Janie's laborious life?

In the days following the celebration of labor in our country, I would like to examine how the idea of work is portrayed in Hurston’s novel, “Their Eyes Were Watching God.”

The idea of work helps to set an immediate generational and philosophical contrast between the young Janie and her grandmother, Nanny, a former slave who has suffered a life of forced labor. The reader can observe a big difference in the way these two characters view life and labor. Logan Killicks, an older man, is painted as a stable suitor for Janie in the eyes of Nanny because of his abundance of land, a reference to, not only the possibility of labor, but, the possibility of prospering from it, an attractive prospect to a former slave. Janie could not show less interest in working, however. She is repulsed by the signs of hard labor in Logan’s body: “his toe-nails look lak mule foots ‘tain’t nothin’ in de way of him washin’ his feet every evenin’ before he comes tuh bed” and “He don’t even never mention nothin’ pretty.” At the request of Logan for Janie to help him on the farm, Janie refuses and shortly after leaves him for a man that promises her a less laborious life: “You behind a plow! You ain’t got no mo’ business wid uh plow than uh hog is got wid auh holiday!”

As the reader later discovers, Janie’s life with Joe Starks is not what he promises which brings us to another stage of Janie’s character development in regards to labor. In the contrast between Janie’s marriages to Joe and Tea Cake there appears a divergence between the idea of leisure and work. Janie detests her job as a storekeeper, a duty assigned to her under her oppressive marriage with Joe, and the idea of labor quickly becomes equated with unhappiness, while the leisure spent with Tea Cake (fishing, gambling, picnics, playing checkers, vacations…etc.) becomes associated with her happiness. “Somebody wanted her to play. Somebody thought it natural for her to play.”

The idea of work as an oppressive task is underscored by the incident of the mule in the novel. In a great symbolic gesture, Joe buys an overworked mule from his oppressive “slave-driver” in order to free him from his life of labor and struggle. Its interesting to consider these notions of freedom and work as similar to slavery in the context of a post-slavery era of our country.

However, finally we see Janie working in perhaps the least glamorous area of work that she is presented with in the novel. Janie joins Tea Cake “in the muck”, with Tea Cake with the most satisfaction that she experiences throughout the novel. She finds the perfect balance between leisure and wor spending her days working alongside Tea Cake and her evenings with her friends dancing and gambling and talking. This evolution in the way Janie experiences her work life reflects her evolution and growth as a character in her search for love and happiness. Not only does it achieve this but it provides a sort of resolution to the perception of labor as oppressive as established under slavery.