Last Updated on July 23, 2020, by eNotes Editorial. Word Count: 621

Zora Neale Hurston wrote most of Their Eyes Were Watching God in 1937 during a seven-week period she spent in Haiti. Hurston, the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, spent her days gathering anthropological data about life in Haiti, but she spent her evenings working on what was to become her greatest novel. The impetus for such an outpouring of words was a love affair with Albert Price III, a young graduate student of West Indian descent whom she had left in New York. Hurston undoubtedly realized that her relationship with Price was doomed, and thus she invested much of her own emotional life in the creation of her protagonist, Janie Crawford Killicks Starks Woods. The reader witnesses the internal maturation of Janie as she embarks on a journey for self-knowledge.

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Janie tells the story of her life to Pheoby, her best friend, a woman who sympathizes with her and who is eager to hear Janie’s story. Although Janie’s brief narration is introduced by and then taken over by a third-person, or “public,” narrator, the narrative voices that speak throughout the text always move toward convergence with Janie’s voice. Janie’s conscious life begins in her grandmother’s backyard, where she first experiences sexual ecstasy. When Nanny sees Janie kissing Johnny Taylor, she insists that Janie marry Logan Killicks. Nanny tells Janie that the White man gives his workload to the Black man, and the Black man gives his workload to the Black woman; therefore, the “nigger” woman is the mule of the world. After her marriage to Killicks, Janie quickly discovers that marriage does not equal love, and when the opportunity presents itself, Janie simply walks away and never looks back.

Janie’s opportunity to leave Killicks presents itself in the form of Joe Starks. Starks is on his way to a town in Florida that has been established by and for African Americans. He is a man of the world and plans to be a “big voice” in the town of Eatonville. Janie marries Joe and moves with him to Eatonville. She is soon disappointed in her marriage, however, because Joe Starks places Janie on a pedestal, far above the common riffraff of the town, and thus effectively silences her. Janie ceases to love Joe, and their marriage moves from the bedroom into the parlor. During the years of her marriage to Joe, Janie’s self-awareness grows. She discovers that she has a “jewel” inside her. Janie discovers that she understands Joe’s motives, that she can see a man’s head “naked of its skull.” Finally, after twenty years of marriage, Joe dies. Janie, rejoicing in her newfound freedom, rejects the community’s efforts to marry her to another man.

Janie is unwilling to allow the community of Eatonville to find her another husband; however, she finds a new mate when Teacake Woods enters her store. Although he is much younger than Janie, Teacake teaches her to laugh and to play again, and together they leave Eatonville to work in the Everglades as farm laborers. In the Everglades, or the Muck, their relationship is challenged by the community of laborers, a community whose attitudes and activities present a microcosm of African American society. Janie and Teacake are also challenged by god, or nature, in the form of a hurricane. During their struggle to survive the hurricane, Teacake is bitten by a rabid dog and becomes rabid himself; Janie is forced to shoot him. Janie is brought to trial and acquitted by a White jury. The circularity of the novel is completed as Janie returns to Eatonville. The narrative ends as Janie pulls her life in about her and drapes it over her shoulders like a great fishnet.

Last Updated on July 23, 2020, by eNotes Editorial. Word Count: 583

West Florida

Region in which Janie Crawford spends the early years of her life. The initial part of the novel is set in her maternal grandmother’s house and charts Janie’s coming into womanhood. Janie has been raised by her maternal grandmother Nanny who fled slavery with her infant daughter and later migrated to West Florida with her employers, the Washburn family. With the Washburns’ assistance, Nanny purchases her own home so that she can properly raise and protect Janie from derision following the tragic rape and subsequent disappearance of her mother Leafy. On a particular spring afternoon, Janie experiences her budding sexuality beneath a blooming pear tree as a bee enters the inner sanctum of a pear blossom in the act of pollination.

