Janie’s Story of Love: An Idealistic Belief to What Became Real Do you remember as a child watching television and seeing the perfect love story? It is often told in a chronological order of progressive events. There’s a boy who meets a girl and knocks her off her feet. They then grow closer, romance and feelings grow stronger, they learn the ins and outs of one another, they fall deeply in love, boy proposes in a grand romantic gesture, girl says yes, they get married, grow old together, and live happily ever after. You know, the kind of love that seems unfathomable, but you long for it? The type of love so deep that nothing can penetrate it? A love so strong that it’s indestructible and can withstand time and all circumstances? Well this is what Zora Neale Hurson’s character, Janie Crawford, wanted. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie begins as a meek and naïve young girl who only seeks love. Her idea of love being the symbiotic relationship she observed between the bee and the pear tree blossom in her yard. A marriage to Janie was a man coming along, talking sweetly to her, and taking care of her as she embraced him and conformed to him just as the blossom embraced the bee. Janie wanted to feel the tingling sensation and shiver just as the tree seemed to after the bee and blossom joined in union. This was marriage and how it was supposed to be. Through the progression of Janie’s life as told in Their Eyes Were Watching God Janie holds this idea, but Janie matures and life teaches her that things can’t always be what you want them to be. More importantly, through each of her three marriages Janie sees that in reality the relationship and love she envisioned based on the bee and the pear tree blossom rarely occurs.
“Nobody put anything on the seat of Logan’s wagon to make it ride glorious on the way to his house. It was a lonesome place like a stump in the middle of the woods where nobody had ever been. The house was absent of flavor, too. Then anyhow Janie went on inside to wait for love to begin.” (pg. 39) Janie, at the point before her first marriage to Logan Killicks, was just a young girl. The only life she knew was the one given to her by Nanny. As a mere teenager with stars in her eyes and visions of a love which were sweet and simplistic Janie had no idea what this marriage would really be. Her Nanny had taught her all she had known, so she waited patiently for the love that her Nanny said would come. Janie tried during the whole marriage to grow accustomed to and get settled in her new life with Logan Killicks, but there was one problem: love never came. The sixty acres didn’t satisfy her and neither did the old Logan Killicks. Janie, still young, continued to long for a connection like the one between the bee and pear tree blossom. There was no attraction to Logan Killicks and no desire. There was no spark, no shiver, yet this was what Janie came to know as marriage. Although unhappy, Janie continues to do what she is expected to do as a wife. When Janie begins to acclimate to her current situation and accepts the fate which life has dealt her; a marriage and life with a man she has no love for, along comes Joe Starks. Joe Starks, although still not exactly what Janie was seeking, represented something more than what Janie was currently receiving. The longing of love still remained as she envisioned it, but Joe gave Janie hope of a different type of love not being received from Killicks. He may not have been an object of her lust, but to Janie, Joe was a step up from the life she had. Janie at this point has not yet progressed a lot, but one thing she knows without a doubt is that marriage does not mean love. Janie begins to talk frequently with Joe, and she realizes Joe Starks may still not be what she wants. Janie has reservations because she has now grown into a woman and she stills holds on to some of the things her Nanny instilled in her. The fact that everything doesn’t work the way