他们眼望上苍 (1937)

《他们眼望上苍》是美国作家佐拉·尼尔·赫斯顿于1937年创作的小说 。小说讲述了主人公珍妮·克劳福德从一个充满活力却默默无闻的少女成长为一个掌控自己命运的女人。赫斯顿在海地用了七周时间创作了《他们眼望上苍》 。

Their Eyes Were Watching God is a 1937 novel by American writer Zora Neale Hurston. It is considered a classic of the Harlem Renaissance and is also considered Hurston's best-known work. The novel explores protagonist Janie Crawford's "ripening from a vibrant, but voiceless, teenage girl into a woman with her finger on the trigger of her own destiny."

Hurston wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God in Haiti in the span of seven weeks. Hurston was self-described as "under internal pressure" when writing and wished she could "write it again". Though retrospectively she felt the work captured "all the tenderness of [her] passion".

Set in central and southern Florida in the early 20th century, the novel was initially poorly received by the African-American community. After the publication of Alice Walker's article "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston" in Ms. magazine in 1975 and Robert Hemenway's publication of a biography of Hurston in 1980, Hurston was back in the literary realm. Since the late 20th century, Their Eyes Were Watching God has been regarded as influential to both African-American literature and women's literature. Time magazine included the novel in its 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels published since 1923. Their Eyes Were Watching God has become a foundational text in high school and college courses across American literature, African American studies, and gender studies.

Plot

Janie Crawford, an African-American woman in her forties, returns to her old town after a year-long absence and recounts her life story to her friend Phoeby.

Janie begins with her sexual awakening, comparing it to a blossoming pear tree kissed by bees in spring, that occurs when she allows a local boy, Johnny Taylor, to kiss her, which Janie's grandmother, Nanny, witnesses. Nanny, as a young enslaved woman, had been raped by her white owner and gave birth to a mixed-race daughter, whom she named Leafy. Though Nanny wanted a better life for her daughter, Leafy was raped by her school teacher and became pregnant with Janie. Shortly after Janie's birth, Leafy began to drink and stay out at night, eventually abandoning the baby and leaving Janie with Nanny.

Nanny, having transferred her hopes for stability and opportunity from Leafy to Janie, arranges for Janie to marry Logan Killicks, an older farmer looking for a wife. However, Killicks does not love Janie and wants only a domestic helper, rather than a lover or partner; he thinks she does not do enough around the farm and considers her ungrateful. When Janie speaks to Nanny about her desire for love, Nanny accuses Janie of being spoiled and dies soon after.

Disillusioned and lonely, Janie leaves Killicks and runs off with Joe "Jody" Starks, a glib man who takes her to the all-Black community of Eatonville, Florida. Starks arranges to buy more land, establishes a general store, and is soon elected mayor of the town. However, Janie soon realizes that Starks wants her as a trophy wife to reinforce his powerful position in town and to run the store, even forbidding her from taking part in the town's social life. During their twenty-year marriage, he treats her as his property to control and physically abuse. When Starks' kidney begins to fail, Janie says that he never knew her because he would not let her be free.