When Nanny spies Janie kissing the shiftless Johnny Taylor, she immediately arranges for young Janie to marry Logan Killicks, a much older man who owns a house and some property, so that Janie will be protected from men whom Nanny fears will take advantage of her granddaughter. While Janie objects to this marriage, she nevertheless tries to make the best of it for awhile, until it becomes quite clear that she will never be able to live for herself in these circumstances. Thus West Florida becomes associated with her grandmother’s dream and Logan Killicks’s dream but not her own dream. When Janie meets Joe Starks, a traveler from Georgia, she walks out of her marriage with Killicks and casts her lot with Joe to pursue the far horizon.

*Eatonville

All-Black town in central Florida just north of Orlando near Maitland. Janie comes here with her new husband Joe in pursuit of the horizon. When they arrive in Eatonville, Joe is disappointed with the place. Through Joe’s energy and foresight Eatonville is soon transformed into a thriving town, but as the years pass Janie discovers once again that this is not the place of her dreams, but of Joe’s. She becomes alienated from the townspeople and forbidden to participate in any of the community’s rituals. In addition, as a woman in a male-dominated world Janie is oppressed, as evidenced by her being forced to wear her hair tied up and by the brutal way that Joe verbally humiliates her in the presence of the men of the town. When Joe dies of a lingering illness, Janie is liberated. Soon she meets a considerably younger man, Vergible “Tea Cake” Woods. Finally deciding that widowhood and life in Eatonville are too confining, she follows Tea Cake to Jacksonville where they marry.

De muck

Name for the portion of the Florida Everglades south of Lake Okeechobee near Clewiston and Belle Glade. The name is derived from the rich black soil that grew lush vegetation. It represents a certain earthiness, a certain carpe diem spirit, as Janie and Tea Cake quit Jacksonville to live and work among the hordes of migrant workers. Like the weeds and vegetables, Janie flourishes in this locale among the folk with a man who loves her for who she is. Thus de muck represents the horizon for Janie, a place where she can finally realize the fullness of life and live out her dreams. Unfortunately this bliss is short-lived, for in the aftermath of a devastating hurricane, Janie is tried and acquitted for killing Tea Cake in a tragic act of self-defense. After she buries him in a lavish ceremony, Janie returns to her home in Eatonville where she intends to grow old.

Last Updated on July 23, 2020, by eNotes Editorial. Word Count: 583

By introducing each chapter of Their Eyes Were Watching God with a thematic image, Zora Neale Hurston artistically changes the focus of the novel from an emphasis on Janie Crawford’s linear chronology of her life to her internal development. For example, the “far horizon” to which ships sail and from which they return identified in the first line of chapter 1 becomes the protagonist’s standard in evaluating the imaginative vision of each of her three husbands. By the concluding chapter, Janie reveals that she herself has traveled to and returned from the “far horizon,” thus expressing her personal voyage of internal discovery.

Their Eyes Were Watching God begins as weary Black workers sit on their porches and witness the return of Janie to her hometown of Eatonville, Florida. Expressing the superficial standards of society, these people believe that the widow of their deceased mayor, in returning alone and wearing overalls, has been financially exploited and abandoned by the young man with whom she had departed. When Janie’s best friend, Pheoby Watson, questions the circumstances of her return, Janie responds that Pheoby can only understand if she knows the whole of Janie’s life. It is within this framework that Janie proceeds to tell her story.

Janie’s grandmother, a former slave, is determined to leave her granddaughter with a protector, in the hope that Janie can avoid the Black woman’s experience of being “the mule of the world.”

At the age of sixteen, Janie marries her grandmother’s choice, an older, lugubrious owner of a farm, Logan Killicks. Ironically, when Killicks expresses his intention to buy a mule, “gentle enough for a woman,” Janie foresees a future very like the one from which her grandmother had sought to save her, and she leaves him to marry Jody Starks.

Although Janie knows that Jody is not the “dust-blossoming bee” of her dreams, he does speak of “far horizons,” the word “horizon” expressing Janie’s intention of fulfilling her dreamed destiny. While Jody fulfills his own dream of fortune and importance by setting up a general store and becoming the mayor of Eatonville, he relegates his wife to a lonely, subordinate position. At Jody’s death, Janie savors the freedom of making her own decisions.

