Love is an emotion hard to describe in word’s. love can take is shape in many different forms and have different meanings to every person. Love is a emotion felt from the day of birth, a infant to its mother or a child’s first crush in elementary school. The theme of love is addressed in Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God , a story about a girl’s journey to find her ideal love. Janie goes through two bad relationships and third times the charm, and with each relationship Janie matures more and more in to a wise women. Janie at age 16 got curious about love and exactly what it was she found it to be some what like nature, comparing it to the spring season or a bud of a tree….( Oh to be a pare tree- any tree in bloom!) (with kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world!) (She had glossy leaves and bursting buds.)pg11. Janie’s dreams of this natural love were soon crushed by her grandmother Nanny. Nanny believed that it was silly for Janie to have all these ideas about love, nanny thought it doesn’t matter how much a man loves you, what matters is if he is rich and can provide protection. Nanny arranges a marriage with a older man named Logan killicks he has many acers of land and his own house.
Janie goes along with the marriage Janie thinks that it doesn’t matter if she loves him now she thinks the love will come in time,…. (did marriage end the cosmic loneliness of the unmated?) (Did marriage compel love like the sun the day?) (Husbands and wives loved each other, and that was what marriage meant.)pg20. Janie soon find’s out this is not true she finds herself just as lonely if not more than she did before. Janie relationship with Logan is loveless and Logan has to many exceptions for Janie, Around the house she is obligated to cook the meals and clean the house chop the wood and help plow the fields. She doesn’t love this man why would she be motivated to work for him.. (” if ah kin haul de wood heah and chop it fuh yuh, look lak you oughta tote it inside”)(” mah fust wife never bothered me bout chopin no wood nohow……shed grab the ax and sling chips lak uh man you done and been spoilt rotten”)pg25. there is absolutely no romantic spark between them. Janie is still waiting on love. Janie is married and alone still dreaming of her perfect love and along comes smooth talking joe starks. Janie finds him quite attractive and romantic .
He sweet talks her telling her that she is to good to be working the plow she should be pampered like some sort of queen…..(“you behind a plow a pretty doll baby lak you is made to sit onde front porch and rock and fan yoself and eat pataters dat outher folks plant just special for you”)pg38 Janie thinks finley love has arrived she will now have a bee for her bloom. Janie still young still naive runs off with joe and marries. Joe’s and Janie’s relationship seems so absolute at first, than Janie started to get treated like that baby doll Joe referred to her as just a doll tucked away on a shelf hidden away form the world around her. Once again working for another man in the house around the store…. (Janie was a good cook, joe had looked forward to his dinners as a refuge from other things so when the bred didn’t rise, and the fish wasn’t quite done at the bone ,and the rice was scorched, he slapped Janie. )pg67 Janie was marred to joe for years once again unhappy and loveless, she devotes her everything to joe they grew old and grew apart.
Joe gets sick and dies once more Janie is alone and loveless. Janie continues on with her life taking care of joe’s business, and things around her home not expecting to find love now at her old age. Much to her surprise she get’s swept off her feet by a young man that goes by the name of tea cake. He opens her up to a new world that she has never experienced before, a relationship full of equity and laughter. He treated her like no man had ever treated her before.
Tea cake taught her how to play checkers and fish, he was so fun so romantic Janie once agin took off for this new love. Janie and tea cake have struggle’s like any couple but Janie stuck it out she was in for the long run, she had never felt this way towards a man in all her years…(“well, he said humbly, ” I reckon you never ‘spected tuh come to dis when you took up with me, didja?”)pg158 (” once upon a time, ah never ‘spected nothin ,’tea cake, but being dead from standin’ still and tryin’ to laugh. But you come’ long and made somthin’ outa me. So ah’m thankful fuh anything we come through together.”)pg185. They are so naturally perfect for each other, this is the natural love that Janie has dreamed of her whole life and now she is living it . Janie learned a lot of things along her journey for love, she learned that love is not money, love is not outward appearance, love is not conditional Janie now a wise old women has found the real bee for her bloom.
