I was blown away by this book as if in a hurricane — thank you to my pal Aditi Juneja for the suggestion / truly, how dare my high school not make it required reading?
I’m so excited to hear your thoughts. (What were the most moving parts of the book for you? What pieces of the story were you most struck by? Is there anything specific you would you like to discuss in more detail?)
For me, the most essential wisdom comes from Janie’s connection between God and self-validation. They are one in the same, and that clicked for me at a new level in the final pages.
Also, speaking of our great creator: It is truly amazing that Zora Neale Hurston wrote this cinematic hero of black feminism in the year 1937. (I’m going to be able to picture the part were she lets her hair down in the mirror after Husband #2 dies for the rest of my life. That scene alone is a goddamn masterpiece.)
I read TEEWG a few years ago when I was in high school, and today I'm so grateful for that, because my teacher forced us to take the time to consider this book in its full context and complexity.
Thinking back on this book, I'm still so impressed by Hurston's depiction of how gender conventions are always present and can seep into and corrupt even loving, positive relationships between men and women. For example, Tea Cake, husband number #3, is supposed to be the "good" one that Janie truly loves, but he's still insecure enough that he must be the couple's primary provider and even hits Janie to reassure himself of his masculinity. Still, I don't necessarily think Tea Cake is a "bad" husband for behaving this way or that Janie is any less of a feminist character for choosing to stay with him until the end. Both characters are complex and three-dimensional enough that I am to find sympathy for them and see the external pressures acting upon their relationship even as I disagree with the choices they make.
Hi hero! I agree with all of that, and wish I had this teacher haha.
I also think the rabies sort of functions as a stand-in for the darkness: He is in a mode of "blank ferocity," to the point where Janie feels there is a "strange thing in Tea Cake's body." That's the actual sickness, and also maybe another way of thinking about that place we all go when we lose ourselves to lizard-brain bullshit.
I had so much compassion for them both in that scene, and even some for myself. It had me thinking a lot about what it means to slip out of contact with my best self.
Yes to all of those points! That scene broke my heart...
One of my favorite theories or interpretations of TEEWG's ending has always been the idea that Janie is pregnant with Tea Cake's child. (Tea cake "was always planting things" and "of course he wasn't dead...the kiss of memory made pictures of love and light against the wall"). I think it is a beautiful idea that Tea Cake and Janie's lives on a new incarnation, in this child that Janie with all of her life experience and newfound self-actualization, is now equipped to raise. I especially like to envision Janie with a daughter who she could impart wisdom to and help to have a better life than she herself did.
I'm a sucker for the theme that there is hope for the future, that future generations can learn from and improve upon the past, and think it maps perfectly onto this interpretation of TEEWG's ending.
Ah, that's beautiful, and it tracks with the energy of the end. It seems to be bursting with hope, even after what should be the greatest tragedy. I was convinced it was because Janie had so fully self-actualized, but I like this happy ending even better, especially in terms of what it means for the case for optimism!!
I had the pleasure of re-reading Hurston’s great ouevre over the past few evenings after my new daily ritual of slogging through a virtual school teaching schedule made only for these times. My experience of reading TEWWG at this point in my life has been highlighted by what I never understood as a sixteen year old hs student: following your heart is only as easy as seeing through the mud covering it up. Feeling really grateful to this great work for the healing message it offers and the reminder to following down your own path.
"Following your heart is only as easy as seeing through the mud covering it up." Fuck yes. Sixteen-year-old me was covered head-to-toe in mud, and a proud atheist, I definitely wouldn't have come to the same conclusions in high school. Do you remember your first impressions then?
Now, I think of God, in part, as the daily decision to love yourself, exactly as you are, and I think that is what Janie was set free to do after losing Tea Cake and standing trial. She wonders how a higher power could tease and challenge her with such horrible tests, and in those final moments of the book it becomes clear that surviving those trials is what liberated her to fully see herself, all on her own.
Now I have to read it! I'm a white guy, an old white guy. Imagine that, an old white guy who despises patriarchy as much as you do. The scene you described gave me goose bumps without even reading it!
I think it might be my favorite book now! It took me a minute to figure out how to read the vernacular, but once I got in the flow, I could not put it down.
I've been in a nonfiction mood of late. Just finished David McCullough's "The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris". It's about the time of George Sand and problems bigger than we face today. Quiet an escape :)
As with the book club of which I am a member, http://escobarbookclub.com/, I had firm intentions to read this book but did not. For that I apologize and pinky promise to read the next one!
YES. Three husbands is all it takes to achieve self-actualization lol. Aditi (who suggested we read "Their Eyes Were Watching God") actually mentioned this to me in yesterday. She said it taught her exactly that, and probably saved a lot of time in therapy. Every breakup can be a chance to collect data, and figure out what you really want in a partner, but, perhaps most importantly, they can show you how to love yourself without one. Or something like that ;)
I read it out loud at first, too, but, by the time Husband #2 died, I was so swept up, I didn't need to anymore.
p.s. I have a fancy 75th anniversary edition, and the afterward looks at the mix of first and third person as a dual consciousness, allowing us to experience the fractured psyche, as Janie finds herself. (Also, that style, especially as it appears toward the end of the book, is apparently called "free indirect discourse." Hadn't been around that term in a minute.)
