Their Eyes were Watching God

Text: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Throughout Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the reader is introduced to a society where women are often times treated as objects and are expected to be completely obedient and submissive. Janie's experiences with men follow this view on women throughout most of the novel.
With Janie's relationship with Joe Starks the role of a submissive and obedient woman is greatly enforced over and over again. Perhaps not from the beginning of the relationship, but certainly as the relationship progresses the control Starks has over Janie is quiet clear. Starks required Janie to put her hair up and to have it covered. "This business of the headrag irked her endlessly. But Jody was set on it. Her hair was not going to show in the store" (55). The text also states, "... he [Starks] ordered Janie to tie up her hair..." (55). The fact that he "ordered" her to do it shows that Janie was expected to do whatever her husband wanted her to do - no questions asked. This follows the view that she was to be an obedient, submissive woman. Continuing on, Starks showed his control over Janie when it came to the mule dying. Janie asked why she couldn't go to the "draggin'-out". Starks responded saying, "Why, Janie! You wouldn't be seen at uh draggin'-out, wouldja? Wid any and everybody in uh passle pushin' and shovin' wid they no-manners selves? Naw, naw" (60). He pretty much laughed at the notion of her going with him. This is another instances where Stakrs shows his control over Janie and how she is expected to be obedient to him. She can't do what she wants to do, even if it means that she just wants to be with him.
Starks shows his control over Janie in the way he runs the store. Janie is always having to be at the store when he doesn't want to be there and by blaming her for everything that goes wrong there. A textual example of this would be when Starks says impatiently to Janie, "Why don't you go on and see whut Mrs. Bogle want? Whut you waitin' on?"; however, Janie didn't want to leave the porch, she "wanted to hear the rest of the play-acting and how it ended, but she got up sullenly and went inside" (70). Regardless of what Janie wants to do, she always has to do whatever Starks wants her to do. Starks didn't want to go inside the store and wait on a customer for the same reason Janie didn't want to, but Janie was Stark's wife and therefore was expected to do what was asked of her without complaint. Starks has complete control over Janie. In the same scene, we see Janie automatically get blamed for a problem with the store.

"Janie, where's dat last bill uh ladin'?"
"It's right dere on de nail, ain't it?"
"Naw it ain't neither. You ani't put it where Ah told yuh tuh. If you'd git yo' mind out de streets and keep it on you' business maybe you could git something' straight sometimes."
"Aw, look around dere, Jody. Dat bill ain't apt tuh be gone off nowheres. If it ain't hangin' on de nail, it's on yo' desk. You bound tuh find it if you look."
"Wid you heah, Ah oughtn't tuh hafta do all dat lookin' and searchin'. Ah done told you time and time agin tuh stick all dem papers on dat nail! All you got tuh do is mind me. How come you can't do lak Ah tell yuh?
"You sho loves to tell me whut to do, but Ah can't tell you nothin' Ah see!"
"Dat's cause you need tellin',...It would be pitiful if Ah didn't. Somebody got to think for women and chillun and chickens and cows. I god, they sho don't think none theirselves."
"Ah knows uh few things, and womenfolks thinks sometimes too!"
"Aw naw they don't. They just think they's thinkin'. When Ah see one thing Ah understands ten. You see ten things and don't understand one."...
He wanted her submission and he'd keep on fighting until he felt he had it. (70)

So Janie is under complete control of Joe Starks, and she is expected to be completely obedient and submissive to him. Even though she has the tendency to fight back every once in awhile, we see that Starks isn't going to rest until he can say that he has complete control over Janie physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
Although Janie has a lot more freedom after Stark dies, her relationship with Tea Cake still requires her to be somewhat obedient and submissive to him. Tea Cake once said in reference to Janie when speaking to another man, "Yo' wife doesn't seem tuh have nothin' much tuh do, so she kin visit uh lot. Mine got tooo much tuh do tuh go visitin' and too much tuh spend time talkin' tuh folks dat visit her" (144). The man Tea Cake tells this to responds with, "Mah wife takes time fuh whatever she wants tuh do" (144). So although not all men in the novel are controlling and expect their women to be submissive, in all of Janie's relationships she is expected to be a submissive and obedient woman. Janie is happier in her relationship, more than in another relationship throughout the novel; however, he is still controlling at some points, as exemplified in the previous passage.
Throughout the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, women are portrayed as very obedient and submissive human beings. The men are in control in all of Janie's relationships, even though she seems like a strong headed female she holds back and ends up not standing up for herself most of the time. Men expect women to be submissive and most often women do as they are expected to.