On Janie and her Relationships with Others

            In Their Eyes were Watching God, we’ve already been given quite the glimpse into the life of Janie, and it causes me to draw some comparisons with Invisible Man. One of the ways to interpret the idea of invisibility in Invisible Man is one of being “forced inside a box,” that is, people see the character, as a black person, and they stereotype them to the point where they don’t even see the characters personality, and they also try to force the character to be something or someone that they are not. It just so happens that both of these have occurred in the beginning of Janie’s narrative.

First, we see the stereotyping and judging in the first chapter, when Janie is walking through town after coming home from her adventure. The stereotypes and assumptions are in no way subtle: the people around her begin to judge her for everything they can, no matter how wild the accusations are. They begin by discussing her looks, rudely pondering “What she doin’ coming back here in dem overhalls? Can’t she find no dress to put on?—Where’s dat blue satin dress she left here in?” Then the surrounding people go on to talk about the man that she left with, guessing that “he off wid some gal so young she ain’t even got no hairs,” and wondering “Where he left her?­—What he done wid all her money?” These comments are quite damaging to Janie’s character: they place her in a box, one where she seems vulnerable, weak, and overly feminine. The townspeople immediately assume that her man left her, and that he took her money, and that he left for a younger woman: all which portray the idea of her being taken advantage of and then left, which we then find out to be not true: Janie is not the weak person that the people think she is, but is in fact a strong woman with a powerful story behind her.

The next part of my definition of invisibility is fulfilled within the next few chapters. This is most easily seen in chapters 3 and chapter 5. Janie’s Nanny is the first character to give us this idea of a controlling character trying to make our narrator something that they are not. In fact, it seems that Janie has married Logan for the sole purpose of pleasing her Nanny, and fulfilling the role that her Nanny so desperately wants her to play. It seems that Janie has been forced into this marriage simply because Nanny wants her to well off, as Nanny says

“Heah you got uh prop tuh lean on all yo’ bawn days, and big protection (. . .) and you come worryin’ me bout love (. . .) Got a house bought and paid for and sixty acres uh land right on de big road and . . . Lawd have mussy! Dat’s de very prong all us black women gits hung on. Dis love!” 

Others’ wills are also pushed on Janie in chapter 5, when Jody is made mayor. Tony and the people request that the new mayor’s wife (Janie) makes a speech, but Jody has other plans. He says that “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.” This obviously angers Janie, as she is said to “[make] her face laugh [. . .], but it wasn’t too easy [. . .] It must have been the way Joe spoke out without giving her a chance to say anything one way or another.” What is shown here is Jody trying, and succeeding to force Janie to be and act like someone that she is not, and in a way, making her and her voice invisible to the townspeople.