I can understand why the African American classic Their Eyes Were Watching God is considered an important work of 20th century American literature. First published in 1937, it is a novel written by a Black female writer and it tells the story of a Black female protagonist, Janie, from her own perspective, at a time when stories were seldom told from the female perspective, and if they were, it was from a (white) man’s idea of the female perspective. Their Eyes Were Watching God is also mostly told in the Black vernacular, which makes Janie’s story more authentic, but also makes it a more challenging read. I am usually a speed reader, but I had to force myself to slow down while reading this novel so that I did not miss anything.

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie tells the story of her life, which is centered on her three marriages. When Janie is sixteen years old, her grandmother marries her off to an older man with a good living in order to keep her out of trouble. Janie is unhappy with her first marriage, imagining there is more to life than the drudgery of farm work. Her husband, meanwhile, accuses her of putting on airs because Janie is not only biracial, but she was also raised with a white family.

Mere months into her first marriage, Janie meets the slick Joe Starks, who acts like a white man and has lots of money in his pocket. Joe has come to Florida because he heard that a new town for Black people is being established. Janie decides to run off and marry Joe but finds her life with him does not make her happy. Joe, using his money and his smarts to take advantage of the poor people in town, has become mayor and made Janie into a respectable wife, but he has little respect for her. He gets jealous when other men pay too much attention to her, and he controls everything she does.

Janie is nearly forty when Joe dies, leaving her a wealthy widow. She then meets Tea Cake, who is nearly fifteen years younger than her. The budding relationship between Janie and Tea Cake is met with disapproval, not only because he is much younger than her, but because he is a poor, dark Black man. Janie does not care what other people think, though, and she leaves town to marry Tea Cake. The rest of the novel tells their tumultuous love story as they travel all over Florida to places where Tea Cake can find work, and partying, drinking, and gambling. A hurricane plays an important role later in the story.

Now, reading this novel through my 21st century lenses, or maybe just through my cynical lenses, I found Janie to be disappointingly naïve and her life not as autonomous as I expected, seeing as how she has little experience of life outside of marriage. Janie’s husbands, especially Tea Cake, send up about a million red flags. Although she chooses to be with a man who she believes is the love of her life, she still hands her agency over to this man and follows him all around Florida even though he does not treat her any more as an equal than her other husbands did. I do not buy Their Eyes Were Watching God as a great love story, but I do find it to be an interesting story about the experiences of Black people in post-slavery Florida.