The Journey To The Horizon

Zora Neale Hurston is universally acknowledged as the Mother of Black Female Literature and she is regarded as one of the greatest writers during the Harlem Renaissance. Her most classic fiction, Their Eyes Were Watching God, explores the spiritual journey of a Black uneducated woman, Janie Crawford, to quest for voice and self. This was not common in a time when black protesting literature was all the rage. Being both an African American and female in a racist and patriarchal society, Janie has been deprived of the right to speak for herself and her sense of self has always been repressed. Hurston uses the oppression of Janie, as both an African American and a woman, as an emblem of the oppression of African Americans generally.Janie undergoes three marriages which serve as stepping stones of her individual quest and a structural vehicle through which Hurston explores a wide range of issues and experiences of struggle. Throughout her marriages, Janie lives in a world that imposes artificial distinctions of class, a world that imposes male fantasies of socialization that deny women the right to autonomous decisions and the right to express themselves. As she moves from marriage to marriage, she gradually sheds the oppressive white and male definitions of selfhood given to her by her grandmother, her community, and society. By fighting against and overcoming various forms of forces that antagonize her quest, Janie has grown into a mature woman with a complete possession of her self from a na?ve and diffident little girl; and thereby completes her metamorphosis from a silent object to a speaking subject.This thesis focuses on Zora Neale Hurston's artful and effective demonstration of her main character's victory over oppression and domination throughout the book through...