Their Eyes Were Watching God

Literature & IT Review

My thesis, currently under the working title “Binaries, Images, & Symbols: The Other in Their Eyes Were Watching God,” aims to examine the depiction of Janie, the story’s heroine, as an (gendered) Other in her own narrative and to filter a scholarly understanding of the way Zora Neale Hurston authored Janie as an Other through the use binary images and symbols in Hurston’s text. I also propose to contextualise the novel, and Janie’s Otherness, in reference to Hurston’s own life experiences.

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Chapter One, page one, in my own copy of Their Eyes Were Watching God

For my thesis, my main text is Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937). However, I also intend to look at other Hurston writings, specifically at her folklore collection Mules And Men (1935) and her autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road (1942). I find her folklore collection useful to my thesis in that it also depicts certain animal images found in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Hurston’s biography will be a practical source in order to glean details of her personal life from Hurston’s own point of view.

I will rely heavily on two collections of critical essays by Harold Bloom, both his Modern Critical Views: Zora Neale Hurston (1986) and also, Modern Critical Interpretations: Zora Neale Hurston’s ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’ (1987). I will use several essays out of these collections, which look at a wide range of images, interpretations, and stigmas and terms attached to Hurston’s work overall. Of particular interest to me are essays that look at images/symbols in Their Eyes Were Watching God and/or look binary ideas contained in the novel, such as ideas of sexism and sexuality or communal spaces and private spaces which are addressed in Missy Dehn Kubitschek’s essay”‘Tuh de Horizon and Back’: The Female Quest in Their Eyes Were Watching God“–an essay in Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations: Zora Neale Hurston’s ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’. As another example of the types of work in these collections, Roger Rosenblatt’s essay in Modern Critical Views: Zora Neale Hurston, titled simply “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” looks at the Other to Self journey for Janie in the novel. At one point he says “she begins as a minor character in her own life story” (29). I’m extremely excited about this essay in particular, as the marginalisation of Janie as an Other in the novel will be part of my thesis. While most of these essays topically address Their Eyes Were Watching God, others address some of her lesser known works–such as, her folklore collections or her autobiography.

Robert E. Hemenway’s Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography (1980) will also serve me well, in addition to Hurston’s own biography, as it examines the general reception of Hurston’s work during the Harlem Renaissance, reactions to Hurston herself, looks into influences on her writing style. For example, the chapter entitled “Ambiguities of Self, Politics of Race” discusses personal experiences like her brief and failed second marriage to Albert Prince III, who Hurston would later use as a type-and-shadow for Janie’s third husband in Their Eyes Were Watching God, Tea Cake. It also provides interesting insight into Hurston’s mid-life and late career, especially into her own doubts and depressions about the results of her life and writing career.

I am also using chapters out of The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (1989). This work benefits my thesis because of its address on the idea of signification in African-American literature: “It presents a number of illustrative examples of Signifyin(g) in its several forms, then concludes by outlining selective examples of black intertextual relations” (Gates 98). As of now, I’m not certain how intertextuality will surface in my thesis, if at all, but for the sake of responsible scholarship, I think it bears looking into at least. This text also looks at Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God as a speakerly text and addresses literary devices Hurston used to narrate her novel.

Along with scholarship specific to Hurston and her work, I intend to look at a couple of theorists who were largely influential to the idea of the Self and the Other, since it plays a significant role in my thesis. I will look at Jacques Lacan’s work on the mirror stage, specifically using the chapters “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience” and “On the Subject Who Is Finally in Question” out of the collection Ecrits: the first complete edition in English (2006). In simple terms, Lacan’s work suggests that the mirror stage is when children recognise themselves in relation to others for the first time, and it is at this point that they form an “I”–a sense of themselves as the Self or Subject.

Of course, I would be remise to address a gendered Self and Other without looking a feminist theory, so I will also rely on excerpts from Hélène Cixous’ “The Newly Born Woman” and her essay “Sorties” out of The Hélène Cixous Reader, edited by Susan Sellers (1994). In this ground breaking essay, Cixous used binary language to juxtapose terms such as Activity/Passivity, Culture/Nature, and Man set over Nature. These language binaries play into Cixous’ idea of l’ecriture feminine (feminine writing) and in her idea of the ways out of male centric authorship. Her essay will feature largely as I discuss Hurston’s use of binary images to create a Self and Other in Their Eyes Were Watching God and to also examine her  narrative techniques.

