Review of Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

*Their Eyes Were Watching God* by Zora Neale Hurston (1937). Published by Amistad.

When I’m writing this, I have been on such a big Zora Neale Hurston kick. It started because we had to read one of her books for my traveler literature course (which focuses on diaspora through the Atlantic Slave Trade), which was Tell My Horse, and I saw this as an opportunity to keep going and dive deeper into her work like I had never done before.

I’ve been meaning to do this for a while now, as I’m very interested in Hurston, her work, and the origins of her criticism (many male Black intellectuals of her period saw her as not radical enough and backwards, which has been a part of my research on the same period in Korean women’s literature).

So when I was doing my work at the Smithsonian, I ended up checking out a copy of this novel to listen to while I was doing my spreadsheets for the month on social media.

It was interesting to listen to this novel in an audiobook format because Hurston is known to use dialect, and she does it unashamedly in this novel as well.

Anyways, I’ve rambled enough. Let’s get into the review!

A woman returns to her hometown and reflects on the circumstances of her life and coming of age.

Our main character in Their Eyes Were Watching God is Janie, now in her forties, who is a Black woman coming home after not having spent some time in her hometown for a bit.

When she comes home, she reflects on her life to the character of Phoeby, beginning with the time she discovered her sexuality and lust for another boy. She allows a boy to kiss her in front of her grandmother, but, as we learn, her grandmother’s own story is not a happy one.

Once a slave, her grandmother, Nanny, gave birth to a mixed race kid after being raped by her owner. She wanted her daughter to live a good life ad get an education, and after the Civil War, she escapes from the situation they were in.

But when she raises her daughter with all of this care, the girl is raped and gives birth to our protagonist. To cope, she begins drinking and eventually abandons both of them.

So Nanny raises Janie, and even arranges the chance for Janie to get married to an older farmer. She wants her granddaughter to achieve the dreams she had for her daughter, but the farmer doesn’t want a wife to love.

He wants a wife to be a servant and ordered around, and when Janie confides with her Nanny that she doesn’t think this situation is ideal and that she wants love, Nanny doesn’t take that well. She dies not long after that.

Disillusioned, Janie leaves her husband and runs away with a man. They go to the all-Black community in Eatonville and the man she runs away with buys land, opens a store, and gets elected as mayor.

But when Janie realizes this man wants to use her too, as he wants a generic wife he can show off to all of the town and his buddies, she knows this, too, is not love. They remain married, but he treats her poorly and even abuses her.

When he begins to die, she tells him he would never let her be free. His death is a form of liberation when she inherits the estate, and she falls in love with a man named Vergible.

She runs away with him, too, to Jacksonville. They work in planting, but this relationship is also unstable and violent at times. Janie thinks this is love, but when a hurricane happens, he’s bitten by a dog after she almost drowns and becomes unstable. After he tries to kill her, she shoots him in self-defense.

The trial begins, as she has been charged with murder. The white jury acquits her, although the Black men who were friends with him tried to tear her down, and she gives him a beautiful funeral. Although the friends forgive her, she leaves back home, and the locals gossip about her when she arrives.

Overall Thoughts

I will admit, before I listened to this book I had no idea what it was about. I knew it was a failure because Hurston was critiqued by everyone in her lifetime about her work, but was rediscovered after her unfortunate death and decline due to poverty.

I was really impressed at this tale of one woman’s story for independence, as well as how it takes place in the Deep South—during the Harlem Renaissance, many stories over veer towards certain settings, but not deep Florida.

It also reflects Hurston’s attitudes towards racial harmony, as she would get along with both whites and Blacks—something she was also critiqued for. This is such an interesting novel though, and I highly recommend it.

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