Her independent lifestyle is disturbed by the arrival of Vergible “Tea Cake” Woods, whom she intuitively believes to be the “dust-blossoming bee” of her dreams. In spite of the difference in their ages and fortunes and the criticism of the townspeople, Janie leaves Eatonville with Tea Cake and marries him. They travel south to the Everglades to work as migrant workers on the Muck. To all appearances as Janie works beside her husband in the fields, she would seem to be the “mule of the world” that her grandmother decried. The difference is that Janie works in the fields not because she has to, but because she and Tea Cake prefer to be together as much as possible.

Unfortunately, a hurricane destroys their idyll, and Tea Cake, in trying to protect Janie from a rabid dog, is himself bitten. In a hydrophobic rage, he attacks Janie, who shoots him in self-defense. After a brief trial that exonerates her, Janie returns to Eatonville.

At the conclusion of Janie’s tale to Pheoby, her friend is so impressed that she claims to feel magnified by hearing the tale. Pheoby’s response universalizes Janie’s personal defiance of conventions into a challenge to all women to satisfy their personal dreams.

Last Updated on July 23, 2020, by eNotes Editorial. Word Count: 338

Their Eyes Were Watching God is a groundbreaking narrative. Hurston’s protagonist, Janie Woods, is a new kind of African American woman. Hurston revised the images of women presented in earlier African American narratives in which African American women were modeled upon White protagonists or were dedicated to the notion of “uplifting” the entire race. Through Janie, Hurston calls attention to the silencing of women and to their exclusion as storytellers within the African American community. She also demonstrates how the men of Eatonville, the “porch talkers,” set the boundaries of discourse for the entire community. The language of the men, unlike the language used by Janie, is a game, a competition; it reveals no internal development. Although Hurston is somewhat ambivalent toward Janie and allows her husband, Teacake, to beat her, she nevertheless depicts her as a questing hero, as a woman who moves from object to subject. Their Eyes Were Watching God is a feminist novel, and it may be considered the first such novel in the African American tradition.

Hurston’s life and work provided a model for later African American writers. Alice Walker has stated that Their Eyes Were Watching God had a profound effect upon her writing and that if she were marooned on a desert island with only ten books, Hurston’s masterpiece would be among those she would choose to take with her. Literary critics believe that one of Walker’s protagonists, Shug, of The Color Purple, is a re-creation of Hurston herself. Hurston has become a literary “foremother” not only for Walker but also for other African American women writers, including Gayl Jones, Gloria Naylor, Toni Cade Bambara, and Toni Morrison. Although Hurston failed to define new parameters for discourse between men and women, she gave her protagonist a voice that allowed her to speak for herself. Their Eyes Were Watching God offers a point of departure for a new generation of African American women writers who are attempting to bridge the communicative chasm that exists between men and women.

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The Great Depression

For southern farmers, both Black and White, who did not enjoy the prosperity of northern industrial centers, the Great Depression had begun in the 1920s, well before the stock market crash of 1929. Factors such as soil erosion, the attack of the boll weevil on cotton crops, and the increasing competition from foreign markets led to widespread poverty amongst southern farmers. The majority of African Americans were still farming in the South and they were much harder hit than the White population, even after the advent of President Roosevelt's New Deal. The numbers of Blacks on relief were three to four times higher than the number of Whites, but relief organizations discriminated by race; some would not help Blacks altogether, while others gave lower amounts of aid to Blacks than they did to Whites. Such practices led one NAACP leader to call the program "the same raw deal." Many critics have criticized Their Eyes Were Watching God for ignoring the plight of African-American farmers in the South during the 1920s and 30s, although Hurston does briefly describe the downtrodden migrant workers who come to pick beans on the muck. "Skillets, beds, patched up spare inner tubes all hanging and dangling from the ancient cars on the outside and hopeful humanity, herded and hovered on the inside, chugging on to the muck. People ugly from ignorance and broken from being poor."

