For most people, love is a dream that rarely comes true due to their lack of understanding of it. In the novel Their Eyes were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston recounts the journey of Janie Mae Crawford, who holds a belief about the nature of love since her maiden age and looks for it for the rest of her life. Though Janie wastes her young ages in unfortunate marriages and undergoes hardships, she does not give in easily but marries three times to encounter her true love. Through her three marriages, Janie deepens her understanding that the essence of conjugal love is domestic felicity, and the only path towards it is contribution and understanding from both the husband and the wife.

Before marrying anyone, the nature offers Janie an understanding of love, happiness, and reciprocity through the intimation of a pear tree. Janie beholds that “a dust-bearing bee sinks into the sanctum of a bloom” and “the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace.” At the same time, every part of the tree has an “ecstatic shiver” with its flowers “creaming” and “frothing” (Hurston 11). The “ecstatic shiver” of the tree visualizes the delightful nature of love. “Creaming” and “frothing” picture the pear flowers that symbolize love as white, pure, and fragile and suggest cream cakes, which illustrate that love carries the same sweetness and brings about consolation and jocundity. More importantly, the interaction between the “bee” and the “sister-calyxes” reveals the way to achieve love. The “bee” assumes the masculine role in a courtship, in which he takes the initial action of “sinking” into the flower. The “calyxes” resemble the feminine character; instead of waiting passively, she “arches” to embrace back. The scenery interprets conjugal love as a reciprocal process, in which both the husband and the wife need to contribute in order to achieve and maintain domestic felicity.

Janie’s marriages to Logan and Joe disillusion her beatific belief about love because the marriages exclude happiness and become the men’s peremptory domination over Janie. Janie considers that “the vision of Logan Killicks desecrates the pear tree” upon the first time that Nanny mentions the potential marriage, and the viewpoint intensifies after their living together (Hurston 14). “Desecrate” accentuates that Logan’s character differentiates immensely from Janie’s imagination about an ideal husband and conveys her repugnance towards Logan. The thought does not originate pointlessly because Logan possesses an unsightly appearance from head to feet and is devoid of the basic sanitary awareness and romantic sensations. After Logan ends his honeymoon period with Janie, he demands for Janie’s labor and claims to Janie: “You ain’t got no particular place. It’s wherever Ah need yuh” (Hurston 31). “No particular place” and “wherever Ah need you” depict two different characteristics of Janie in the household- the former signifies that Janie feels unimportant in Logan’s household, but the latter demands for Janie’s unlimited devotion to satisfy Logan’s needs, which renders Janie a pure working tool for Logan. The two roles Logan assigns to Janie, though different, both prove his constant domination over Janie. Although Janie chooses to remarry Joe after Logan completely exposes his corrupt nature, she fails to escape from the male domination. When villagers in Eatonville invite Janie for a speech, Joe rejects for Janie and expounds to the villagers that “Ah never married her for nothin’ lak dat” (Hurston 43). Joe’s denouncement demonstrates his unilateral interpretation about Janie’s role in their marriage. “Nothin’ lak dat” refers to Janie’s ability of making speech. While Joe expresses that he disregards this ability, he indicates the purpose of his marriage is to possess Janie and parade her around as his wife. Logan and Joe’s preconception about Janie as a tool and a decoration precludes mutual understanding in the marriages and restrains Janie from domestic felicity.

By bestowing upon Janie unbridled happiness and mutual acceptance, Tea Cake helps Janie realize her maiden dream about the pear tree. Tea Cake offers to teach Janie checkers during their first acquaintance, in which Janie complies with inner excitement and “looks [Tea Cake] over and gets little thrills from every one of his good points” (Hurston 96). Janie describes her “thrills” as if they originate from Tea Cake’s “good points”, or in other words, his sensuous physical features. In fact, Tea Cake’s proposal to teach Janie checkers is another important stimulation of her ecstatic feeling and what makes Janie more receptive to Tea Cake’s physical features. Tea Cake’s proposal indicates his ability not only to engender happiness but also understand equality in both genders. Janie moves to the Everglades with Tea Cake and commences a new phase of her life. The allocation of their works- “Janie fussed around the shack making a home while Tea Cake planted beans,” shows a busy but promising home and displays an equal division of labor between Janie and Tea Cake (Hurston 130). This allows the marriage to become a reciprocal process because the husband and the wife both instinctively endeavor to build a home and make livings. The affection between Janie and Tea Cake reaches its climax at the imminent catastrophe of storm. When Tea Cake asks Janie whether she would regret if she were to die in the disaster, Janie expresses her resolution, saying, “If you kin see de light at daybreak, you don’t keer if you die at dusk” (Hurston 159). In her statement, Tea Cake is the “light at daybreak.” Their conjugal love blessed with felicity makes Janie dauntless at the face of demise, because no matter how ephemeral life becomes, their mutual affection already empowers life fortitude and permanency. Therefore, Tea Cake is “a bee to a blossom” (Hurston 106) because the reciprocity in the marriage between Janie and him prospers the pear tree and brings forth happiness.

Tea Cake, a jocular lover with devotion and capability of appreciation, rekindles Janie’s imagination about conjugal love and domestic felicity after she undergoes hardships and disenchantment for many times. Their loyal affection towards each other exemplifies that love is not about a person’s domination but rather two people’s reciprocity. Although it might be hard to reach such a status as mutual understanding in the marriage, the fruit of love proves it is worth to strive for it.

Work Cited

Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Harper Perennial

    Modern Classics, 2006.