Women

So tackling this project shouldn’t be that hard but it is. Hurston tries to give Janie a life of her own, a mind if you will, that roams outside of her body. Her corporeal body however, is an entirely different manner. It’s tied and or bogged down in this life that she can’t handle. Her first husband wanted to use her as a mule if you will. He ran a farm and he expected his wife to help him with the farm. Understandable, my dad expects my mom to help out with certain things too; to the extent of plotting seeds while he plows? HAHAHAHA no. I am pretty sure she would draw the line right there. Janie however, is in the land where girls get no say and she is to do exactly what her husband tells her. Another example of this is Joe, her next husband. He starts out as this really sweet guy who would “rope the moon” for her if he could. Then, he gets caught up in the whole mayor idea. He breaks her is what he does. She takes that Janie she’s always wanted to be and hides it. A direct example of this is when he makes her hide her hair under the handkerchief. It’s a sign of submission. Until the day he died Janie had always had to hide behind this mask and be the mayor’s wife. She couldn’t be anything but because Joe didn’t want her to be. She was almost like a trophy wife now-a-days. She was a husk walking around with a planted smile on her face. She was more free with Tea Cake but was he any better than the others? He thought she was getting a little out of hand and he wasn’t mad at her but he hit her anyway. To teach her how to mind I suppose. Women were almost like a cattle and or pet dog. They were expected to submit, give all of themselves to their husbands while they give nothing, and were meant to mind every order they could think of. Now, it sounds ridiculous but then it was the law. I’m not going to sit here and say I haven’t seen something like that. My parents have been together for over twenty some odd years now…maybe longer but I don’t keep track. My dad expects my mom to take care of the house. He’ll pitch in now and then but he doesn’t really think it’s a guy thing to do. Understandable, it was how he was brought up. My mom was brought up the same way. No big deal. It is a big deal however, when someone decides they can beat submission into someone. I’ve never agreed with that policy. I’m not saying it for like…a little kid when you give them a slap on the butt go get them going or something but I’m talking about the kind of beating Janie gets when Tea Cake is simply mad. Now that’s ridiculous. I guess that’s what it was all about back then. There was a lot of love between the two of them but they couldn’t just talk out what was going on with each other. Tea Cake didn’t know any other way to get her to mind other than by using his fists. Ridiculous? Yes. Was it the way they lived? Yes. For women, that’d degrading. It makes you nothing more than an animal.