Book_Their_Eyes_Were_Watching_God_ Zora_Neale_Hurston_Valerie_Boyd http://www1.epinions.com/review/Book_Their_Eyes_Were_Watching_God_ Zora_Neale_Hurston_Valerie_Boyd/content_535209086596 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= EXTRAS: Related
TV FILM
http://movies.netflix.com/Movie/Their-Eyes-Were-Watching-God/70023525?trkid=22687
1#height1764 Their Eyes Were Watching God 2005NR 113 minutes Halle Berry stars in this version of Zora Neale Hurston's novel, adapted for television and produced by Oprah Winfrey. The story centers on Janie Crawford (Berry), a free-spirited woman who lives her life on her own terms. Refusing to accept her place as a black woman in the 1920s, Crawford lives life to its fullest and experiences a journey filled with great joy and unbearable heartache. Ruby Dee and Ruben Santiago-Hudson also star. Cast: Halle Berry, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Michael Ealy, Nicki Micheaux, Lorraine Toussaint, Ruby Dee, Terrence Howard, Gabriel Casseus, Artel Kayaru, Kevin Daniels, Henry Brown Director: Darnell Martin Genres: Drama, Dramas Based on the Book, Romantic Dramas, Period Pieces, Made-for-TV Movies, African-American Dramas, Dramas Based on Classic Literature, 20th Century Period Pieces, Buena Vista Home Entertainment This movie is: Gritty, Sentimental, Romantic Format: DVD http://www.patrickkillough.com/books/hurston_eyes.html |