Womanist Reading Of Their Eyes Were Watching God

Their Eyes Were Watching God can be read on two levels—a woman's journey towards self-fulfillment and a culture's journey towards self-affirmation. The two levels are intertwined. Janie, the heroine, finds strength in her culture and therefore manifests its power and charm. This kind of focus alienates Zora Neale Hurston, the author, from her contemporary writers who favor Protest Literature but finds echoes twenty-four years after her death in Alice Walker's definition of womanist whose self-loving spirit and Universalist love towards mankinds are well illustrated in this novel.This thesis explores the womanist characteristics of Their Eyes Were Watching God. The analysis of it is conducted from three aspects in terms of the two striking characteristics of womanism. In Chapter One, the writer's Universalist love towards human being will be interpreted from Hurston's depiction of the whites, the blacks and the black men. The womanist self-loving spirit will be illustrated respectively in the second and third chapters, namely, the emphasis of verbal power, and the employment of two blues' elements, that is, the call-and-response pattern and aab stanzaic structure.With her confidence in her own culture and tolerant attitude towards gender and race, Hurston exemplifies Walker's womanist definition in her masterpiece, Their Eyes Were Watching God and provides the reader with a perspective of the world around them.