I feel like sometimes we treat Janie a lot older than she
really is. She is about our age, or a bit older. She is still a young girl, her
head filled with these ideas about love. Even after getting married to Logan,
she seems to accept it for a little while believing that love will come from
marriage. Once she realizes love is not happening and meets a seemingly much
more eligible Joe Starks, she runs off. Not surprising. Joe Starks also does
not end up meeting her expectations, though she does stick around. In this way,
I feel she has matured. Perhaps she was taking her grandmother's advice
seriously. Despite her relationship with Jody, she is still living quite
comfortably. Once she is finally free from Jody, it makes sense why she moves on
to Tea Cake. In her experimentation with love, she has been to the middle and
the high (in terms of status). Where is there to go but the bottom? And so she
goes to Tea Cake. Being much younger than her, Tea Cake makes Janie herself feel young. She becomes once more
that young girl still trying to find true love. Just like with Logan and Jody,
she feels that she has found true love with Tea Cake. Despite suspicions from
people like Phoeby, who feel he might be after her money, Janie stays with him.
Perhaps she stays with him because she wants to find out whether he is true
love. I haven't read much farther than this, but if Tea Cake does not work out,
then maybe that is where she will stop with her idealistic view of love. One
last thing--Janie mentions to Phoeby that she is selling the store and is going
to "start all over in Tea Cake's way" (114). This might explain why
we saw Janie in working clothes at the beginning of the novel.
I think the way you start this post out, commenting on Janie's age, is really important. It's hard to keep in mind that she is *so* young but it is important to keep bringing up because it a piece of context for her actions. I like the idea of experimentation because it doesn't sound bad, it sounds a bit more innocent. Also, this post brings up the idea of youth and love juxtaposed with security and reason. Maybe these themes will develop? Maybe not...
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with the age factor here. As Juliana said, Janie is so young. She was forced to grow up early, getting married at age seventeen to a man she hated. Yes, I think she did mature after her first marriage. At the end of chapter 3, the narrator says, "Janie's first dream was dead, so she became a woman." She was never even given an opportunity for a young typical teenage girl romance. When she realized there was no hope for this, she grew up, gave up, and moved on to adulthood. Since she missed this whole section of her youth, it makes perfect sense that in the midst of her "mourning" she would deeply have a longing for that missing piece.
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