Simple Living

As Hurtson’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God progresses a pattern seems to develop that relates simplicity in life to an individual’s happiness. This pattern takes the shape of a bell curve as Janie’s life progresses from the happy simplicity of a young woman coming of age, to a climax of her unhappiness in her complicated life as a mayor’s wife, and then once again back to a happy and simple life on the “muck” of the everglades with her lover.

In the beginning life for Janie seems so simple, love and life seem to be as natural and as straightforward as a pear tree blossoming in the springtime. Love was as simple as the act of a bee pollinating a flower- or so she believed. These thoughts are soon complicated by the overbearing influence of Nanny as she explains to a young Janie the muddling factors of race and gender that come in the way of Janie’s simple and happy picture of life and love. From here the complicating factors of life accumulate through the story and as a consequence so to does Janie’s misery.

The climax of Janie’s misery comes at a very complicated point in her life as she fills the roles of an African American woman, a wife, a storekeeper, and a political figure (by way of her husband’s role as Mayor). This misery increases, as the time flows by until this complicated and restricted life finally leaves Janie an uninterested spectator in her own life. This climax occurs when Janie life is filled with the complicating and man-made institutions of race, gender, and politics and when she is the farthest away from her simple and natural conception of life and love.

Eventually, however, Janie replaces the misery in her life with happiness as simple living and love come to replace these unnatural and dividing conceptions of men. One by one, it seems, these institutions of race and gender and politics are weeded out as ill-founded and needlessly complex influences from Janie’s life. When Tea Cake comes into the story their travelling and the story’s progression removes first the politics from Janie’s life as they leave Eatonville. Then during the courtship between Tea Cake and Janie, and on into their marriage, most of the prejudicial ideas of gender are removed, in that the only differences maintained, for the most part, are those natural ones that will always remain between men and women as she even works alongside of Tea Cake during their time in the Everglades. Then finally even ideas of race are tossed out from her life as is made apparent by their mingling with the “Saws” down on the muck and her inability to connect with Mrs. Turner and her racist ideals. Once these influences have been removed Janie’s life becomes a simple and full one as she spends her days enjoying the people around her, loving Tea Cake, and in general simply living.

This return to simplicity and natural living for Janie brings happiness back into her life and restores her belief in a natural and free love that she once held. The happiest moments in Janie’s life occur when she is the most removed from the complicating and restricting conceptions of civilized man, such as race, gender, and politics showing that, at least according to Hurston’s view, life is better if it is simply lived.