Janie and Land--BMDawson

It seems fitting to do my first blog post on a blogspot centered around environmental fiction on environment. I am going to address the interesting connection between the land and Janie.

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie seems to grow with each man who comes into her life. After the reader is confronted with Janie’s desire “to be a pear a tree—any tree in bloom,” she sees a boy walking down the road and kisses him (11). In kissing the boy on the sunny day, Janie grows in much the same fashion the tree she aspires to be does in kissing the sun.

The next man in Janie’s life is focused almost entirely on the environment. Every fiber of Logan’s being is put into bettering life through farming, and he is determined to have Janie join him in plowing fields. Metaphorically and literally, in helping farm, Janie would have been establishing roots, but she has not grown enough emotionally with Logan to root herself to his land.

After Logan, “a cityfied, stylish dressed man” comes along to sweep Janie off her feet and to a different area of Florida (27). At first glance of Joe, it should become apparent Janie will be unable to root her to Joe and his plans for success because a city is the opposite of environment and land. During 20 years of marriage to Jody, Janie never grows like the tree of imagination because Joe forbids her from being of the town and even makes her cover her hair—a symbolic blocking of the sun.

When Joe passes and is returned to the earth, Janie begins the grow as a person in her own right by uncovering her head and socializing as she sees fit, but not until Janie meets Tea Cake does she truly blossom as a woman. Throughout the novel, Janie has been opposed to working the land, but she is more than willing to plant beans in the muck with Tea Cake. Personally, I find it interesting Janie is able to grow as a woman in the area where there is “ground so rich that everything went wild” (129).

Janie’s growth seems to correlate with her ability to be one with the land and establish roots, and the demise of her love comes by way of the environment, as well. The hurricane forces Tea Cake and Janie to leave their roots and home in a rush causing them to abandon caution which allows Tea Cake to be bitten. Janie’s love is lost to the wild the muck seems to foster.