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Frame narratives in "Their Eyes Were Watching God"

     In the first three chapters of Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God," Hurston introduces two different frame narratives. The first frame narrative comes with Janie recounting her life to her friend Pheoby. The second comes from within Janie's life story, when she remembers a story from her grandmother's life. To call these "frame narratives" is a little bit unfeeling, because they are actually stories. This oral tradition adds. depth to the characters and the novel. 

    When the novel begins, Janie seems guarded and reluctant to talk about her life. We later learn that this is because she has been gone from town and has experienced a lot of hardship since, including losing a partner. However, her willingness to open up to Pheoby about her life and past shows the reader that their relationship is a lot deeper than their conversations would suggest. The reader also gets to learn more about Janie through her story, which helps to open up the narrative after the semi-confusing first chapter. 

    The second story, told by Janie's grandmother, has multiple purposes. The reader learns so much more about Janie's life, but they also learn about her grandmother's motivations. The pain of losing Janie's mother effects almost all of her grandmother's choices that surround Janie. Pairing Janie's story about womanhood and growing up with her grandmother's story about Janie's mother and experiences with assault ties the three woman together even more that their blood ties. 

    In the end, these stories serve to move the novel along and create depth for the characters. 






Comments

  1. The "layers" of frame narratives in Their Eyes Were Watching God definitely confused me at first, but your post does a great job of clarifying them! The stories seem to serve the purpose of adding dimension to the characters by depicting the far-reaching impacts of certain events on all 3 generations of women .

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  2. The grandmother at one point describes the story she tells Janie as a kind of "sermon" she's long wanted to deliver on behalf of women, making it a unique kind of frame narrative: she has a *lesson* she wants to impart to her granddaughter, and it has to do with raising her consciousness about gender and sexuality and the hazards of being a black woman in this world. Curiously, given how generally sympathetic and moving Nanny's framed narrative is, Janie largely hears it as so many reasons she needs to lower her expectations and accept a second-rate life. As we'll see, Nanny ultimately is "hated" by Janie, a foil who stands in the way of her chances for happiness and self-realization. But the history of sexual violence she relates--connecting two generations of this family to rape--is vital information to frame the whole novel. We'll hear a lot about Janie's hair and her other biracial features, and it's important to remember that Hurston is clear that these very features are the result of brutal historical circumstances and literally the products of rape.

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  3. In my mind I picture the narrator as an old black woman, or like an ageless god lady, so that adds another layer to the onion of black women telling a story, though in the narrator's case it isn't her story - or is it? Maybe she's an elderly Janie, telling a story about herself telling a story about her life.

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    Replies
    1. ageless god lady. love it.
      zora neale hurston = ageless god lady????

      But for real, I like the idea of a narrator defying realism. The narrator breaks into the frame narratives by transitioning Janie's speech to normal narration and possesses a fair degree of omniscience (e.g. speaking the thoughts of multiple characters), so some serious suspense of disbelief would have to happen if we were to consider the narrator to be a character or friend of a character in the novel.

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