hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God"

In the novel, “Their Eyes Were Watching God” women were treated very differently than women today are treated. It was inflected in the beginning how Janie’s grandmother was a slave woman, who was forced to have a child with her slave owner, (Janie’s mom). This situation was followed by Janie’s mother, whom also was raped, except this time it was by her own school teacher. This to me shows that women meant nothing to guys of that earlier time, because they just would rape them and abandon the child they left behind. As the novel progressed, we saw how Janie’s grandmother disapproved of her kissing the boy at the fence. Women of this time period could not randomly kiss a guy unless they were married to them. I guess you can say that in reality these women were just pieces of property passed along to the next caretaker.
Being a piece of property was shown very well when Janie was forced to marry Logan Killicks by her grandmother. Her life of being a man’s property started with this marriage. Logan first pampered her and as he said “spoiled” her at the beginning of their marriage. Towards the end, he figured she should start helping with things like cutting wood and carrying it in the house, as well as plowing fields. “Naw, Ah needs two mules dis yea. Taters is going’ tuh be taters in de fall. Bringin’ big prices. Ah aims tuh run two plows, and dis man Ah’m talkin’ ‘bout is got uh mule all gentled up so een uh woman kin handle ‘im.” Although he doesn’t come out and say “ Janie you’re going to start plowing fields with me” he does tell her that she is going to in an odd way.
As Janie got tired of that life she did end up running away with Joe Starks. This life seemed at first to also give her a great deal of freedom. That changed as you’d think it would during this time period. He would tell her always that she should be proud to be the mayor’s wife and she needed to start acting like it. He was often very jealous of other men in the town also, because they would stare at his wife’s hair. Because of this, he made her put a bandana on her head to cover her hair’s beauty.
Soon after Joe died Janie’s life changed once again , and this time it was in a totally different aspect. She met tea cake, who treated her wonderfully. Although tea cake was much younger than her he would tell her that age didn’t matter and that no body would know because she looked as though she were his own age. Tea cake did everything he could to please Janie. To him, she was far from a piece of property, but rather a gift from god. The other women in the town having no knowledge of being treated so wonderfully made it obvious that they did not approve. Often times the women would just tell her that he was going to run off with her money and that is all that he wants. They would do this to her because as she was previously, they were pieces of property set out to only please their husband, but yet not be happy in their life. Janie although had found a happyness. Tea cake only once had hit her, and that was to prove ownership as though he thought he had to in order to not lose her. But unlike the other men of the area, he did not treat Janie as though she was just there to please him and him only. He was caring and compassionate to her, which made her happy in her life.
Although Janie’s life went from persay owner to owner, in the end she was no longer treated as though she was property. Tea cake treated her as something special, which most men in this time period by far did not treat their wives like this. In all it was a progression through time, when women started to show their strengths leading to their freedom. It was not until much later that they were no longer property, but this book showed the starting of it. Hurston is trying to show how the women were treated poorly, and how some of them led their own way into happyness.