The Great Migration and the Harlem Renaissance

A large number of African-Americans fought in the first World War under the banner of freedom, only to return home to find how far they were from such a goal. By 1920, over one million Blacks had fled the South, where they had little chance of rising out of poverty, and migrated to the industrial centers of the North where they obtained jobs in factories and packing houses, eventually making up as much as twenty percent of the industrial work force there. The migration of Blacks to northern cities caused Whites to fear that their jobs would be threatened, and increased racial tensions erupted in race riots in 1917. Nonetheless, many Blacks began to vocally demand an end to discrimination. Out of this climate came calls for a "New Negro," who would be filled with racial pride and demand justice for his people. While earlier Black leaders, represented by Booker T. Washington, had accepted segregation and preached cooperation and patience, new Black leaders like W. E. B. DuBois insisted that concessions and appeasements were not the correct approach, and that complete equality could only be achieved by demanding it without compromise. DuBois also believed that the "Talented Tenth," his name for the small percentage of educated Blacks, must lead the way for the masses of Blacks who still lived in poverty and lacked educational opportunities. DuBois's ideas were reflected in the newly formed Black middle class, which, although small, sought to exert an influence on behalf of all Blacks. The new efforts of this Black elite were centered in Harlem, where a large percentage of migrating Blacks ended up, turning the area into a rich, thriving center of Black culture. The new energy generated there by jazz musicians, writers, artists, actors, and intellectuals became known as the Harlem Renaissance. This artistic and intellectual movement confronted the racial prejudices of White America by demanding equal recognition for their talent and by depicting the injustices experienced by African-Americans. But ironically, although the artists of the Harlem Renaissance intended their works to promote better conditions for Blacks less fortunate than themselves, few Blacks around the country were even aware of the movement. In fact, it was more often Whites who comprised the audiences and readerships of the products of the Harlem Renaissance. A cult of the primitive, which celebrated all things exotic and sensual, had become all the rage in New York and many wealthy Whites flocked to Harlem to witness and participate in the revelry. But wealthy Whites were essential to the livelihood of many Black artists and writers who relied on their patronage, a fact regretted by many who felt that the artistic products of African-Americans were muted to appeal to the tastes of the Whites they depended on. Although the stock market crash of 1929 brought much of the activity in Harlem to an end, the creative energies of those involved had not abated, and many, like Zora Neale Hurston, produced their best work through the 1930s.

Race Colonies

After the Civil War, former slaves formed a number of all-Black towns all over the South, in an effort to escape the segregation and discrimination they experienced amongst Whites. By 1914, approximately thirty such towns were in existence. Eatonville, Florida, the town where Zora Neale Hurston grew up and the setting for much of Their Eyes Were Watching God, was the first such town to be incorporated and to win the right of self-governance. In Eatonville, the Jim Crow laws that segregated public schools, housing, restaurants, theaters, and drinking fountains all over the South, did not exist.

Last Updated on July 23, 2020, by eNotes Editorial. Word Count: 120

Their Eyes Were Watching God takes place during the 1920s and '30s and is set in a series of all-Black communities in rural Florida. After the Civil War, former slaves formed a number of towns all over the South, in an effort to escape the segregation and discrimination they experienced among Whites. By 1914, approximately thirty such towns were in existence. Eatonville, Florida, the town where Zora Neale Hurston grew up and the setting for much of Their Eyes Were Watching God, was the first such town to be incorporated and to win the right of self-governance. In Eatonville, the Jim Crow laws that segregated public schools, housing, restaurants, theaters, and drinking fountains all over the South, did not exist.

Last Updated on July 23, 2020, by eNotes Editorial. Word Count: 618

Although the framing device of Janie telling Pheoby her story sets up the novel as Janie's story, it is not told in the first person. Instead, a narrative voice tells most of the story, and there has been much discussion of whose voice this is. Claire Crabtree, writing in Southern Literary Journal, argues that it is "always close to but not identical with Janie's consciousness," indicating that the omniscient narrator, who knows more about other characters' thoughts than Janie could know herself, is also closely aligned with the heroine. The narrator also uses free indirect speech at many points to convey Janie's thoughts, another indication that the narrator and Janie's consciousness are closely aligned. But Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in his The Signifying Monkey, argues that the narrative voice "echoes and aspires to the status of the impersonality, anonymity, and authority of the Black vernacular tradition, a nameless, selfless tradition, at once collective and compelling." The narrator, then, who speaks in standard English, while the characters speak in Black dialect, becomes, according to Gates, more and more representative of the Black community as it progressively adopts the patterns of Black vernacular speech. The narrative voice takes on the aspect of oral speech, telling not only Janie's story, but many other stories as well. For example, Nanny's voice takes over as she tells the story of Janie's heritage, and the voices on the porch also take over for long stretches as their "arguments" tell the story of life in Eatonville. In essence, there are many storytellers within the larger story of Janie's life, and many voices inform the novel.

