Becoming Through Identity | What Their Eyes Were Watching God Reveals About Modern Womanhood
Becoming Through Identity | What Their Eyes Were Watching God Reveals About Modern Womanhood
There are certain stories that survive generations because they reveal something timeless about humanity. They are not simply stories about a particular place, culture, or period in history. They endure because somewhere inside the pages, people recognize themselves.
Their Eyes Were Watching God is one of those stories.
This is one of my favorite novels because of the universally timeless themes that still serve as foundational pillars of the modern woman’s experience. Although the novel was published decades ago, its exploration of identity, voice, relationships, emotional endurance, self-worth, longing, and becoming continues to resonate deeply today.
For years, the novel has been discussed through the lens of literary significance, symbolism, feminism, dialect, and historical importance. While all of those conversations matter, there is another layer within the text that continues to resonate deeply with readers today:
the journey of becoming.
Not simply becoming successful.
Not simply becoming independent.
But becoming whole. Becoming visible. Becoming human.
At its core, Janie Crawford’s story is about identity—how it is shaped, suppressed, challenged, and eventually reclaimed. It is a journey through silence, longing, relationships, loss, endurance, and voice. And in many ways, her journey mirrors the emotional experiences many modern women still navigate today.
This series explores what literature reveals about becoming human. Not just through plot summaries or academic analysis, but through emotional truth. Stories often expose the hidden struggles, desires, fears, and transformations that shape our lives. Sometimes literature gives language to emotions we have carried silently for years.
Janie Crawford’s story does exactly that.
The Beginning of Identity
When readers first encounter Janie, they encounter possibility. She is young, observant, curious, and filled with longing. She wants something deeper from life than survival or social approval. She wants connection, meaning, and fulfillment.
But like many women, Janie begins her journey surrounded by expectations.
People tell her:
- what love should look like
- what safety should look like
- what womanhood should look like
- what success should look like
And slowly, the expectations of others begin shaping her identity before she fully understands herself.
That experience still feels painfully modern.
Many women spend years becoming versions of themselves that were designed for survival, acceptance, responsibility, or appearance rather than authenticity. Society often rewards women for being accommodating, emotionally available, resilient, agreeable, nurturing, or silent long before it encourages them to fully discover who they actually are.
Even now, despite women’s suffrage and decades of social progress, many of the foundational expectations surrounding gender roles and social norms remain deeply embedded within society. Women are still often expected to:
- carry emotional labor quietly
- prioritize the needs of others
- suppress anger
- remain agreeable
- balance strength with softness carefully
- endure without complaint
- and fight daily to be fully heard, respected, and understood
Although the language surrounding oppression may evolve over time, many women still experience the emotional weight of navigating systems, relationships, and cultural expectations that attempt to define their identity before they have the opportunity to define it for themselves.
This is part of what makes Janie’s story timeless.
Her journey is not simply about romance.
It is about self-discovery.
Becoming Through Silence
One of the most powerful themes in the novel is silence.
Janie repeatedly experiences environments where her voice is minimized, dismissed, or controlled. In many ways, she learns that survival sometimes requires quietness. Silence becomes protection. Silence becomes endurance.
But emotional silence comes with a cost.
Over time, many people lose connection with their desires, emotions, identity, and truth because they spend years suppressing parts of themselves to maintain peace, avoid conflict, or meet expectations.
Modern women still wrestle with this reality every day.
Some silence themselves in relationships.
Some silence themselves at work.
Some silence themselves emotionally.
Some silence themselves spiritually.
And eventually, exhaustion begins to appear.
Not simply physical exhaustion, but the exhaustion that comes from carrying an identity that no longer feels fully alive.
This is why Janie’s journey resonates so deeply. Her silence is not weakness. It is survival. But the novel also reveals an important truth:
survival and fulfillment are not always the same thing.
Interestingly, silence in the novel is not always represented through the absence of words alone. Sometimes silence appears through control, restriction, presentation, and the suppression of identity itself.
Hair becomes one of the most powerful symbolic expressions of this reality.
Janie’s hair represents beauty, individuality, femininity, freedom, and presence. Yet throughout parts of the novel, her hair is controlled and covered—particularly within environments where visibility, independence, and self-expression are threatening to male authority and societal expectations.
