The search for one’s own voice in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their eyes were watching god

Abstract EN

African American women in the United States of America were doubly oppressed by racism and by patriarchy.

Any attempt from them to raise the issue of their subordination within the home or to change the drastic situation in which they lived, was condemned by the patriarchal system as a blasphemous attempt to trespass the communal laws and destroy the sacred structure of the family.

The present paper aims at showing how these women attempt to declare their subject hood in a paternalistic society that insists upon their object status through an analysis of the character of Janie in Zora Neale Hurston's novel, «Their eyes were watching god» (1937).

As will be argued in this article, Zora Neale Hurston aims, in her novel, to deconstruct the negative vision of womanhood as framed by the male-dominated discourse and give voice to women to express their selfhood.