Their Eyes Were Watching God and The Bluest Eye

Their Eyes Were Watching God was written by Zora Neale Hurston in 1937. Hurston moved to New York in 1925 and had a significant role in the Harlem Renaissance . The novel is about a girl named Janie who was raised by her grandmother in Eatonville, Florida because her mother ran away.  She experiences with three different marriages over the course of the novel, and all of them have their ups and downs but none end up working out. Her third marriage with Tea Cake was going well until he got bit by a rabied dog and Janie was forced to shoot and ultimately kill him.

 

Even though these two novels have similar backgrounds, being in the 1900’s in predominantly black towns, the manner in which society acts and views African-American’s are completely different. In The Bluest Eye, Pecola goes to Mr. Yacobowski’s store one day with her three pennies to buy some candy. Claudia states, “He does not see her, because for him there is nothing to see”(Morrison 48). Blackness is a form of invisibility for whites in Morrison’s novel. The white clerk “does not see her” because the little black girl is not important to him since she is economically inferior and is carrying only three cents. Racism is also a form of paralysis in Morrison’s novel because Pecola couldn’t even give the money to the clerk; she stuck her hand out and waited for him to take it.

In Florida’s black society in Hurston’s novel, there was still many racist people but the society overall seemed to be more tolerant and understanding of race. At the end of the novel when Janie was doing her trial for killing Tea Cake, the narrator asks, “What need had they to leave their richness to come look on Janie in her overalls”(Hurston 185)? Rich, white people left what they were doing to watch a poor black girl in court for killing a black man. In The Bluest Eye, this never would have happened because whites and blacks refused to associate with one another and never got along, as illustrated in the scene with Mr. Yacobowski and Pecola.

One of the most significant symbols in both of these novels is hair and it’s powerful effect on people. First of all, Janie’s hair is symbolic of her individuality. At the beginning of the novel, the town’s critique illustrates how it is not right and undignified for woman around Janie’s age to wear their hair down. Janie is unique and her refusal to follow this tradition shows how she is a tough and rebellious individual. Also, similar to The Bluest Eye, Janie’s hair symbolizes whiteness and white power. Blacks in both novels praise women with straight hair because it is the most beautiful, particularly straight and blonde. Mrs. Turner, a black woman, worships Janie because she has straight hair. Also, it gives her an advantage in her relationships because her hair  makes her more “white” than her husbands, therefore giving her more power than them. In The Bluest Eye, African American woman see tight, curly hair as a source of shame and ugliness. Claudia and Pecola are given white dolls with straight blonde hair to be shown what looks the two girls should love.

 Claudia says about the dolls, “Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs—all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured”(20). Because of the expectations in society regarding hair, Geraldine and Pauline straighten it to look more beautiful. The craving of straight hair was not just evident in the books, but also real life. One of the most popular gels that people used at the time to acquire straight hair was called the conk.

       

"Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe"(Morrison 206)

Another common issue during the early to mid 1900’s was violence in African American society as well as violence in relationships. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, two of the three relationships that Janie had with other men ended violently. For example, when Janie’s dinner didn’t meet her husband Jody’s expectations, “he slapped Janie until she had a ringing sound in her ears and told her about her brains before he stalked on back to the store”(Hurston 72). One common reason for violence in the relationships is because "love is never any better than the lover." The characters in both novels have been warped or corrupted in some way, and therefore fail to love each other. For example, Pecola was raped by her father and Janie's mother ran away. The relationship between Janie and Jody is similar to that of Cholly and Pauline, Pecola’s parents. They fought eachother with a “darkly brutal formalism” and “tacitly they had agreed not to kill each other”(Morrison 43). In today’s society, fighting a girl is one of the worst things that a man can do but Cholly did it over and over again to his wife to the point where the kids were worried one of them would die. Although it’s very uncommon nowadays, African American violence between men and woman still exists, for example the Chris Brown beating of Rihanna.