Running Out Of Time
Over the course of the first dozen or so chapters of Their Eyes Were Watching God, the main character Janie has already gone through three husbands. These first chapters are very fast-paced, condensing decades of her life at a time into a matter of pages. Years go by on paper where we just get kind of fast-forwarded through it, but time seems to slow down when something important happens to Janie. I think the relative amount of time given to each stage of Janie's life corresponds to the events' significance to her, and also speaks to what she values and prioritizes.
I'm wondering if the sentence from Chapter 1 saying that women "Forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget", has anything to do with the novel's helter-skelter sense of time. Has Janie cut out much of the more boring, tedious, and miserable parts of her life so she can hold on to the highlights? Since Janie is narrating her life story to her best friend Pheoby, she could just be omitting the redundant details that Pheoby already knows all about, or she could be telling everything that she remembers, while subconsciously deciding the rest wasn't important.
Certainly, it seems like Janie doesn't want to remember much of her early life.
The earliest we actually see through her eyes is at age sixteen, or the time her "conscious life commenced". Janie's childhood was filled with teasing from the other children in her neighborhood, so it makes sense why she would want to forget it. Also, Janie was not self aware yet at all, so she hasdless to reflect on than later in her life.
Janie skips through a year of marriage in a blink of an eye through the frame-narrative retelling of her life, but lavishes detail on her every encounter with Tea Cake and her thoughts and feelings about him. Clearly, she doesn't want to forget a single moment of her relationship with him. The time devoted to him also shows how he's the only one of her husbands she was actually in love with, since time slowed down when they were together. The second both of her previous marriages ended, Janie couldn't wait to forget them and move on, but this time around she takes considerable time and energy to preserve her memories with Tea Cake. Janie's 20 years of marriage to Jody are abridged to just the beginning and end, where she only describes times of particular conflict or particular happiness between them. In this case, it seems like these are the only parts of her two decades of marriage that Janie saw much importance in. This contrasts heavily with Tea Cake, where every minor moment is given major attention, and contrasts to a lesser degree with Logan Killicks. The only aspects of this marriage Janie describes is how badly she wanted to get out of it.
I think by this stage in Janie's life, once she has ample time to reflect on her current and past relationships, she has a good idea of what she wants for herself and what she values in others. Her choices are reflected in what memories she considers not only too valuable to forget, but significant enough to share with Pheoby.
I'm curious to see how this pattern plays out through the rest of the book.
I'm wondering if the sentence from Chapter 1 saying that women "Forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget", has anything to do with the novel's helter-skelter sense of time. Has Janie cut out much of the more boring, tedious, and miserable parts of her life so she can hold on to the highlights? Since Janie is narrating her life story to her best friend Pheoby, she could just be omitting the redundant details that Pheoby already knows all about, or she could be telling everything that she remembers, while subconsciously deciding the rest wasn't important.
Certainly, it seems like Janie doesn't want to remember much of her early life.
The earliest we actually see through her eyes is at age sixteen, or the time her "conscious life commenced". Janie's childhood was filled with teasing from the other children in her neighborhood, so it makes sense why she would want to forget it. Also, Janie was not self aware yet at all, so she hasdless to reflect on than later in her life.
Janie skips through a year of marriage in a blink of an eye through the frame-narrative retelling of her life, but lavishes detail on her every encounter with Tea Cake and her thoughts and feelings about him. Clearly, she doesn't want to forget a single moment of her relationship with him. The time devoted to him also shows how he's the only one of her husbands she was actually in love with, since time slowed down when they were together. The second both of her previous marriages ended, Janie couldn't wait to forget them and move on, but this time around she takes considerable time and energy to preserve her memories with Tea Cake. Janie's 20 years of marriage to Jody are abridged to just the beginning and end, where she only describes times of particular conflict or particular happiness between them. In this case, it seems like these are the only parts of her two decades of marriage that Janie saw much importance in. This contrasts heavily with Tea Cake, where every minor moment is given major attention, and contrasts to a lesser degree with Logan Killicks. The only aspects of this marriage Janie describes is how badly she wanted to get out of it.
