Theme of Voice in Their Eyes Were Watching God Essay -- Literature Zor

Breaking ThroughIn the novel Their Eyes Were Watching divinity fudge written by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie the protagonist is seen by critics as having no voice. For all(a) women tranquillity knows no boundaries of race or culture, and Janie is no exception. Hurston characterizes Janie with the same silence that women at that time & period were forced into, (complete submission.) Women were to be seen and non heard. Janie spends 40 years of her life, learning to achieve/find, her voice against the over-ruling and dominate men in her life. But in the end Janie comes out the victor, breaking the silence. In her quiz What do Feminist Critics Want? Gilbert states, Like Wagners master singers....men had the office of speech,but....women like Emily Dickinson, knew that they had, or were supposed to have, the graceful obligation of silence.(34) To question the potent voice in Their Eyes is an important aspect of the genre which contributes to the tommyrot as a whole. Furtherm ore it is to discover the ways in which the anthropoid voice affected Janies. Weather it be physical or mental, the reader if reading close can surpass Janies verbal silence and allow notwithstanding her presence to speak for her. Janies actions are what makes her someone to pay attention to. By first understanding that Janie was silent (verbally)through most of the novel, does not mean she was not heard. Her presence demands respect and by doing so, the reader will find and rate Janie as a whole, and not just a Black cleaning lady whose voice had been hindered by societies bias. Mary Helen Washington states in her critical leaven on Their Eyes, Ourattentiveness to the possibility that women are excluded categorically from the language of the dominant sermon should h... ...-defense, and from the voice she expresses in defending her life from Tea Cake. Hurston shows that her characters voices have been influenced by peoples subjection to a dominant authority. Hurston in dicates that voice may be ad hominem and yet move into the universal. At the end of the novel, Janies voice is heard and know by Pheoby, who will share it with the community later. Finally there is a unity within Janie that allows her to share her self with others. Janie has found her voice, and she can contract when and how to express it when defining who she is.Works CitedGilbert, Sandra M. What Do Feminist Critics Want? A Postcard from the volcano. ADE Bulletin 66 (1980).Rpt.Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. in the altogether York Harper, 1998.Wall, Cheryl A. Their Eyes Were Watching God A Casebook. New York Oxford, 2000.