In many ways, the covering of Janie’s hair becomes symbolic of the silencing of her identity.
Others are unable to fully see her because parts of her authentic self are intentionally concealed. The suppression is not only verbal; it is visual, emotional, and psychological.
That symbolism continues to resonate deeply, especially for many Black women.
Hair has long existed as more than appearance within the Black experience. It often intersects with:
identity
beauty standards
professionalism
femininity
cultural expression
societal acceptance
and autonomy
For generations, Black women have navigated pressures surrounding how their hair should look, how it should be worn, and whether their natural presentation would be accepted, respected, or understood within certain spaces.
Because of this, many Black women understand the emotional weight connected to visibility and self-expression.
In many ways, Janie is repeatedly pushed toward a version of womanhood that is “meek and mild”—quiet, controlled, agreeable, emotionally restrained, and careful not to disrupt the expectations placed upon her. While gentleness itself is not weakness, society often weaponizes these expectations to suppress women’s voices, individuality, and emotional truth.
Women are frequently taught—both directly and indirectly—that they should:
- remain agreeable
- suppress anger
- prioritize comfort for others
- endure quietly
- and soften themselves in order to remain acceptable
Hurston reveals how easily society can confuse obedience with fulfillment and quietness with peace.
To control someone’s appearance can also become a way of controlling how they are perceived. And when individuals feel pressured to suppress parts of themselves in order to survive, succeed, or remain accepted, silence begins taking forms beyond speech.
Hurston quietly reveals that identity suppression does not always happen loudly.
Sometimes it happens gradually.
Sometimes culturally.
Sometimes relationally.
Sometimes visually.
And sometimes people become so accustomed to concealing parts of themselves that they no longer recognize how much of their identity has been hidden beneath survival.
Perhaps one of the most powerful aspects of Their Eyes Were Watching God is Janie’s gradual movement toward voice.
Voice is more than speaking.
Voice is identity.
Voice is self-recognition.
Voice is emotional truth.
Janie’s movement toward voice becomes especially significant when contrasted with the environments that repeatedly attempted to silence her.
When Janie leaves Logan Killicks, she does so searching for something deeper than survival. She longs for love, freedom, growth, possibility, and a fuller experience of life itself.
Joe Starks initially appears to represent that transformation. He is ambitious, charismatic, visionary, and socially powerful. Yet over time, Janie realizes that his vision of womanhood is still deeply rooted in control, presentation, status, and restrictive gender expectations.
One of the most revealing moments occurs when the townspeople ask Janie—referred to symbolically as “Mrs. Mayor Starks”—to say a few words publicly. Even in the title itself, her personal identity becomes overshadowed by Joe’s social position.
Before Janie can speak for herself, Joe immediately interrupts:
“Mah wife don’t know nothin’ ’bout no speech-makin’. Ah never married her for nothin’ lak dat. She’s uh woman and her place is in de home.”
That moment becomes deeply symbolic of the silencing Janie experiences throughout much of the novel.
Joe does not simply suppress her words; he suppresses her visibility, intellect, individuality, and autonomy. Janie is valued for beauty, image, and presentation, but not for voice.
Hurston reveals how societal expectations and patriarchal ideas often condition women to remain visible physically while remaining unheard emotionally and intellectually.
Many people move through life disconnected from their own voice because they have spent years prioritizing expectation over authenticity. Over time, they lose confidence in their thoughts, desires, instincts, and emotional reality.
But healing often begins when people reconnect with their voice.
This is why Janie’s evolution feels so emotionally significant. She does not remain emotionally stagnant. She changes. She reflects. She begins reclaiming pieces of herself that were buried beneath fear, expectation, and silence.
That process mirrors the emotional experiences of many women later in life.
There often comes a moment when women begin asking:
- Who am I beyond responsibility?
- What do I actually want?
- What parts of myself did I abandon?
- What voice have I silenced for years?
These questions are not signs of failure.
They are often signs of awakening.
Becoming Through Relationships
Relationships play a major role in identity formation throughout the novel. Janie’s experiences reveal how deeply relationships can influence the way people see themselves.
Some relationships encourage growth.
Some relationships distort identity.
Some relationships expose emotional wounds that were already present.
This remains deeply relevant today.
