Janie Crawford tells her friend Phoeby...."Ah'm older than Tea Cake, yes. But he done showed me where it's de thought dat makes de difference in ages. If people thinks de same they can make it all right. So in the beginnin' new thoughts had tuh be thought and new words said. After Ah got used tuh dat, we gits' long jus' fine. He done taught me de maiden language all over. Wait till you see de new blue satin Tea Cake done picked out for me tuh stand up wid him in. High heel slippers, necklace, earrings, everything he wants tuh see me in. Some of dese mornin's and it won't be long, you gointuh wake up callin' me and Ah'll be gone."
Janie already has had two husbands, both of whom belittled her and insisted she stay in the background and just work hard and who generally treated her as a lesser human. When her second husband dies, she is a widow of some substance with many suitors, but she falls head over heels in love with Tea Cake, a charming, sweet-talking, younger man. It is the 1930s in Florida. They move from northern Florida to the 'Glades as migrants, working on the "muck" until a devastating hurricane arrives and their lives change. They listen to the wind and the waters of Lake Okechobee move toward them and "their eyes were watching God."
These are the bare bones of this amazing novel. It is a love story and a portrait of black life in the south, yet, as all great novels, it is much more than that. The universal themes of human dignity and desire, community, love, boredom, dreams, loss, and living a life through days and seasons and years are all here.
Hurston wrote for years, studied anthropology, received honorary degrees and awards, but eventually died at age 69 in a county welfare home in Florida in 1960. Alice Walker searched for and found Hurston's unmarked grave in 1973 and said of Their Eyes Were Watching God, "There is no book more important to me than this one."
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