Why is janie jealous

This jealousy causes Janie to provoke a fight with Tea Cake so that he will be forced to remind her of his love for her. Again, Hurston incorporates the image of the tree into the novel. This time, however, the tree image deals with Janie's fear that she will lose Tea Cake to another woman. As Janie witnesses the two in the fields, she feels anxious and upset.

Janie acts coldly toward Mrs. Turner, but the woman keeps visiting nonetheless. Turner worships whiteness, and Janie, by virtue of her light skin and high-class demeanor, represents an ideal for her.

The summer soon ends, and the busy season begins again. Because he wholly possesses her, she cannot bear the thought that she does not wholly possess him. Although the previous chapters establish the inequalities in their relationship, this chapter reveals that Janie is not willing to compromise on important matters; their relationship must be reciprocal.

It is interesting to see how this reciprocity is expressed. At the first moment of reconciliation—the steamy passion that follows their fight—they express themselves through their bodies. Turner, Chapter 16 provides the clearest perspective on issues of race in the novel. Many critics dismissed Their Eyes Were Watching God when it was first published because of its atypical discussion of race.

At the time, most critics, Black and white alike, expected a novel by a Black author to deal with issues of race in stark, political terms. Instead of approaching race as a marker of innate difference and inferiority, he began to use anthropology to study race in cultural terms, discussing, for example, how ideas of racism circulate. Boas believed that race is not the fundamental truth about a person or group of people but rather a mere cultural construct that affects the perception of a specific person or group.

Indeed, the narrator attributes near-cosmic significance to Mrs. What with him biting down on cigars and saving his breath on talk and swinging round in that chair, it weakened people. And then he spit in that gold-looking vase that anybody else would have been glad to put on their front-room table.

Said it was a spittoon just like his used-to-be bossman used to have in his bank up there in Atlanta. Had that golded-up spitting pot right handy. But he went further than that. He bought a little lady-size spitting pot for Janie to spit in. Had it right in the parlor with little sprigs of flowers painted all around the sides It took people by surprise because most of the women dipped snuff and of course had a spit-cup in the house.

But how could they know up-to-date folks was spitting in flowery little things like that? It sort of made the rest of them feel that they had been taken advantage of.

Like things had been kept from them. It was bad enough for white people, but when one of your own color could be so different it put you on a wonder. A familiar strangeness. There was no doubt that the town respected him and even admired him in a way.

But any man who walks in the way of power and property is bound to meet hate. Though Joe is indeed mayor, he takes every opportunity to flaunt his superiority to the common townspeople. His house, unnecessarily big. Similarly, the decorative spittoons that Joe buys for himself and Janie are pretentious shows of wealth, objects that humbler people would have cherished as vases.

All this arrogance is made worse by the fact that Joe is undeniably black, a man who is supposed to be their equal. Joe seems to want everyone to envy him, and they do. Janie soon began to feel the impact of awe and envy against her sensibilities. The wife of the Mayor was not just another woman as she had supposed.

She slept with authority and so she was part of it in the town mind. It was especially noticeable after Joe had forced through a town ditch to drain the street in front of the store. They had murmured hotly about slavery being over, but every man filled his assignment. As Janie explains, her marriage to the mayor of the town makes her a part of that authority in the eyes of the town, so the townspeople hold her at a distance.

The people of Eatonville hold Janie to a double standard; they place her in a position of superiority but they also reserve the right to be bitterly jealous of her. The same goes for Joe. Such is the public mentality. Maybe he skeered de rest of us mens might touch it round dat store. However, the fact that the citizens do not recognize this immediately as the truth shows that they think highly of Joe; they consider him too secure in his own assets to fear anything from the other men.

This business of the head-rag irked her endlessly. But Jody was set on it. Her hair was NOT going to show in the store. That was because Joe never told Janie how jealous he was. He never told her how often he had seen the other men figuratively wallowing in it as she went about things in the store. And one night he had caught Walter standing behind and brushing the back of his hand back and forth across the loose end of her braid ever so lightly so as to enjoy the feel of it without Janie knowing what he was doing.

There is much enthusiasm, joy and spontaneity in this marriage that makes Janie and Tea Cake carry on like a young couple in love, whereas in her previous marriage she lacks happiness. This chapter also reveals that Janie honestly cares for Tea Cake. After she finds that Tea Cake has been gone for a long time she prays to God for his return.

This quote is saying the obvious that she has been waiting for Tea Cake to return for two days, but it is also saying that she has been waiting a long time to find someone like Tea Cake who she genuinely loves. She is praying to God for him not to take Tea Cake away from her because he fills the loneliness that she feels in her past relationships and she does not want to lose that. Jealousy and fear of losing him to another woman is also shown in this quote which are normal reactions that a women has when she loves a man.

Jealousy by both Tea Cake and Janie in the novel indicates their attachment for each other; however their attachment may have been too strong as it eventually leads to be the death of Tea Cake. Tea Cake loves Janie as much as she loves him.