Spoiler-Free Review: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Before diving into my review, please note that it is based on my opinion of the book. As you consider my thoughts, remember that you are allowed to have different feelings about this book. If you haven't read it yet, feel free to pick up a copy and form your own opinion on it.
Content Warnings: Domestic Abuse, Racism, Racial Slurs, Emotional Abuse, Death, Sexism, Toxic Relationships, Physical Abuse, Violence, Grief, Animal Death, Medical Content.
Note: This book contains some sensitive topics, please proceed with caution.
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Review:
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston was a very quick read at just under 300 pages, yet still so much happened throughout the story. I found myself in awe of Janie's perseverance and determination through so many trying times in her life. She was a lot stronger than the men (and so many other people) in the book giver her credit for. In the beginning, I could see how she grappled between her love for her grandmother (the woman who raised her) and also her frustrations at her grandmother's misguided marriage match for Janie.
All of Janie's husbands really irritated me especially in their extremely misogynistic behavior towards women (especially her)! Her first husband was a farmer and really only saw Janie as a piece of property he owned, but also, he was pretty irrelevant to a majority of the story. The most important part of their marriage was Janie's unhappiness in it and her desperation to escape the life she has. That was when she met Joe Starks, the ambitious man who would become her second husband, who she quickly realizes just wants her to be a trophy wife. He has a great need to control her especially as a man who comes to hold a great deal of power and honestly he was ever more frustrating than her first husband.
Arguably, Janie's third husband treated her best and the most like an equal partner compared to her other husbands. However, he still felt the need to control Janie and this manifests itself in physical abuse. The amount of abuse Janie suffers at the hands of her husbands left me feeling so much empathy and sadness for her as well as great bitterness against her husbands.
I was quite surprised to learn that most of the novel took place in Florida, my home state, which was pretty cool. The climax of the story actually happens during the great 1928 Okeechobee hurricane which I honestly knew nothing about before reading this book! It was interesting to see my state through the lens of a black person in the early 20th century and also quite unrecognizable. This story was geographically close to home yet still felt like a greatly distant story as so much has changed over the last nearly 100 years making so many things unrecognizable and foreign to me. There was a lot of very overt, prominent racism and discrimination addressed in this book which makes sense for the time period that the story was written in. Hearing some of the racial slurs that were being said in this book made me very uncomfortable and reminded me of how far we've come but also how far we still have to go in tackling race-based discrimination. Slavery is mentioned a few times in the book as Janie's grandmother had been born a slave.
The writing style of the story was really lovely. I also absolutely loved how the story comes full circle with the very beginning being where Janie begins to recount her life and the ending when she finishes telling her childhood friend this story. There were many fascinating metaphors used throughout the story and some interesting slang which made it a little difficult to understand the dialogue at some points, but, it didn't really take away from the story in a major way. The book was definitely pretty slow-paced with only a few fast-paced areas and I didn't love this the way I have in some other books I've read. What I will say is if you decide to read this book, definitely listen to the audiobook! The audiobook performance was absolutely fantastic and I highly recommend listening to it, I got so much more out of the story in this format! I removed a star and a half from my rating because of the slow pace of the story and the misogynistic behavior of the men.
I highly recommend you check out some OwnVoices Reviews for this book as I could not attest to the accuracy of the representation in this book. I left any mention of the accuracy of the representation out of my review for this reason.
Rating: 3.5/5 stars
Author: Zora Neale Hurston
Genre: Classic, Historical Fiction,
Publisher: J.B. Lippincott & Co (Harper Collins)
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