Dorcas Gustine & Margaret Fuller Slack
There were two poems that I was able to relate to Their Eyes Were Watching God that I thought made pretty strong connections. First of all would be the words of Dorcas Gustine [p.21], a person who had always spoken their mind during their life and did not regret it a bit despite what the town had to say. Like Dorcas Gustine who the other villagers disapproved of, was Janie’s running away with Tea Cake, a considerably younger man with not much to his name not long after Jody died. Janie did not care what society thought of her, she ended up doing what her heart desired. As Dorcas defends them self, “Berate me who will — I am content.” Also, Janie always spoke her mind, whether it was of her dreams and disappointments with her first marriage, to verbally attacking her her first two husbands, etc. When she was not speaking her mind was when she was married to Jody, who controlled what she could and could not do, how she wore her hair, who she could talk to, etc. without any objections from her. This ate away at Janie, who was a strong character from the get-go, and took her strength away until she completely burst out in rage at Jody just before he died. As Dorcas explains, “Silence poisons the soul.”
Then there was the story of Margaret Fuller Slack, a woman bitter in death with the lack of accomplishments she had made. Instead of becoming a novelist dedicated to her profession/aspirations, she married and had eight children. She did not want to be tied up by taking care of all of these children, she wanted to have the time to write as her husband had promised before they married. Just as Margaret was forced to compromise herself by being sucked into the traditional “woman’s role,” Janie also was forced to compromise herself in her marriages. Going into her first marriage, Janie had believed in true love and had great dreams — until she was forced into a marriage with an older man who she soon could not bear to be with. She had to compromise her dreams of something larger to be a dutiful wife, and compromised herself again in her marriage to Jody by allowing herself to be pushed around and her dreams/inner-strength to be squandered. Her marriage with Jody especially applies here, because Jody wooed Janie with dreams of a better life and happiness just as Margaret says that John Slack was “luring me with the promise of leisure for my novel.” [p.23]
