Analysis of Freedom Through The Protagonists By Using Feminism in Zora Neale Hurston's 'Their Eyes Were Watching God' and Toni Morrison's 'Beloved'.

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CHAPTER TWO: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ... 6

CHAPTER THREE: ANALYSIS OF FREEDOM THROUGH THE PROTAGONIST IN THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD ... 9

CHAPTER FOUR: ANALYSIS OF FREEDOM THROUGH THE PROTAGONIST IN BELOVED ... 19

CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION ... 31

BIBLIOGRAPHY ... 35

APPENDICES: Summary of Their Eyes were Watching God... 38

Summary of Beloved ... 40

Biography of Zora Neale Hurston ... 41

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Universitas Kristen Maranatha

ABSTRACT

Dalam penulisan skripsi ini saya menganalisis dua novel berjudul Their Eyes Were Watching God karya Zora Neale Hurston dan Beloved karya Toni Morrison, kedua novel tersebut ternyata menyimpan makna yang dalam mengenai arti kebebasan bagi para wanita. Menurut Hurston dan Morrison, kebebasan para tokoh protagonis di dalam kedua novel tersebut ternyata berawal dari berbagai batasan dan subordinasi pria terhadap wanita. Tentu saja, hal-hal tersebut membuat arti kebebasan menjadi semakin besar dan sulit untuk dicapai.

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APPENDICES

Summary of Their Eyes Were Watching God

The story is about the quest of a mulatto woman for her identity. The central character, Janie Crawford, returns to her hometown of Eatonville, Florida, after nearly two years of absence. Her neighbours are curious to know where she has been and what has happened to her. They wonder why she is returning in dirty overalls when she left in bridal satin.

Janie tells her story to her friend Pheoby Watson and after the story is over, the novelist returns to Janie’s back steps. Thus, the story, which actually turns nearly forty years of Janie’s life, is “framed” by an evening visit between two friends.

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and an enviable position as the mayor’s wife. Janie endures this marriage in the shadow of charismatic, ambitious Jody, a man who knows how to handle people, money, and power, but who has no perception of Janie’s simple wish to be respected and loved.

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Summary of Beloved

The story is about an African American mother, Sethe, who tries to rebuild their lives with her fourth child Denver after having escaped from slavery. One day, it comes a day when a young lady shows up at their house, saying that her name is "Beloved." This makes Sethe believe that the girl is her first daughter, whom Sethe murdered by slitting her throat with a handsaw when she was only two years old to save her from a life of slavery, and whose tombstone is written as "Beloved." Beloved's return makes Sethe suffer to the point where she neglects her other daughter at home and even her own needs, while Beloved becomes more and more demanding.

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Biography of Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston was an American folklorist and author during the time of the Harlem Renaissance, best known for the novel Their Eyes Were Watching

God. Hurston was born and raised in Eatonville, Florida, with a birth date in

1901. It seems that Eatonville inspired her imagination which is taken to be the setting of Their Eyes Were Watching God. Hurston spent her last 10 years as a freelance writer for magazines and newspapers. She worked in a library at Cape Canaveral and as a substitute teacher in Fort Pierce, Florida where she died of a stroke and was buried in an unmarked grave. It seems the world had somehow

Toni Morrison is one of the most prominent authors in world literature; she won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993 for her collected works. Most of her novels have taken their place in the canon of American literature, including The

Bluest Eye, Beloved (winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction), and Song of

Solomon. Morrison's writings are notable for their epic themes, vivid dialogue,

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EVALUATION SHEET

1st / 2nd evaluation This draft is declared

fit / unfit* for the thesis defence examination

Points to elaborate/reconsider:

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EXAMINER

_’

S NOTE FOR REVISION

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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

In the early 20th century, Zora Neale Hurston was “one of the most famous authors in the Harlem Renaissance” (Wikipedia.org: Harlem Renaissance). I choose her because she has an important role in American Literature by influencing such writers as “Toni Morrison and Alice Walker”. Her works were significant because she was able to “break into the secret societies and they are called ‘women’”(The Official Zora Neale Hurston Website). Most of her works are about a prototypical black woman who is clearly facing and undergoing life harder than men.

Another American great writer is Toni Morrison who was named as one of "The 30 Most Powerful Women in America" by Ladies' Home Journal in 2001 (Wikipedia.org: Toni Morrison). She is a perfect match for Hurston since her works were influenced by Hurston and they come from the same race. She was

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The works that I will analyze are Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and Toni Morrison’s Beloved. From their works, I learn a lot about being a black woman and how they have to deal with their lives. Both raise the protagonists’ desire to be free from the world which is dominated by men. Women have had a long and difficult struggle to gain freedom and possessions. Whether black or white, women still face similar struggles. They both have a dream to be free.

The fictions Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and Beloved by Toni Morrison share a similar background, yet different endings of the story. I choose the protagonists since they are the most important characters in the novel and they lead the story to different concepts of freedom.

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, the protagonist, Janie, is a woman who denies gender stereotypes and unequal treatment toward women. She is married three times to find her true love and acceptance from men. Eventually, she “needs freedom and an expansion of her horizons more than she needs love” (Domina). She needs freedom more because Janie has become “an object” to her husband and that is not something that she is willing to stand (Their Eyes Were Watching God: Comprehension and Analysis Blog). She is looking for a freedom and she gets it after Tea Cake, her third husband, dies.

In Beloved, the protagonist, Sethe, is a proud and independent woman who is extremely devoted to her children. Unwilling to let her children have the physical, emotional, sexual, and spiritual trauma she endured as a slave at Sweet Home, she attempts to murder them in an act of “motherly love and protection”

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own freedom by protecting her children with a controversial act such as killing the children, so that they will not be slaves like her. She is looking for freedom, but she does not have it until the end of the story.

