Independence in Community


       Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God has 3 primary community settings: Janie’s hometown, Eatonville, and the Muck. Janie’s independence and self-realization is closely tied to her engagement in these communities, which increases over the course of the novel. In Janie’s hometown, we learn almost nothing about the wider community. We know that Janie was raised in close proximity to the single white family, which we know may have isolated her to some degree from the rest of the town. We also know that a major party was thrown for the town when she and Logan were married. Other than that, however, we know essentially nothing about the community. After her encounter with Taylor, one of only a few named characters in the early chapters, Janie is shipped off to Logan, who lives far away from the rest of the town, and does not interact with his neighbors much if it all. Janie, as we know, quickly runs away with Jody, and settles in Eatonville, abandoning a place with no community in it. 
In Eatonville, Janie finds something of a community, enough that it is to Eatonville that she chooses to return following Tea Cake’s death. Obviously, her ability to interact with the Eatonville is crippled by Jody’s possessiveness and refusal to allow Janie normal interactions with other human beings, but she still manages to incorporate herself into the town, becoming incredibly close friends with Phoebe and associating to the maximum extent possible with the porch-men. She is also responsible for the idea of what to do with the donkey, even if Jody is the one who takes all the credit. Janie’s increasingly understands her desire for independence in Eatonville, even as Jody does not permit her that independence.
Then, with Tea Cake, on the Muck, Janie’s independence is showcased through her interactions with the wider community. Her friends visit her without much considering Tea Cake’s presence (very much not considering Tea Cake’s presence in the case of Mrs. Turner. Janie is well known in the community, as she works in the fields with them, and organizes various community activities with Tea Cake. Even after his death at her hands, many in the community begin to wonder if Janie will stay on the Muck, after their initial anger at her. Janie is able to choose both to go to the Muck, and then to come back from it, when she decides that without Tea Cake, there is nothing there for her. She makes the decision to leave a community, one which she loved, for the first time without prompting from an outside source at the end of the book, showing a completed journey to independent thought and action. 

Comments

  1. MitchellNovember 26, 2019 at 10:12 AM

    This is an interesting thread through the three main settings of the novel, and I've not noticed this particular progression before--or, how conspicuous the *lack* of community is in the early part of the story, where she's literally isolated on a farm alone with Logan. I was thinking how ambivalent the image of community in Eatonville is, with the opening scene in mind--but even there, we see that Janie does have a place in the picture, if only as a character everyone on the porch can hate on and gossip about. And earlier in Eatonville, during her term as "mayor's wife," we see community largely on the porch of the store, as something Janie is kept apart from by Joe--but definitely something desirable to have. She wishes she could listen in on the stories in Eatonville, while on the Muck she starts telling stories herself, to large, appreciative crowds. Community is better and more real once you're allowed to participate.

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