One of the most unique features of Their Eyes Were Watching God is its integration of folklore with fiction. Hurston borrows literary devices from the Black rural oral tradition, which she studied as an anthropologist, to further cement her privileging of that tradition over the Western literary tradition. For example, she borrows the technique of repetition in threes found commonly in folklore in her depiction of Janie's three marriages. Also, in the words of Crabtree, "Janie follows a pattern familiar to folklorists of a young person's journey from home to face adventure and various dangers, followed by a triumphant homecoming." In addition, Janie returns "richer and wiser" than she left, and she is ready to share her story with Pheoby, intending that the story be repeated, as a kind of folktale to be passed on.

The Harlem Renaissance, which experienced its heyday in the 1920s but also flourished well into the 1930s, was an outpouring of creative innovation among Blacks that celebrated the achievements of Black intellectuals and artists. The initial goal of the writers of the Harlem Renaissance was to overcome racism and convince the White public that African-Americans were more intelligent than the stereotypes of docile, ignorant Blacks that pervaded the popular arena. In order to do so, then, most of the early writers associated with the movement imitated the themes and styles of mainstream, White literature. But later writers felt that African-American literature should depict the unique and debilitating circumstances in which Blacks lived, confronting their White audiences with scenes of brutal racism. Zora Neale Hurston, considered the most important female member of the Harlem Renaissance, felt that the writings of African-Americans should celebrate the speech and traditions of Black people. The use of dialect in Their Eyes Were Watching God caused much controversy among other Black writers of the day when it was first published because many felt that such language in the mouths of Black characters perpetuated negative stereotypes about Blacks as ignorant, but more modern commentators agree that the novel's celebration of Black language was the most important contribution Hurston made to African-American literature.

Last Updated on July 23, 2020, by eNotes Editorial. Word Count: 729

For southern farmers, both Black and White, who did not enjoy the prosperity of northern industrial centers, the Great Depression had begun in the 1920s, well before the stock market crash of 1929. Factors such as soil erosion, the attack of the boll weevil on cotton crops, and the increasing competition from foreign markets led to widespread poverty among southern farmers. The majority of African Americans were still farming in the South, and they were much harder hit than the White population, even after the advent of President Roosevelt's New Deal. The percentage of Blacks on relief was three to four times higher than the number of Whites, but relief organizations discriminated by race; some would not help Blacks altogether, while others gave lower amounts of aid to Blacks than they did to Whites. Such practices led one NAACP leader to call the program "the same raw deal." Many commentators have criticized Their Eyes Were Watching God for ignoring the plight of African-American farmers in the South during the 1920s and '30s, although Hurston does briefly describe the downtrodden migrant workers who come to pick beans on the muck. "Skillets, beds, patched up spare inner tubes all hanging and dangling from the ancient cars on the outside and hopeful humanity, herded and hovered on the inside, chugging on to the muck. People ugly from ignorance and broken from being poor."

