Their Eyes Were Watching God

Janie Crawford's search for love and a self of her own carries her across Florida through three marriages: from her grandmother's cabin and a loveless farm in the west, to the all-Black town of Eatonville where she is the mayor's silenced wife, to the Everglades 'muck' by Lake Okeechobee where she finds joy with Tea Cake, until the great 1928 hurricane. Hurston roots her landmark of Black American literature in real places she knew, above all the self-governing town of Eatonville and the migrant bean fields of the Glades.

Nanny

The grandmother's cabin

The pear tree

In the yard behind her grandmother's cabin, sixteen-year-old Janie watches a pear tree in bloom and awakens to a longing for love that will drive her whole life. Her grandmother Nanny, terrified for her, marries her off to the older farmer Logan Killicks for security, and the pear-tree dream collides at once with a loveless duty.

The opening chapters

inferred Janie's girlhood with her grandmother and her first, arranged marriage are set in west Florida; drawn from the rural districts of the region and sited there.

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