Throughout the novel by Zora Neale Hurston, "Their eyes were watching God", Janie struggles with the decision of marriage. She is torn with the decision to either marry for love or to marry for what a man has to offer her.
As a child Jamie often spent time laying under her favorite pear tree dreaming of her knight in shining armor, who would one day come and sweep her off her feet and carry her away to the life of her dreams, and form a perfect union where each would live in harmony with the other, "She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was marriage! (Pg. 11)". Janie sees the marriage of the bee and the blossom as the way a human marriage should be, the bee represents the man coming to meet the woman, the blossom.
English: Janie Fricke
Janie porche
Janie Porter BarrettThe blossom waits anticipating the arrival of the bee, as a woman should, or at least thatÃÂs how Janie feels. When the blossom and bee connect it creates the perfect union in nature, both are giving and receiving the other, appreciating the connection. When Janie first got married it was to a man who could provide for her, as her grandmother had wanted for her. Janie thought that after she was married the love that she had so often dreamed about would come, however she soon learned that love does not always come with marriage, "She knew now that marriage did not make love. JanieÃÂs first dream was dead, so she became a woman" (Pg. 25).
Janie often dreamed of a marriage where both...