The beauty of childhood is the
innocence of not knowing the corruption of the world. Janie’s character is very
naïve in the beginning of the novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God.” She admits
that “Ah didn’t know Ah wuzn’t white till Ah was round six years old.” (pg. 8) Janie
saw a photograph of herself with other white children and she couldn’t pick out
which one she was. She exclaimed “Aw, aw! Ah’m colored!” (pg. 9) when she
discovered that she was the only colored one in the photo. Her character at
this point is pure, not tampered by the racism and judgment of the world.
Janie loses her innocence after
kissing Johnny Taylor and getting caught by her Nanny. Janie just wanted to
experience love like when she sees the bee pollinating the flower.
But Nanny desires Janie to be a wife, not to love. So Janie
marries Logan Killicks to please her Nanny but she also hopes of finding
herself, her future, and her love in him. She never loved him to begin with,
but in her heart she hoped she would grow into loving him like the bee
pollinating the flower. Unfortunately, Janie learned that “marriage did not
make love” (pg. 25). Her innocence that originally had been there slowly
disappeared until she accepted that her “dream was dead” and she “became a
woman” (page 25.) Her character lost innocence when she compromised her dream for
her Nanny's expectation. Janie grew into womanhood through her failed marriage.
Women of the 1930's were forced to mature at a very young age due to the influence of society around them. It was not uncommon to have a large age difference between husband and wife; men needed to earn enough money to support a woman before they could marry. These older men often wanted to marry teenage girls like Janie, who did not know any better, but felt they needed to follow tradition. Janie was forced into a life of misery along with many women of the time period, losing her innocence before it was necessary.
ReplyDeleteJanie seemed to fit in fairly well with who she lived with and they accepted her as well until she had lost her innocence. Janie lost her innocence younger than she should have because she hadn't know that there was any corruption out there. Once she had kissed Johnny Taylor, just as you said, she lost her innocence and from then, Nanny wanted her to get married and not to love and told the story of her daughter and explained why she didn't want her to go down a similar path.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your analysis of Janie. When she kisses Johnny Taylor, she doesn't think much of it, but Nanny thinks she is loosing her innocence. When Nanny tells her she wants her to get married, Janie does not seem to understand Nanny's purpose for doing so, which shows how naive she is as a young girl.
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