I think by this stage in Janie's life, once she has ample time to reflect on her current and past relationships, she has a good idea of what she wants for herself and what she values in others. Her choices are reflected in what memories she considers not only too valuable to forget, but significant enough to share with Pheoby.
I'm curious to see how this pattern plays out through the rest of the book.
I think this is a really interesting observation that you make. We don't really see much of Logan or Joe, if you think about it on a larger scale. However, we saw a lot of details in the beginning of Janie's relationship with Joe that are similar to the kinds of details we get with Tea Cake. I think that because she had strong feeling for Joe initially, she recounted their early days together with more detail than once their marriage deteriorated. We never get any details about Logan because Janie never loved him. Another possible explanation for the warped sense of time is that only the beginnings and ends of her marriages are interesting. She settles into a routine with Logan and with Joe, and it would be pointless to maintain a linear sense of time if the events don't develop the story.
ReplyDeleteThis is a really interesting take on the narration of the novel. It seems as if Janie values her relationship with Tea Cake more than she does of her relationships with Logan or Jody which is why her description of those marriages are shorter and less detailed. Her age also might play a role in her narration because she is older and supposedly wiser in each marriage she enters so the description of each marriage is greater that the one that preceded it.
ReplyDeleteI didn't really think about the lack of detail Hurston provides us on Janie's first two relationships until I saw the immense detail her relationship with Tea Cake. It seems to me like this relationship will be a lot more successful, but from what I learned so far I can't speak too soon.
ReplyDeleteI can easily imagine Janie breezing over her first two marriages because they were quite awful. I feel like the whole reason we hear about them is so we get to know Janie's history before hearing about her story about Tea Cake. If the novel just started with meeting Tea Cake, we wouldn't have the same reactions. When discussed in class, we wanted Tea Cake to be good but knew to be a little bit wary based on Janie's marriage history. We also already know Janie's character from the previous chapters, so we don't need to figure out her character. Instead, we can focus on Tea Cake as a character a possibly gain more insight by having a more focused look.
ReplyDeleteI really like this point you make and how you relate it to the quote from the beginning of the book. I also think that there is some truth to your speculation; that the truncated nature of Janie's narration of his first two relationships are a product of how she valued them. I also really like that connection as it feels very realistic; we as humans remember the things we value, and remember little events rather than the course of every action taken in every relationship. It makes Janie's narrative sound very human and natural.
ReplyDeleteI think you're making a great point! It is interesting how quickly Jamie describes the 20 years of marriage with Jody, while she takes her time to describe her short relationship with Tea Cake. Your post makes me wonder whether Jamie has a clear idea of what love is. As we have seen in the early chapters, Jamie really romanticizes love. By this point however, it seems to me that she is confused. Despite Jody not being a great husband to Jamie, she makes it out as if the marriage was short lived while it was actually for 20 years.
ReplyDeleteIt is also interesting how her relationships end up being with younger people. With Logan, he was way older than her, then with Joe he was about the same age as her, and then with Tea Cakes, he was younger than her. That could represent how she feels as well. With Joe, she had to work and so that made her age sort of irrelevant and then with Joe, she was just an object that sort of aged with the "owner". The way that the men in her life treat her makes her seem younger as she gets older. With Tea Cakes, she is actually having fun like a young girl.
ReplyDeleteI'm not even kidding when I say that I have a draft for a blog post with the same exact title. Anyways, I agree with your point. We have seen Hurston's strong alignment with Janie and ultimately, it's interesting to see what Hurston deems 'valuable' to linger on and what is not. It is clear that like you said, Janie values and savors every moment with Tea Cake while so many years with Joe fly by with no mention. The difference is so drastic that I couldn't/still can barely comprehend that she had been with him from when she was 17 ish to 40 ish...
ReplyDelete