A large number of African Americans fought in the First World War under the banner of freedom, only to return home to find how far they were from such a goal. By 1920, over one million Blacks had fled the South, where they had little chance of rising out of poverty, and migrated to the industrial centers of the North where they obtained jobs in factories and packing houses, eventually making up as much as twenty percent of the industrial work force there. The migration of Blacks to northern cities caused Whites to fear that their jobs would be threatened, and increased racial tensions erupted in race riots in 1917. Nonetheless, many Blacks began to vocally demand an end to discrimination. Out of this climate came calls for a "New Negro," who would be filled with racial pride and would demand justice for his people. While earlier Black leaders, represented by Booker T. Washington, had accepted segregation and preached cooperation and patience, new Black leaders like W. E. B. DuBois insisted that concessions and appeasements were not the correct approach, and that complete equality could only be achieved by demanding it without compromise. DuBois also believed that the "Talented Tenth," his name for the small percentage of educated Blacks, must lead the way for the masses of Blacks who still lived in poverty and lacked educational opportunities. DuBois's ideas were reflected in the newly formed Black middle class, which, although small, sought to exert an influence on behalf of all Blacks. The new efforts of this Black elite were centered in Harlem, where a large percentage of migrating Blacks ended up, turning the area into a rich, thriving center of Black culture. The new energy generated there by jazz musicians, writers, artists, actors, and intellectuals became known as the Harlem Renaissance. This artistic and intellectual movement confronted the racial prejudices of White America by demanding equal recognition for their talent and by depicting the injustices experienced by African Americans. But ironically, although the artists of the Harlem Renaissance intended their works to promote better conditions for Blacks less fortunate than themselves, few Blacks around the country were even aware of the movement. In fact, it was more often Whites who comprised the audiences and readerships of the products of the Harlem Renaissance. A cult of the primitive, which celebrated all things exotic and sensual, had become all the rage in New York and many wealthy Whites flocked to Harlem to witness and participate in the revelry. But wealthy Whites were essential to the livelihood of many Black artists and writers who relied on their patronage, a fact regretted by many who felt that the artistic products of African Americans were muted to appeal to the tastes of the Whites on whom they depended. Although the stock market crash of 1929 brought much of the activity in Harlem to an end, the creative energies of those involved had not abated, and many, like Zora Neale Hurston, produced their best work through the 1930s.

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1920s and '30s: The number of unemployed African-Americans during the Great Depression was as much as 25% in northern cities, and well over 50% in many southern cities, figures that were three to four times higher than the number of unemployed Whites.

Today: Unemployment among African-Americans averages between 10 and 11%, higher than the 4.5 to 5% among Whites.

1920s and '30s: Blues and jazz flourished from New Orleans to Harlem. Although these indigenous American music forms were the dominant mode of expression for the oppressed Black culture, they also attracted a large audience of Whites.

Today: Rap and hip-hop are the major musical forms that express the unique experiences of Black culture in America's ghettos, but they also have many non-Black fans, not only in America, but all over the world.

1920s and '30s: In the South, Jim Crow laws dictated that Blacks and Whites use separate drinking fountains, eat in separate restaurants, and learn in separate schools. In the North, although such laws did not exist, Blacks were more subtly excluded from better jobs, schools, and neighborhoods, creating Black ghettos in the major cities.

Today: Affirmative action plans to end discrimination in hiring have been in place for fifteen years. Some people are now calling for their abolishment, claiming the goal has been achieved, while others believe there is still a long way to go.

1920s and '30s: Although many women writers participated in the Harlem Renaissance, they experienced the prejudice of their male counterparts, who excluded all but a chosen few of them from the anthologies and prestigious periodicals.

Today: African-American women writers are experiencing their own "Renaissance," as represented by Tom Morrison's receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. Most contemporary critics agree that some of the most important literature being produced today is by African-American women, many of whom claim a direct heritage from Zora Neale Hurston.

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A classic feminist novel, The Awakening (1899) by Kate Chopin, follows a well-to-do White woman from Louisiana on a perilous path of self-discovery. The novel challenges the strict mores of a society that provides only one path of self-fulfillment for women, namely marriage and motherhood.

Other works of interest include The Souls of Black Folk (1903) by W. E. B. DuBois, a classic document of African-American cultural history. In this collection of essays, DuBois articulates, among other things, his influential theory of "double consciousness," which describes how African Americans wrestle between two identities as Black and American. Mules and Men, published in 1935, was Zora Neale Hurston's second book, and it was the first collection of Black folklore published in America.

David Levering Lewis's When Harlem Was in Vogue (1981) is a classic historical study of the Harlem Renaissance. Lewis surveys all the major writers, artists, and intellectuals associated with the movement.

