is unaware of the emotions that must follow. As a child, raised by Nanny, Janie was guided by the unreal allusion of what life is made up of. When Janie was about sixteen, she spent a spring afternoon under a blossoming tree in Nanny’s yard. Here she comes to the realization that something is missing in her life… sexual ecstasy. The blooms, the new leaves and the virgin- like spring came to life all around her. She wondered when and where she might find such an ecstasy herself. According to Hurston, