Jane Crawford Finds Out About Living For Herself

Term Paper Title	Jane Crawford Finds Out About Living For Herself
# of Words	2776
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	11.1

Jane Crawford finds out about living for herself


    Everybody has to find out about living for themselves

     Janie Crawford evolving selfhood through three marriages.  Fair-skinned, long haired, dreamy
  as a child, Janie grows up expecting better treatment than she gets.  Living life as one man's mules or
  another man's adornment.  Janie is one black woman who does not have to live in lost sorrow,
  bitterness, fear, or foolish romantic dreams, for Janie has learned "two things everybody's got tuh do
  fuh theyselves.  They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin' fuh themselves."  Janie
  Crawford is better off at the end of the noval Their Eyes Were Watching God.
     Janie is confused when she was a young woman.  The noval explains her life as a young girl.
  Her mother left her when she was really young.  Janie never met her.  Her grandmother explains that
  her master rapped her, "Den, one night ah heard de big funs boomin' lak thunder.  It kept up all night.
  And de next morin' Ah could see uh big ship at a distance and a great stirrin' round.  So Ah wrapped
  mah way on down to de landin'.  The men was all in blue, and Ah heard people say Sherman was
  comin' to meet de boats in Savannah, and all of us slaves was free.  So Ah run got mah baby and got
  in quotation wid people and found a place Ah could stay."  Grandmother was wanting to make a school
  teacher out of Janie's mother.  Janie found out that a school teacher rapped her mother so she never
  met her father either.  Janie's mother was seventeen, when she was pregnant with Janie.  After Janie
  was born, Janie's mother took to drinking a lot.  Janie's grandmother  raised Janie since she was born,
  grandmother says "Maybe it wasn't much, but Ah done de best Ah kin by you.  Ah raked and scraped
  and bought dis lil piece uh land so you wouldn't have to stay in de white folk's yard and tuck yo' head
  befor' other chillun at school."  When Janie turned sixteen years of age, her childhood had ended with
  a kiss from a boy named Johnny Taylor.  Grandmother wanted to see her married at once but Janie did
  not understand what was going on.  Janie did not feel love for this man or any man at this time but
  grandmother explains that she is not going to be around forever and she wants to protect her from harm
  and danger.  Janie's life as a young person was a hardship she did not understand what purpose in life
  she has and she does not understand what love is.
     Janie dreams marriage will bring her love.  Logon is a man wanting to marry Janie.  Janie had
  no chance to know things, so she had to ask.  "Did marriage end the cosmic loneliness of the unmated?
  Did marriage compel love like the sun the day?"  After Grandmother's talks and Janie's own conjectures
  she made a sort of comfort for herself.  She came to the conclusion that she would love Logon after
  they were married.  "I saw no other way for it to come about, but Nanny and the old folks had said it,
  so it must be so.  Husbands and wives always loved each other, and that was what marriage meant.
  It was just so."  Janie felt glad for a moment in her life she felt that for then it wouldn't seem so
  destructive and moldy.  She would not be lonely anymore.  Janie married Logan in Nanny's parlor.
  Janie felt lonesome when she went to Logan's house "It was a lonesome place like a stump in the
  middle of the woods where nobody had ever been.  The house was absent of flavor, too.  But anyhow
  Janie went on inside to wait for love to begin."  After two months have gone by Janie had to reconsider
  her marriage with Logon.  "Janie waited a bloom time, and a green time and an orange time.
  Nevertheless, when the pollen again gilded the sun and sifted down on the world she began to stand
  around the gate and expect things."  She did not know exactly what to expect.  "Janie knew that God
  tore down the old world every evening and built a new one by sun-u...

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