I read TEEWG a few years ago when I was in high school, and today I'm so grateful for that, because my teacher forced us to take the time to consider this book in its full context and complexity.
Thinking back on this book, I'm still so impressed by Hurston's depiction of how gender conventions are always present and can seep into and corrupt even loving, positive relationships between men and women. For example, Tea Cake, husband number #3, is supposed to be the "good" one that Janie truly loves, but he's still insecure enough that he must be the couple's primary provider and even hits Janie to reassure himself of his masculinity. Still, I don't necessarily think Tea Cake is a "bad" husband for behaving this way or that Janie is any less of a feminist character for choosing to stay with him until the end. Both characters are complex and three-dimensional enough that I am to find sympathy for them and see the external pressures acting upon their relationship even as I disagree with the choices they make.
Hi hero! I agree with all of that, and wish I had this teacher haha.
I also think the rabies sort of functions as a stand-in for the darkness: He is in a mode of "blank ferocity," to the point where Janie feels there is a "strange thing in Tea Cake's body." That's the actual sickness, and also maybe another way of thinking about that place we all go when we lose ourselves to lizard-brain bullshit.
I had so much compassion for them both in that scene, and even some for myself. It had me thinking a lot about what it means to slip out of contact with my best self.
Yes to all of those points! That scene broke my heart...
One of my favorite theories or interpretations of TEEWG's ending has always been the idea that Janie is pregnant with Tea Cake's child. (Tea cake "was always planting things" and "of course he wasn't dead...the kiss of memory made pictures of love and light against the wall"). I think it is a beautiful idea that Tea Cake and Janie's lives on a new incarnation, in this child that Janie with all of her life experience and newfound self-actualization, is now equipped to raise. I especially like to envision Janie with a daughter who she could impart wisdom to and help to have a better life than she herself did.
I'm a sucker for the theme that there is hope for the future, that future generations can learn from and improve upon the past, and think it maps perfectly onto this interpretation of TEEWG's ending.
Ah, that's beautiful, and it tracks with the energy of the end. It seems to be bursting with hope, even after what should be the greatest tragedy. I was convinced it was because Janie had so fully self-actualized, but I like this happy ending even better, especially in terms of what it means for the case for optimism!!
I had the pleasure of re-reading Hurston’s great ouevre over the past few evenings after my new daily ritual of slogging through a virtual school teaching schedule made only for these times. My experience of reading TEWWG at this point in my life has been highlighted by what I never understood as a sixteen year old hs student: following your heart is only as easy as seeing through the mud covering it up. Feeling really grateful to this great work for the healing message it offers and the reminder to following down your own path.
"Following your heart is only as easy as seeing through the mud covering it up." Fuck yes. Sixteen-year-old me was covered head-to-toe in mud, and a proud atheist, I definitely wouldn't have come to the same conclusions in high school. Do you remember your first impressions then?
Now, I think of God, in part, as the daily decision to love yourself, exactly as you are, and I think that is what Janie was set free to do after losing Tea Cake and standing trial. She wonders how a higher power could tease and challenge her with such horrible tests, and in those final moments of the book it becomes clear that surviving those trials is what liberated her to fully see herself, all on her own.
Now I have to read it! I'm a white guy, an old white guy. Imagine that, an old white guy who despises patriarchy as much as you do. The scene you described gave me goose bumps without even reading it!
I think it might be my favorite book now! It took me a minute to figure out how to read the vernacular, but once I got in the flow, I could not put it down.
What's the best book you've read lately?
I've been in a nonfiction mood of late. Just finished David McCullough's "The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris". It's about the time of George Sand and problems bigger than we face today. Quiet an escape :)
As with the book club of which I am a member, http://escobarbookclub.com/, I had firm intentions to read this book but did not. For that I apologize and pinky promise to read the next one!
Aha fair enough, it's the thought that counts?! See ya next time. <3
Did anyone else think about learning from relationships? I wish this would have occurred to me when I read it in high school..
YES. Three husbands is all it takes to achieve self-actualization lol. Aditi (who suggested we read "Their Eyes Were Watching God") actually mentioned this to me in yesterday. She said it taught her exactly that, and probably saved a lot of time in therapy. Every breakup can be a chance to collect data, and figure out what you really want in a partner, but, perhaps most importantly, they can show you how to love yourself without one. Or something like that ;)
I had to read it out loud at first, but I ended up really enjoying the dialogue
I read it out loud at first, too, but, by the time Husband #2 died, I was so swept up, I didn't need to anymore.
p.s. I have a fancy 75th anniversary edition, and the afterward looks at the mix of first and third person as a dual consciousness, allowing us to experience the fractured psyche, as Janie finds herself. (Also, that style, especially as it appears toward the end of the book, is apparently called "free indirect discourse." Hadn't been around that term in a minute.)
I have that copy too! I'll check that out