Beyond these print sources, I will use online databases, such as Academic Search Complete and JSTOR to access scholarly journals, articles, and other materials that I may need during the months I work on my thesis. Also, as I included in a previous blog post, there is a film documentary on Hurston by PBS which I may look into as supplementary research and to engage in a different medium of scholarship around this amazing author.

Reflections On Our Textualities’17 Mini-Conference

First off, I’m sorry for the delay in a reflective post about the mini-conference; however, after all the stress and exhaustion caused by preparation for, and even on, the conference day, I needed some distance.

After all was said and done though, the mini-conference was entirely enjoyable.

The Textualities’17 mini-conference was not my first nor my second academic conference. I’ve had the absolute pleasure and privilege of presenting at the annual international Sigma Tau Delta convention in the States. (You can actually go view the website for this year’s convention, if you want: http://www.englishconvention.org/2017/) However, UCC’s mini-conference was perhaps the most stressful academic conference I’ve attended. I think that’s part and parcel to the fact that we students organised and ran the conference, and that it’s presentation style was wildly different than what I’ve encountered before.

When preparing for Textualities’17, there were a couple of things I felt concerned about, as well as a couple of things I was excited for.

The conference was set up in six different panels throughout the day with breaks for lunch and coffee. Each panel had an assigned student who acted as the Chair to introduce presenters and facilitate the Q&A session following each panel. We also were told to live-Tweet about the conference and different panel throughout the day.

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An example of what my Twitter feed looked like on the conference day.

I can say with certainty, the prospect of live-Tweeting and, for some of us, live-blogging the conference was significantly less stressful than focusing on our own presentations.

Mainly, my concern–and I think most of my cohert’s–centered around the presentation style of the mini-conference: Pecha Kucha.

Pecha Kucha is a presentation style that prescribes a 20×20 formula. The 20×20 stands for using only twenty slides and spending only twenty seconds of the presentation on each slide; this makes for a presentation that lasts only 6 minutes and 40 seconds. The style also recommends that you don’t use text on your slides, and if you do, it recommends that you only use small amounts. Essentially, the idea is that you use images which will speak to the presentation you’re giving, but not act as the presentation. (If you’re interested in learning more about the Pecha Kucha style, you can follow this link to Pechakucha.org.)

The task of presenting on (what we hope will be) our thesis topics in such a short amount of time seemed incredibly daunting. However, I was also kind of excited about the presentation style, as well. The kind of forced concision that Pecha Kucha demands made me hopeful that it would bring into focus more of what I want to address in my thesis.

Update: it totally did!

My preparation for the Pecha Kucha presentation started out with me writing down long rambling sentences that vaguely addressed ideas of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God as a text on the Self and the Other. I had way too many ideas and not enough direction.

On the mini-conference day, after loads of practice, revision, more practice, and more revision, I actually had what I felt was a solid direction to move with in my research.

My thesis will focus on Hurston’s use of symbolism and binary images in the text to address the (gendered) Other. I will look at her work through the lens of French feminist theory, as well as the work of Jacques Lacan, and with attention to her personal life–so, looking at Hurston’s work in anthropology, her work with folklore collections, and also the social climate of the time when she was writing.

In my presentation, I tackled a brief history of Hurston and introduced her book to my fellow students and the faculty members in attendance. I also addressed the theorists (Jacques Lacan and Helene Cixous) I want to look at during my thesis process and outlined a few different reasons I’m interested in their work. After that, I felt it most effective to only look at one of the binary images I see in Their Eyes Were Watching God and use it as an example for my interest in the Other of Hurston’s work. For the presentation, I chose to focus on the image of the mule in Hurston’s work, binary to the image of the master.

After the presentation ended came the part I think we all dreaded most: the Q&A.

Of course, we definitely didn’t have reason to be so flustered. The questions we all received were lovely and, I think, we each answered intelligently.

All-in-all, the day was a great success and I’m proud of my third experience in an academic conference!

You are welcome to view my presentation slides through the Prezi website. However, do remember that the presentation slides are mostly images, so don’t be alarmed if you don’t exactly follow what the slides  represent.

