The Perversion of Love
“Now, women forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly” (1).
The dream is the truth. As I was reading the first five chapters in “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston, I kept coming back to this line. For such a small, ambiguous opening, I felt it held some serious weight in the context of Janie’s life story and her unending search for love.
At the innocent age of sixteen, Janie’s eyes, and more importantly her heart, became awakened to the lure of love. As she was sitting under a pear tree, watching it blossom and burst forth, beckoning the bees to come to her, she observed, “So this was a marriage!” (11). To Janie, this beautiful song and dance between the female tree and the male bees, created a perfect harmony; it was the very essence of love. And in her mind, there was no other way for love to be; it was a captivating, sweeping romance. It was a beautiful symphony, with all of the natural beauty of the world sweetly playing its strings.
With all of this unassuming grandeur built up in her mind, Janie found herself being swept away in the music. The bees and the trees were calling to each other, and she felt herself being summoned by some unknown. The trees were the answer for the bees; who was she an answer to? This was the beginning of Janie’s truth coming alive. This dream of how love must be stirred up so powerfully in her mind and her heart that it became her truth. And ultimately, led her to the unhappy life she leads.
Quickly after coming to this revelation of love, Janie finds herself awakened to be living in a nightmare. Janie innocently gives in to her infatuation with love and kisses a boy that is passing by. But what she saw as part of the symphony of love, her Nanny saw as the beginning of a dangerous cycle of lust. Nanny concludes that the only way to avoid this pitfall is to marry Janie off to an older, wealthy man. Janie puts up a fight, but ultimately does as Nanny wishes, even though she does not love Logan Killicks, her intended.
When Janie enters the marriage, she is still clinging to her dream of the pear tree and the bees; hoping that soon she will partake of the grand song and dance. When she does not, she finds herself completely confused. Where is the love that she dreams of? This marriage is not love; this is not her truth. And so eventually, she acts accordingly. Janie leaves Logan behind to marry a man who seems to be promising her a life full of magic and music; a life where she can blossom under his love.
But by the end of chapter five, already this romance is going stale for Janie. She is still caught up in her dream of what love is. And we see clearly, that this is no longer merely a dream for Janie. It is her truth. And she will not be happy unit she has found what her heart has told her head is true love. So far, all she has found is disillusionment with a perverted sort of love, where the air is stale and silent, shutting out all sounds of music and blocking the sun, leaving her a withered blossom begging for life.
posted by Stephanie @ 5:02 PM
5 Comments
5 Comments:
Stephanie, I really enjoyed reading this post. You brought up the interesting theme of Janie's dream, truth, and reality, and wrote about it beautifully. I thought the question you posed, "Who is Janie the answer to?" is one of, if not the, major themes of the book. The conclusion was really strong, especially the poetic last sentence.
I think that Janie's dream is significant because it represents her independence as a woman. I can almost see a feminist ideal in Hurston's writing. Like Chopin Hurston's characters are strong independent women. It seems as if no on can control Janie. She is free thinking and in control. I think that characters like that are unusual for the time period.
I agree with you opinion. Thinking about what you said it seems like Janie seems to think that love is a look or someone's status, based on what she is being told by her grandmother. So she seems confused when she realizes she is not in love with her first husband. Each time this is happening to her she make it seem like she knows what love is but every time she gets into the marriage she realizes she had the wrong ideas about love.
Stephanie,
I agree completely that Janie does not have any idea of what true love is. I liked how you made a metaphor between Janie’s longing to find love, and a lonely blossom. I feel that Janie’s relationship with her second husband is in fact going down the tubes, yet we still are not sure of whether or not she loves him or not. Since Janie’s idea of love is a fantasy, we do not know of whether or not her expectations are just too high, or she just does not recognize true love because she is looking for the wrong thing. She might not even realize when she is in love, or when someone loves her. When looking at the story from this aspect, Janie’s misery and loveless life could in fact be her own doing, simply because of the fact that she is in her dream world so deep that she can not snap out of it.
I agree with your ideas and feelings about Wright's way of writing. I compared his writing to Frederick Douglas' style and felt that Wright was telling his life story and wrote it very nonchalantly. Douglas on the other hand was very descriptive about his abuse and feelings and went into such vivde details about his experiences with racism and discrimination, however, his experience was in the time of slavery. I feel that these two writers had different outlooks and writing styles because they were coming from two different times of racism.
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