The aim of this thesis is to understand what kinds of freedom that the protagonists want. The importance of freedom is not purely restricted to political and economic domain of countries, important though it is. Freedom is connected to individuals who make up families; it matters to families which make up

(Guerin 117); therefore, it will be best to find the specific reasons that cause the protagonists’ actions and conflicts and their effects upon the protagonists through theory. In order to achieve a better understanding, I try to analyze the protagonists to reveal the concepts of freedom in both novels using the feminism theory by

Simone de Beauvoir. Beauvoir is a French feminist and philosopher; she is now

“best known for her detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism” (Wikipedia.org: Simone de Beauvoir). In Beauvoir’s rejection of the traditional concept that woman is weak, it is expressed once again the essential feminist idea that a woman has the same nature as man does, and is like him a free and creative being.

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freedom from spouse-control and freedom from guilt. Thus, considering that

both works are prominent works of literature conveying feminism, I decide to discuss them.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

The problems are stated as follows:

1. How do the protagonists help the revelation of freedom? 2. What kinds of freedom do the protagonists fight for? Approach: Feminism by Simone de Beauvoir

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

1. To reveal the use of the protagonists in revealing the protagonists’ concept of freedom.

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METHOD OF RESEARCH

The research used for writing this thesis is library research. First I read Their Eyes Were Watching God and Beloved as the primary texts. Then, to support my study, especially in accordance with the topic of my study, I perform research for additional information, which is done through secondary reading from some books such as Contemporary Women’s Fiction, and Feminism. Finally, I also read and compile some texts that are taken from the internet. All of the information and knowledge that are gathered are then used to analyze the novel. Finally, I draw some conclusion from the research I have made.

ORGANIZATION OF THE THESIS

This thesis consists of five chapters. The thesis starts with the Acknowledgements. The first chapter is the Introduction, which consists of the Background of the Study, Statement of the Problems, the Purpose of the Study, Method of Research, and the Organization of the Thesis. Chapter Two consists of the theoretical background; Chapter Three is the discussion of Their Eyes Were Watching God. Chapter Four is the discussion of Beloved. The last chapter is Conclusion. The thesis ends with a Bibliography and an Appendix, which consists of Summaries of the two novels and Biographies of the Authors.

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CHAPTER FIVE

CONCLUSION

Having analyzed the freedom through the protagonists in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and Toni Morrison’s Beloved, I come to the conclusion that one’s characteristics play an important role in affecting one’s decision to have their own freedom. Janie’s being free-spirited, forward-looking, and self-committed lead her to get the freedom in a much easier way than Sethe, who keeps looking back to the past, feeling guilty, and pretending not to have a failing decision in her life.

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Furthermore, both of the novels draw attention to the oppressive affects of the “stereotypical representation of women as sex object, wife, and mother”

(Palmer 14). They depict the negative view of the feminine identity and position and identify femininity with a number of undesirable attributes, including passivity, dependence, indecisiveness and a propensity for excessive self-sacrifice.

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie is described as a woman who undergoes much oppression from her spouses. She has to do as her husbands say, be as her husbands want, and step back from the society since she is able to be the front woman. She is also defined as a woman who has the ability to break free. Although she seems weak, she actually has the power to lead her own life. In other words, she can establish her own freedom. She shows her need to find the right spouse for herself until the end of the story. She keeps on searching someone to be at her side and share the same concept of freedom. It is possible for Janie to have an active freedom because she is not a mother who is immanent and not free like Sethe in Beloved. She moves forward and believes in herself in reaching freedom. In gaining freedom, Janie has a bigger opportunity than Sethe.

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responsibilities as a mother and is blamed for her failure. As seen through the feminist perspective, Sethe is not going to have any active freedom at all because she is a mother of four children and she has two daughters who bind them together into a more complicated relationship (Charvet 114). At the end of the story she remains guilty because as a mother she is immanent and not free (Charvet 107).

The act of oppression and limitation of freedom happens because there are different classes within the society. In the eye of feminism, the society in here is male-made society. This differentiation seems to be some kind of subordination toward women. The differentiation is also seen as the stratum in gender. Women are labeled as the Other who are not allowed to have the same rights, power and opportunities as men. The notion of women is given by men who seem to determine the positions and rules in the society. This subordination toward women is rejected by both of the protagonists but in gaining their freedom, they do it in different ways as they have the notion that “motherhood makes women more vulnerable to male control” (Palmer 99).

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Text

Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: First Perennial Library, 1998.

Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Penguin Books, 1987.

References

Charvet, John. Feminism. London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1 982.

Guerin, Wilfred L. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Gutherie, Danille Taylor. Conversation with Toni Morrison. Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 1994.

Palmer, Paulina. Contemporary Woman’s Fiction: Narrative Practice and Feminist Theory. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989.

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Internet Sources

Domina, Lynn. “Their Eyes Were Watching God (Criticism).” 5 June 2007. <http://www.answers.com/topic/their-eyes-were-watching-god-novel-7>. Freedom and Possession - Beloved. 14 July 2005.

< http://www.echeat.com/essay.php?t=27299>.

Mussett , Shannon. “Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986).” 2006. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy . 6 April 2007.

<http://www.iep.utm.edu/b/beauvoir.htm>.

Sparknotes.com: Beloved Toni Morrison, Character List. 29 March 2007 <http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/beloved/characters.html>. Wikipedia.org: Simone de Beauvoir. 6 April 2007

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_de_Beauvoir>. Wikipedia.org: Toni Morrison. 28 March 2007

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toni_Morrison>.

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