Their Eyes Were Watching God Quote

“She knew now that marriage did not make love. Her dream was dead, so she became a woman,” (Hurston 25)
This quote really sticks out within the story and is a big eye catcher to be in the first twenty-five pages. It shows how quickly Zora jumps right into deeper meaning within her stories. This phrase caught a lot of my attention because it makes you think. It reveals truth in some respects. Hurston uses this statement as a major attention getter and one of the many rhetorical phrases in her story. The two truths are that marriage does not make love and dreams.
Our first truth is very self-explanatory. Marriage will not create love in the future. Janie found this out when she married Logan, a man she never loved. One big mistake that most people make today is waiting for love to come and just rushing into marriage when love is what marriage should be based off of anyway. Without that there is nothing to keep the two of you together when things get hard. It’s the sticky adhesive, supposedly unbreakable bond that keeps a couple together, but at this day and age that glue has been getting weak and dry. Love is becoming dry to only last a few years instead of when love lasted forever. A bond so strong cannot be created by anything other than the intertwined souls of two separate spirits and that is not what marriage is. Marriage is the public declaration of this bondage and legal unification, but is also a life-changing decision, commitment, agreement, and bonding. With this book being written in the early 20th century it is possible that Hurston saw that the main thing that kept this together, love, was becoming less noticed and warned us against it.
Another point she had was about Janie’s dreams. Janie claims that she was not grown enough when her Nanny said that she was now a woman. Janie was not ready for this, but it happened. She wanted to live young for a longer time like she was before. She then realized that this was not possible so her plans, her dreams died. Here Hurston says that “she became a woman,” (Hurston 25). It is true though that when you get older and eventually become grown some of your dreams—in some cases most or all dreams—die along with your younger years. Everything that you wanted to be or do you then realize you can neither do nor do so easily. Reality crashes in and it alters your vision. You begin to see the difference between reality and dreams and you must wake up. It makes you think your dreams are impossible and twists what really is possible. Once you realize that it is claimed that you reach another level in growing up—you reach another level in maturity. Hurston says that Janie realized this and became a woman, showing that just like that, she knew the struggle and sacrifices of womanhood. Once you are grown certain things are given up for your own future and the people around you. Hurston showed us that this was another level in maturity and one of life’s unfortunate lessons that does not go well when learned the hard way, especially when Janie was just crying when she realized it.
To conclude, there was a large message in this little phrase within the book. Love is not being used to keep lives together as it should be and it cannot be recreated by marriage. Also the dreams that you once had are slowly eroded as you become older and this is a new level of maturity and a painful life lesson. Hurston gives off many more messages within her book which makes it an entertaining book as well as education about what a textbook can’t teach you: life lessons.