The Bluest Eye (1970) by Toni Morrison portrays a young Black girl's obsession with blue eyes and blond hair. Having accepted society's definition of beauty as White, she has learned to despise her own Black features, which leads to tragic consequences.

Their Eyes Were Watching God has been recorded on cassette in an abridged version by Caedmon. This recording, which was issued in 1991, was performed by Ruby Dee. In 1994, Recorded Books produced an unabridged recording of the novel on audio cassette, read by Michele-Denise Woods. Movie rights to the novel are owned by Quincy Jones and Oprah Winfrey, although as of 2000 no film had yet been made.

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Sources

Claire Crabtree, "The Confluence of Folklore, Feminism and Black Self-Determination in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God," Southern Literary Journal, Vol. 17, No. 2, Spring, 1985, pp. 54-66.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., The Signifying Monkey, Oxford, 1988.

Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Harper & Row, New York, 1937.

Jennifer Jordon, "Feminist Fantasies: Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God," Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, Vol. 7, Spring, 1988, pp. 105-17.

Alain Locke, review in Opportunity, June 1,1938, reprinted in Zora Neale Hurston: Critical Perspectives Past and Present, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and K. A. Appiah, Amistad, 1993, p. 18.

Lucille Tompkins, review in New York Times Book Review, September 26, 1937, reprinted in Zora Neale Hurston: Critical Perspectives Past and Present, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and K. A. Appiah, Amistad, 1993, pp. 18-19.

Alice Walker, "Looking for Zora," in In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983, pp. 93-116.

Cheryl Wall, "Zora Neale Hurston Changing Her Own Words," in Zora Neale Hurston: Critical Perspectives Past and Present, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and K. A. Appiah, Amistad, 1993, pp. 78-97.

Mary Helen Washington, " 'I Love the Way Janie Crawford Left Her Husbands:' Emergent Female Hero," in Zora Neale Hurston: Critical Perspectives Past and Present, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and K. A. Appiah, Amistad, 1993, pp. 98-109.

Gay Wilentz, "Defeating the False God: Janie's Self-Determination in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God," in Faith of a (Woman) Writer, edited by Alice Kessler-Harris and William McBrien, Greenwood Press, 1988, pp. 285-91.

Richard Wright, review in New Masses, October 5, 1937, reprinted in Zora Neale Hurston: Critical Perspectives Past and Present, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and K. A. Appiah, Amistad, 1993, pp. 16-17.

For Further Study

Sharon Davie, "Free Mules, Talking Buzzards, and Cracked Plates: The Politics of Dislocation in Their Eyes Were Watching God," in PMLA, May, 1993, pp. 446-459.

Scholarly article which examines the relationships among control, reason, and language in the novel.

Robert E. Hemenway, Zora Neale Hurston, Illinois, 1977.

A popular biography of the writer which includes a good discussion of her work and its relationship to her life.

Karla F. C Holloway, Moorings & Metaphors: Figures of Culture and Gender in Black Women's Literature, Rutgers, 1992.

A book-length study which considers the work of several Black women writers and several of Hurston's works in addition to Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Pearlie Peters, "Women and Assertive Voice in Hurston's Fiction and Folklore," in The Literary Griot, Spring/Fall, 1992, pp. 100-10

An article which discusses the African-American oral tradition and its social significance.

Priscilla Wald, "Becoming 'Colored': The Self-Authorized Language of Difference in Zora Neale Hurston," in American Literary History, Spring, 1990, pp. 79-100.

Scholarly article which discusses Hurston's ability to be both the observer and the observed and which compares her fiction to her studies of folklore.

Alice Walker, "Zora Neale Hurston: A Cautionary Tale and a Partisan View," in In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983, pp. 83-92.

An essay which discusses Walker's discovery of Hurston's work.

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Bloom, Harold, ed. Zora Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God”: Modern Critical Interpretations. New York: Chelsea House, 1987. A collection of selections and essays on the novel written by critics of African American literature. Bloom’s introduction places the novel in the world tradition of novels and discounts its role in the genealogy of African American writing. Bloom argues as well that Hurston’s writing transcends the limitations of feminist and racial political ideologies.