Modern culture often teaches people to search for identity through validation, romance, visibility, or external approval. Many individuals spend years hoping another person will confirm their worth before they learn to recognize it within themselves.
Society frequently promotes the idea that people must “find their other half” or discover the one person who will finally complete them. But one of the deeper lessons revealed throughout Janie’s journey is that human beings are not incomplete fragments searching for completion through another person.
Every individual is already whole.
The challenge is that many people have not yet discovered what their “whole” truly looks like beneath survival, expectation, fear, conditioning, trauma, or longing.
Because of this, relationships sometimes become places where people search for identity instead of places where identity is shared, nurtured, and expanded.
Hurston quietly reveals the danger of seeking a single relationship, experience, or external source to fully define personal worth and purpose. People continue evolving throughout life. Human beings are constantly:
- learning
- growing
- grieving
- healing
- transforming
- and discovering new layers of themselves
Becoming does not stop once love is found.
And this is one of the most powerful truths within Janie’s story.
Janie experiences love. She experiences disappointment. She experiences longing, connection, heartbreak, and emotional awakening. Yet even after finding deep love, her journey of becoming continues.
Love becomes part of her transformation, but it does not become the final definition of who she is.
That distinction matters.
Many people unconsciously place impossible expectations on relationships because they hope another person will:
- heal them completely
- define their identity
- eliminate loneliness
- validate their worth
- or provide permanent emotional fulfillment
But no single person can carry the responsibility of defining another human being’s existence.
Janie’s journey suggests that identity must ultimately be developed internally through self-awareness, reflection, experience, endurance, and truth.
Perhaps one of the most profound moments in Janie’s journey is that losing Tea Cake ultimately forces her to confront the reality of her own wholeness.
Tea Cake contributes deeply to her becoming. Through him, Janie experiences joy, passion, emotional freedom, companionship, visibility, and a fuller expression of herself. For perhaps the first time, she experiences love in a way that allows parts of her authentic self to fully emerge.
Yet Hurston does not allow the story to end with romantic completion.
Janie loses Tea Cake, and in that devastating loss, she is forced to continue living, reflecting, growing, and becoming beyond the relationship itself.
That distinction is powerful.
The novel quietly challenges the belief that another human being can fully complete a person’s identity. Love may expand us, awaken us, and transform us, but it should not become the sole definition of who we are.
By the conclusion of the story, Janie returns alone, yet she is not empty.
Earlier versions of Janie often searched for fulfillment, identity, meaning, and security through external structures. But by the end of the novel, she carries herself differently. Not because pain disappeared, but because she has integrated the experiences into a deeper understanding of herself.
Throughout the novel, Janie is repeatedly asked, “What you doing, Janie?” by the dominant figures attempting to shape or control different seasons of her life. Yet during moments of transformation and reflection, Janie often responds while gazing into nature, water, or the open sky:
“Ah’m watchin’ God.”
That response is deeply symbolic.
Janie is not claiming complete understanding. Instead, she remains spiritually attentive. Even through suffering, silence, longing, disappointment, grief, and love, she continues:
- reflecting
- observing
- evolving
- questioning
- and becoming
That posture of openness matters.
Even while navigating relationships, longing, love, disappointment, and loss, Janie’s journey remains connected to something larger than romance alone. Beneath the human relationships exists a deeper spiritual and existential search for meaning, identity, truth, and understanding.
The recurring imagery of water throughout the novel further reinforces this process of renewal, reflection, emotional depth, and transformation.
Earlier in the novel, water often feels:
- reflective
- transformative
- calm
- renewing
- spiritually expansive
But during the storm, the water becomes violent.
Uncontrollable.
Dangerous.
Overwhelming.
That shift mirrors what happens when human beings begin believing they are fully in control—when power, domination, ego, certainty, status, or human strength become substitutes for humility, spiritual awareness, or guidance beyond themselves.
The storm destroys that illusion.
Throughout the novel, people repeatedly attempt to:
- define reality
- dominate others
- possess identity
- silence expression
- and control life itself
But the storm reminds everyone of something deeply human:
people are limited.
And suddenly:
“their eyes were watching God.”
Not wealth.
Not status.
Not power.
Not relationships.
God.
Or at minimum, something greater than themselves.
The contrast between calm water and violent water becomes one of the novel’s most powerful symbolic expressions of transformation itself.
