Question

What is the relationship between Nanny and Janie?Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston.
the reason i ask this is because it was nanny who raised her and not her real mother, and im trying to figure out nanny's influence on her.
quotes from the book would be helpful :)

Accepted Answer

In Their Eyes Were Watching God,the protagonist Janie is raised by her grandmother, Nanny Crawford.  Nanny grew up as a slave, which means her view on the world and what mattered was not the same as others' might have been.  Their relationship was comfortable but grew more strained as both of them got older.  Nanny was concerned about several things which shaped her grandaughter for the rest of her life.  First, because she grew up with nothing, financial security was very important to Nanny.  The impact on Janie, of course, was that when Nanny understood her time on earth was nearly over she was determined to see that Janie was well provided for after her death.  To do that, Nanny married Janie off to the much older--but financially secure--Logan.  Second, Nanny was quite concerned about maintaining respectability.  When Janie enters adolescence  she begins to be attracted to boys, of course, and the boys begin hanging around regularly.  Nanny notices and, rather than talking to Janie, scolds her and marries her off at the first opportunity out of fear.  Janie was following the irresponsible path her mother took, and Nanny wanted to change her course.  Finally, Nanny wanted more social opportunities for Janie than either she or Janie's mother had.  Once again, the answer is marriage to a financially secure and respectable man.  This marriage is doomed from the start, though; even though Logan can provide material things, there is no love. After the loveless and confusing marriage happened, the relationship between Janie and Nanny was strained; Janie was first confused then resentful at what Nanny had done.  Once Nanny died and Janie began to mature, she better understood that her grandmother loved her and was only trying to do what was best for her.  Nanny did the best she could, it seems to me, but she totally discounted some other things that mattered, like love.  In the end, Janie's journey would have been much different--though probably somehowlower or more common, I think--if she hadn't become a woman in the house of Logan Killicks as determined by her grandmother.

Answer

Nanny is Janie's grandmother, raising her after her mother, Leafy, leaves. Nanny's influence is significant early in the novel, as Nanny is seeking to protect Janie from the types of oppression that defined life in the Reconstructed South. Nanny brings Janie up to admire and desire the goods that white people value: a house, acreage, marriage. Like Logan and Jody Stark, Nanny wants to live according to white values and to value the white world over the African American experience. As a result, she tries to ensure that Janie is well-married to Logan before she dies.
Hurston uses different characters to embody the many arguments regarding how African Americans should embrace their options. Nanny and Logan are similar to Booker T. Washington in his "go slow" approach to enfranchisement of freed slaves. Both Logan and Jody admire Janie for her hair, which is a product of both Nanny's and Leafy's rapes by white men, which Nanny narrates as she explains to Janie her desire to see her married safely. These early characters are only slightly better, or offer only a slightly better life, than Nanny had imagined as the ideal of "sitting on high" and having a voice. None of them imagined true freedom.
These early lessons remain with Janie for many years, and it's only after she is able to live on her own that she begins to develop a different perspective. After Jody dies and Janie feels the power of her independence, she realizes that she hates Nanny because of the values she has instilled. Safety, status, and financial comfort come at a price, she realizes. With Tea Cake, she gets none of these things, but—at least at the beginning of their relationship—she becomes happier than she had ever imagined. In the early days of Janie and Tea Cake's marriage, the mutuality that the pear tree symbolizes, and that Nanny disregards, becomes possible.
It is valuable to note here the way Hurston uses the motif of nature as a subtle commentary on the stages of Janie's development. Nanny is described as looking like an old tree stump, Logan Killick's name literally means "log" and "anchor," Jody is "stark." These are all names evoking death, and they stand in contrast to the vibrantly alive pear tree that is essentially Janie's "ship at a distance"—the dream that she holds so that, despite years of the dream being mocked, she can "act and do accordingly" to its truth (1).

Their Eyes Were Watching God

What is the relationship between Nanny and Janie? Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. the reason i ask this is because it was nanny who raised her and not her real mother, and im trying to figure out nanny's influence on her. quotes from the book would be helpful :)

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