Janie’s voice is first seen in the first pages as she begins to tell her story to Phoeby

3. Janie’s voice is first seen in the first pages as she begins to tell her story to Phoeby • It can even be said that through storytelling Janie’s voice is strongest • Janie’s voice is suppressed by first two husbands • As she meets Teacake, her third husband, he helps her find her voice and she shows how she is able to express herself

5. Voice and Interiority – Finding the Voice of the Character through Hurston’s Narration: Researched by Kathleen Deleon • Interiority – “Refers to an author’s relatively full and non-judgmental rendering of the internal consciousness of a character” – Maria J. Racine • Johnny Taylor has no voice and yet is a catalyst for Janie early on in life • “She thought a while and decided that her conscious life had commenced at Nanny’s gate” [Their Eyes 10] • Logan Killicks’ voice is minimal except when it is spoken through the narration of Hurston • When Janie threatens to leave him, we understand Killicks’ interiority through the narrator. [Racine 3] • “Flops over resentful in his agony and pretends sleep. He hopes that he had hurt her as she had hurt him” [Their Eyes 29] • Through Hurston’s narration we are able to see the vulnerable side of Killicks

6. Cont. • “Starks’s voice booms as he awakens Eatonville into a genuine, active community, it diminishes when he might express his true emotions to his wife; similarly, Janie’s voice inadequately expresses her true emotions to her husband. The only way that we as readers understand that Janie is unhappy is through the narrator.” [Racine 5] • “…one day she sat and watched the shadow of herself going about tending store and prostrating itself before Jody, while all the time she herself sat under a shady tree with the wind blowing through her hair and her clothes…” [Their Eyes 73] • Tea Cake Woods represents passion and gives Janie the love and support for her to find her own voice. He encourages to speak her true emotions. • “Naw, it ain’t all right wid you. If it was you wouldn’t be sayin’ dat. Have de nerve tuh say whut you mean” [Their Eyes 104] • The Trial scene displays Janie’s new found independence as a women. She does not seem to talk to during the trial scene but emotions are narrated through Hurston. • “In shooting Tea Cake, Janie’s violence is a conscious act of self-defense and a matter choosing life rather than death. Thus, it is the ultimate act of voice. Shooting Tea Cake is Janie’s assertion to the world that she has a life worth living, whether married or single.” [Racine 9] • From beginning to end, Janie is telling her life story to her friend Pheoby. “Janie has used her voice to speak to one who will speak to the many. She has finally acquired what she has spent forty years searching for- her voice, and herself.” [Racine 10] • Janie has enriched Phoeby by telling her story just as much as Phoeby has enriched Janie’s by listening • “Lawd!... Ah done growed then feet higher jus’ listenin’ tuh you, Janie. Ah aint satisfied widmahself no mo’. Ah means tuh make Sam take me fishing wid him after this.” [Their Eyes 182-183]

7. The Trouble with Publicness: Toward a Theory of Black Quiet Quashie, Kevin Everod African American Review; Summer 2009; 43, 2/3; ProQuest Research Library pg. 329

8. Whose voice is this? "Dat's 'cause you need tellin'," he rejoined hotly. "It would be pitiful if Ah didn't. Somebody got to think for women and chillun and chickens and cows.” 2."You ain't got no particular place. It's wherever Ah need yuh" 4. “Yeah, Janie, youse got yo’ womanhood on yuh. So Ah mout ez well tell yuh whut Ah been savin’ up for uh spell. Ah wants to see you married right away.” 3. “I God amighty! 5. “If you wants tuh rob uh poor man lak me uh everything he got tuh make uh living wid, Ah’ll take de five dollars.” 6. “Thought Ah’d try tuh git heah soon eough tuh tell yuh mah daytime thoughts. Ah see yuh needs tuh know mah daytime feelings” 7. “You big-bellies round here and put out a lot of brag, but ‘taint nothin’ to it but yo’ big voice. When you pull down yo’ britches, you look lak de change uh life.”

9. Whose silent voice is this? He wanted her submission and he’d keep on fighting until he felt he had it _____ held a wad of tobacco real still in his jaw like a thermometer of his feelings while he studied Janie’s face and waited for her to say something. Seeing the women as she was made them remember the envy they had stored up from other times. So they chewed up the back parts of their minds and swallowed with relish. He felt like rushing forth with the meat knife and chopping off the offended hand. He didn’t really hate Janie, but he wanted her to think so. He crawled off to lick his wounds. Sometimes she stuck out into the future, imagining her life different from what it was. But mostly she lived between her hat and her heels, with her emotional disturbances like shade patterns in the woods-come and gone with the sun. He was scared for her and thought to have Tea Cake locked up in the jail, but seeing Janie’s care he neglected to do it. There! Janie had put words in his held-in fears. The thought put a terrible ache in ____’s body but he thought it best to put on scorn.