Sometimes becoming feels:
- peaceful
- reflective
- renewing
Other times becoming feels:
- chaotic
- devastating
- overwhelming
- destructive
But both forms reshape identity.
What makes Janie’s journey especially powerful is that she survives the storm physically, emotionally, and spiritually transformed.
Not untouched.
Not unchanged.
But transformed.
By the conclusion of the novel, Janie has endured love, grief, transformation, suffering, renewal, and spiritual reflection—and through it all, she has begun recognizing the fullness of herself.
Janie’s becoming never fully stops.
Even after love, even after loss, she continues evolving.
That movement toward self-awareness is part of becoming.
Sometimes relationships reveal who we are.
Sometimes they reveal who we are not.
Becoming Through Loss
Loss reshapes identity.
Some versions of ourselves are born through grief, disappointment, heartbreak, or endings we never expected. Janie’s story reflects the reality that emotional transformation is rarely comfortable.
Pain changes people.
But pain can also deepen self-awareness, compassion, resilience, and clarity.
One of the reasons literature matters is because it allows readers to examine suffering from a distance while quietly recognizing their own experiences within the story. Through Janie’s losses, readers witness emotional endurance. They witness survival. They witness the complicated process of rebuilding identity after disappointment.
And perhaps most importantly, they witness hope.
Not shallow optimism.
But the deeper hope that emerges when people survive difficult seasons without completely losing themselves.
One of the most powerful patterns throughout Their Eyes Were Watching God is the way transformation repeatedly emerges through endings. Hurston reveals that becoming often requires the completion, severing, or death of one season before another can begin.
Growth in the novel is rarely immediate or comfortable.
Instead, Janie’s life unfolds through a series of emotional deaths and rebirths.
Early in the novel, the pear tree symbolizes Janie’s youthful understanding of harmony, love, possibility, and awakening. Under the pear tree, Janie imagines connection, fulfillment, and the beauty of mutual existence. The image represents innocence, longing, emotional awakening, and her earliest vision of what life could become.
But almost immediately after this spiritual and emotional awakening, that season begins shifting.
Her grandmother’s fear-driven understanding of survival redirects Janie’s path toward security rather than self-discovery. Nanny’s death later becomes symbolic in itself because Janie is left standing between inherited fear and the uncertain possibility of defining life for herself.
And after the emotional death of Janie’s dreams within her marriage to Logan Killicks, Hurston presents another powerful symbolic transition.
Janie stands at the gate.
The gate scene becomes deeply significant because gates throughout literature often symbolize thresholds, transition, departure, and transformation. It is at this moment—standing between one version of herself and another—that Janie encounters Joe Starks.
Even earlier, Hurston quietly foreshadows Janie’s longing for freedom through the symbolic image of her releasing the mule or pig from restraint. That imagery reflects Janie’s deeper emotional desire to escape limitation, confinement, and imposed identity.
The crossroads imagery surrounding Joe Starks also matters tremendously.
Crossroads often symbolize decision, destiny, spiritual transition, uncertainty, and transformation. Janie’s choice to leave with Joe is not simply about romance; it represents her willingness to step into the unknown in search of possibility, growth, and a larger life.
Yet each new season also carries new forms of suffering.
Joe initially appears to represent freedom, ambition, movement, and transformation. But over time, Janie discovers that emotional confinement can exist even within material success and social status.
One of the most painful moments in the novel occurs when Janie finally asserts her voice publicly against Joe Starks after years of suppression and humiliation. In response, Joe strikes her in front of the townspeople.
That moment becomes deeply symbolic.
Janie’s movement toward voice is met with violence, humiliation, and punishment. Hurston reveals how threatening female self-expression can become within systems rooted in domination and control.
Yet even after this moment, Janie’s internal transformation continues.
Although she remains physically present within the marriage, she begins emotionally separating herself from Joe. Hurston writes that Janie “moved her things into the bedroom and slept there,” symbolically separating herself from the emotional and spiritual structure of the relationship long before Joe’s physical death occurs.
In many ways, the emotional death of the marriage precedes the literal death itself.
And even as Joe approaches death, he continues shouting commands, expecting obedience and control until the very end. That detail matters because it reinforces how deeply identity, domination, gender roles, and power shaped their relationship.