 

Zora Neal Hurston: An Introduction to the Supreme

Definition of Supreme:

  1. highest in rank or authority

  2. highest in degree or quality

  3. ultimate or  final

The word ‘supreme’ carries a lot of authority and stakes a pretty incredible claim. While I’ve used supreme in my title for this blog in a half-joking way (and mainly because I think it makes an impressive title and really fits the image), in many ways I do believe Zora Neale Hurston is the supreme black, female author of the world to date.

As I’m gearing my Master’s thesis around her, now, renowned novel Their Eyes Were Watching God my opinion may be slightly biased, but I do hope to prove, or at least cause you, dear readers, to consider Hurston as a “supreme” author.

Zora Neale Hurston, born in 1891, knew how to make an impression. She is described as someone who could so charm people with her wit and stories that they would offer help in anyway she needed it. Not shy of taking up those offers, what Hurston needed most was patronage. However, the idea of writing on a patron’s penny left many of her fellow African-American writers sour.

She wrote during the Harlem Renaissance, a time rich with the celebration of black culture, but also, unfortunately, a time when America’s black citizenship felt that they were being asked to prove their humanity. They did so through the arts, and so, Hurston was seen by some Renaissance participants as a puppet to her Anglo-American patrons. As a result, she suffered discrimination from her contemporaries.

Today, that discrimination is firmly their loss. Hurston was brilliant. During her career of more than thirty years, Hurston published four novels, two folklore collections, an autobiography, short stories, and a number of essays, articles, and plays (Boyd).

However, what some people may not know is that, though she’d already begun writing, Hurston went to university for an anthropology degree and worked under Franz Boas, an anthropologist who was the first to really practice the idea of field work. One has to wonder and speculate if his influence and her anthropological roots are what inspired her to go to Florida, Jamaica, and Haiti in order to write both Mules and Men (1935) and Tell My Horse (1938). She also wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), her most well-known novel, in Haiti in a matter of weeks.

Eatonville, Fl.–the small town wherein much of the novel takes place–mirrors Hurston’s own childhood, as well. Though born in Alabama, Hurston’s family moved to Eatonville, Florida when Hurston was still quite young.

Established in 1887, the small community was the nation’s first incorporated black township. Hurston described it as, “a city of five lakes, three croquet courts, three hundred brown skins, three hundred good swimmers, plenty guavas, two schools, and no jailhouse” (qtd. in Boyd).

Hurston’s personal experience with living in an incorporated black township/community certainly gives credence and authority to her novel’s reality, just as her field time in Florida,  Jamaica, and Haiti lend a more authentic tone to her folklore collections.

[There is a quant (albeit dated, in some ways) documentary on Hurston’s life which I saw part of some years ago on PBS. I’ve included a short youtube clip of the documentary, but you should also be able to purchase the full version from baybottomnews.com if you’re just really inspired to get to know more about her.]

Beyond the credentials I’ve touched on, a webpage dedicated to Hurston’s memory and biography provides a wonderful timeline account of her life and work. Please spend some time browsing the website if you’d like more information.

As Hurston’s work was not popularised during her lifetime, partly due to the discrimination of her fellow Renaissance writers, at the time of her death she was living in poverty. She was laid in an unmarked grave, sadly, as she left no money for a headstone.

Fortunately, some years later–in 1973–Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, found her grave and commissioned a stone that reads “Zora Neale Hurston: A Genius of the South.”

The epitaph, to me speaks to the quality of her work; especially as it was commissioned by another black, female author whom some would argue eclipsed Hurston. However, since its reissue in paperback form in 1978, Their Eyes Were Watching God has become arguably the most widely read and highly acclaimed novel in the cannon of African-American literature (Official Website of Zora Neale Hurston).

Her work has proved enduring, relevant, and powerful. Her command of oral tradition translated to written word is magnificent; her use of symbolism absolutely masterful… I feel indebted to Walker for her “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston,” an essay which really sparked the revival Hurston’s work, but, for me, Hurston will forever be the ultimate, the Supreme, African-American author.

Works Cited:

Boyd, Valerie. “About Zora Neale Hurston.” Zora Neale Hurston: The Official Website of Zora Neale Hurston, 2015, http://www.zoranealehurston.com/about/index.html. Accessed 26 Jan. 2017.

Mirriam-Webster. Dictionary. 2017. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/supreme. Accessed 26 Jan. 2017.

Zora Neale Hurston. The Official Website of Zora Neale Hurston. 2015, http://www.zoranealehurston.com. Accessed 26 Jan. 2017.