Boyd, Valerie. Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston. New York: Scribner, 2002. Detailed biography of Hurston, covering her personal and professional lives and relating them to the major historical events through which she lived.

Callahan, John F. “’Mah Tongue Is in Mah Friend’s Mouf’: The Rhetoric of Intimacy and Immensity in Their Eyes Were Watching God. ” In In the African-American Grain: The Pursuit of Voice in Twentieth-Century Black Fiction. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988. Callahan’s essay examines the most controversial aspect of Hurston’s novel, the role of narrative voice in the telling of Janie’s story. He emphasizes the novel’s utilization of African American folk forms of storytelling, which promote a democratic conception of culture.

Cooke, Michael G. “Solitude: The Beginnings of Self-Realization in Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, and Ralph Ellison.” In Afro-American Literature in the Twentieth Century: The Achievement of Intimacy. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1984. Cooke highlights the movement from materialism to self-fulfillment in the work of three very different African American writers.

Davies, Kathleen. “Zora Neale Hurston’s Poetics of Embalmment: Articulating the Rage of Black Women and Narrative Self-Defense.” African American Review 26 (Spring, 1992): 147-160. Davies argues that Hurston’s own relationships with abusive men are glossed over in her biography and the novel by her reliance on the ideology of love.

Hemenway, Robert. Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977. The standard biography of Hurston; helped to establish her as a major writer. Includes material on her life as well as critical analyses of her novels and other work.

Hurston, Zora Neale. Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters. Edited by Carla Kaplan. New York: Doubleday, 2002. A collection of more than five hundred letters, annotated and arranged chronologically.

Woodson, Jon. “Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and the Influence of Jens Peter Jacobsen’s Marie Grubbe. ” African American Review 26 (Winter, 1992): 619-636. Woodson traces the similarities in the plot of Their Eyes Were Watching God and Jens Peter Jacobsen’s Fru Marie Grubbe (1876). He argues that Hurston turns the basic plot in Jacobsen’s tragic novel into the affirmative plot of Their Eyes Were Watching God in order to counteract the negative stereotypes of women in fiction.

Wright, Richard. “Between Laughter and Tears.” New Masses 25 (October 5, 1937): 22, 25. A diatribe against Their Eyes Were Watching God by the soon-to-be-famous African American novelist. Wright accuses Hurston of contributing to almost every stereotype concerning African Americans and also accuses her of accommodating her wealthy White audience.

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Their Eyes Were Watching God has been recorded on cassette in an abridged version by Caedmon. This recording, which came out in 1991, was performed by Ruby Dee.

In 1994, Recorded Books produced an unabridged recording of the novel on sound cassette, read by Michele-Denise Woods.

The movie rights to the novel are owned by Quincy Jones and Oprah Winfrey, although as of 1997 no film had yet been made.

Last Updated on July 23, 2020, by eNotes Editorial. Word Count: 213

Davie, Sharon. "Free Mules, Talking Buzzards, and Cracked Plates: The Politics of Dislocation in Their Eyes Were Watching God." PMLA (May 1993): 446-59. Scholarly article which examines the relationships among control, reason, and language in the novel.

Hemenway, Robert E. Zora Neale Hurston. University of Illinois Press, 1977. A popular biography of the writer which includes a good discussion of her work and its relationship to her life.

Holloway, Karla F. C. Moorings & Metaphors: Figures of Culture and Gender in Black Women's Literature. Rutgers University Press, 1992. A book-length study which considers the work of several Black women writers and several of Hurston's works in addition to Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Peters, Pearlie. "Women and Assertive Voice in Hurston's Fiction and Folklore." The Literary Griot (spring-fall 1992): 100-10. An article which discusses the African- American oral tradition and its social significance.

Wald, Priscilla. "Becoming 'Colored': The Self-Authorized Language of Difference in Zora Neale Hurston." American Literary History (spring 1990): 79-100. Scholarly article which discusses Hurston's ability to be both the observer and the observed and which compares her fiction to her studies of folklore.

Walker, Alice. "Zora Neale Hurston: A Cautionary Tale and a Partisan View." In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983, pp. 83-92. An essay which discusses Walker's discovery of Hurston's work.