But Joe’s death also becomes another threshold.
Another ending.
Another severing.
Another transformation.
And then comes Tea Cake.
Through Tea Cake, Janie experiences emotional openness, joy, companionship, sensuality, and freedom in ways she had long desired. Yet Hurston once again refuses to allow transformation to remain simplistic.
The storm arrives.
Chaos arrives.
Loss arrives.
Death arrives.
And perhaps this is where Janie’s final transformation begins most deeply.
Losing Tea Cake forces Janie to confront grief unlike anything she has previously experienced. Yet it also forces her to confront herself beyond attachment, beyond romance, and beyond dependency.
Tea Cake contributes to her becoming, but he does not become the entirety of her identity.
That distinction matters profoundly.
By the conclusion of the novel, Janie has survived:
- silence
- control
- longing
- heartbreak
- humiliation
- grief
- love
- loss
- and spiritual transformation
And through each completed season, a new version of herself emerges.
Hurston ultimately reveals that becoming often requires release.
Sometimes one identity must die before another can fully live.
Sometimes one season must end before clarity can begin.
Sometimes people must lose what once defined them in order to finally discover who they are beneath survival, expectation, fear, or attachment.
That is part of what makes Janie’s story feel so profoundly human.
Her life does not unfold through perfection.
It unfolds through transformation.
What This Novel Reveals About Modern Womanhood
Although Their Eyes Were Watching God was published decades ago, many of its emotional themes remain strikingly relevant today.
Women still wrestle with:
- identity
- self-worth
- emotional exhaustion
- relationships
- visibility
- purpose
- societal expectation
- loneliness
- voice
- becoming
Modern womanhood often requires balancing strength and softness simultaneously. Women are frequently expected to nurture others while quietly carrying their own emotional burdens. Many become highly capable while privately feeling disconnected from themselves.
This is why Janie’s journey still speaks across generations.
Her story reminds readers that becoming is rarely immediate. Identity often develops through struggle, reflection, endurance, heartbreak, and awakening. Sometimes people do not fully discover themselves until after disappointment forces them to confront deeper truths.
And sometimes becoming requires unlearning versions of ourselves we created simply to survive.
What Literature Reveals About Becoming Human
Stories matter because humans need mirrors.
Literature allows us to examine:
- emotional patterns
- identity formation
- relationships
- grief
- hope
- fear
- transformation
- humanity itself
Certain stories endure because they expose emotional truths that remain relevant regardless of time period.
That is why Their Eyes Were Watching God continues to resonate. Beneath the literary analysis exists something profoundly human: the search to become fully alive.
And perhaps that is why stories remain powerful.
Sometimes they help us understand other people.
Sometimes they help us understand ourselves.
Reflection Questions
- Have you ever felt disconnected from your own voice?
- What experiences shaped your identity the most?
- Have relationships ever helped you discover parts of yourself?
- What season of life required the greatest emotional endurance from you?
- What does “becoming” mean to you now?
Final Reflection
Becoming is rarely linear.
Sometimes it happens through silence.
Sometimes through heartbreak.
Sometimes through longing, endurance, waiting, or loss.
And sometimes literature reveals parts of ourselves we did not yet have language for.
Interestingly, Their Eyes Were Watching God reflects this truth not only through Janie’s experiences, but through the structure of the novel itself.
The story unfolds as a flashback, with Janie reflecting on the experiences that shaped her identity. That structure feels deeply human because people often understand themselves through reflection. Many individuals do not fully recognize the meaning of certain relationships, losses, disappointments, or seasons until they look back on them later.
Hurston’s use of the frame narrative quietly reinforces the reality that becoming is often understood in retrospect.
Janie’s journey does not unfold as a simple transformation. Instead, readers move through memories of hope, silence, love, grief, endurance, and awakening in ways that mirror real emotional development.
Human growth rarely happens in straight lines.
Sometimes people revisit the same emotional lessons repeatedly. Sometimes they evolve through setbacks, relationships, loss, or unexpected moments that slowly reshape their understanding of themselves.
And perhaps that is why Janie Crawford’s story continues to resonate generations later. Beneath the literary analysis exists something deeply human—the lifelong search to become fully alive.
Stories matter because they remind us that becoming human is a lifelong journey.