Their Eyes Were Watching God

Janie and Joe arrive in Eatonville, disappointed to discover the town not at all developed. Joe immediately purchases additional land, builds a store, buys the town’s first streetlamp, and pushes the townspeople to establish a government—and to elect him mayor.

Joe treats Janie like another of his many possessions; he uses this display of wealth to enforce his superiority over the other townspeople. Although several men in the town attempt to flirt with her, Janie remains closemouthed and unfriendly. The women of the town envy Janie, in part because she follows Joe’s instructions to present herself as above them by dressing formally.

As time goes on, the townspeople learn that Joe, although arrogant and accustomed to having his way, is also willing to work hard to make his ambitions a reality. They wonder how Janie bears her marriage to a man who regularly berates her in front of customers when she makes mistakes in the store. Janie begins to feel fearful and lonely, realizing that Joe expects her to find complete self-fulfillment in his successes, just as he does. She grows weary of his constant activity.

The front porch of Joe’s store becomes the center of the town and the center of its rich storytelling culture. A whole mythology springs up around a very thin, overworked mule that belongs to a man named Matt Bonner. The porch gatherers regularly tell stories about the mule and tease Matt about the way he mistreats it. Joe buys the mule and puts it out to pasture after he overhears Janie fret about the mule’s poor treatment. Impressed by the gesture, she gives a public speech to praise his generosity, but the good feeling evaporates when Joe refuses to let Janie attend a mock funeral for the mule.

As the years go by, Janie feels increasingly oppressed by Joe’s demands for submission. He forces her to work in the store despite how unsuited she is for it, and he demands that she cover her long hair with a rag after he realizes that her hair mesmerizes the men. He also slaps her repeatedly when one of her dinners turned out to be inedible.

Although Joe believes that he is doing his duty as a husband by “building a high chair for her to sit in and overlook the world” (62), Janie instead wants to participate in community life on the porch. Joe’s insistence on her absolute obedience slowly suffocates Janie’s idealized notion of what marriage should be. As the years go by, their relationship, and especially their sexual connection, shrivels.

By the time she is 40 and Joe is almost 50, Janie survives by dissociating: She is physically present in the store and in her home but emotionally absent. Janie considers leaving her loveless marriage at times, but she cannot imagine where she would go.

Joe, meanwhile, wastes away from an unnamed illness. Conscious of how he has diminished physically, he begins to ridicule Janie in front of others about her age. One day when Janie makes a mistake while serving a customer, Joe insults her by calling attention to her “rump hangin’ nearly to [her] knees” (78). The people in the store laugh at first but stop when they realize that Joe intends to degrade his wife. For the first time, Janie speaks up, insisting that Joe stop insulting her and revealing publicly that he is impotent, which astonishes the onlookers. Humiliated by the public insult to his manliness, Joe beats Janie until she leaves the store.

After this public rupture, Joe, whose illness continues to progress, moves into a separate bedroom and ceases talking to Janie. He begins seeing a root doctor, or a traditional Black rural healer, who convinces him that Janie has cursed him and that Joe will only get better with the root doctor’s help. Joe is nearly on his deathbed when Janie finally calls a medical doctor. The doctor explains that Joe has been in kidney failure for two years. He is terminally ill because of his failure to get treatment. Janie shares the news with Joe, who is shocked by the truth.

Joe tries to force Janie to leave his sickroom, but she refuses. She instead tells him what she’s been keeping inside for many years: that his insistence that everyone—including Janie—bow in submission to him has destroyed any possibility of happiness for her. Janie tells him that as a result, no one will mourn his passing: “You got tuh die tuh find out dat you got tuh pacify somebody besides yo’self if you wants any love and any sympathy in dis world” (86-87).

After Joe dies, Janie looks at herself in the mirror; she sees a woman who is clearly middle-aged but still beautiful. Then, she leaves the room to perform the mourning that the townspeople expect.