I was familiar with the title of Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), but that’s about all. Not till I read Jeane’s review recently did I decide to read it. Though it took me two tries, I found it to be a unique and powerful book about a black woman in the South becoming her own person.
I started reading it last week, but I couldn’t seem to gain any momentum because the dialect was slowing me down. I also felt (and still feel) confused at the narrative, which is a curious blend of poetic profundity and childlike directness and simplicity. Here’s an example:
Every morning the world flung itself over and exposed the town to the sun. So Janie had another day… When the people sat around on the porch and passed around the pictures of their thoughts for the others to look at and see, it was nice. The fact that the thought pictures were always crayon enlargements of life made it even nicer to listen to.
The narrator is clearly someone like the novel’s main character, Janie: intelligent and perceptive, intuitive in her experience of the world, but not sophisticated in her expression. It reminded me of a Henry James novel, narrated in the third person but limited to what the character knows and feels. (It seems less ponderous here than in a Henry James novel, though.)
Anyway, I got bogged down in the dialogue and finally set the book aside for a few days. When I picked it back up, I was able to find a stride, and the ending came all too quickly. By then, I cared deeply about Janie, who we first encounter as a quadruply-impoverished character: young, black, female, and unmarried. Ultimately she develops a strong sense of who she is and an ability to live intentionally, but the journey is not without heartache.
This novel, a feminist classic, is considered Hurston’s masterpiece. An anthropologist born and raised in the first incorporated all-black town in America, Hurston sets this tale in all-black settings and uses black oral tradition and folklore. It places the reader within the confines of the experience it relates, and though it took me a bit of work to get inside, I emerge feeling that it was well worth the effort.
I am so glad you liked it. I tried this book twice before I could appreciate the writing- and that mix of simplicity and poetic prose really intrigued me this time.
This is one I’ve tried before but never managed to get past the first few pages. I’ve ALWAYS had it on my radar, and I love the title. I might have to give it another try some day. Thanks for the encouragement!
Hmm, I hadn’t heard about this book before. Saw your link on Semicolon and wanted to come see what the book was about. THanks for the heads up about the book! I learned about something new (to me) which is always fun.
I, too, did not “get” this book when I first tried to read it. I was going through a busy time and couldn’t give it the attention that it required. Thanks to you it may go on my “books to try again” list. =)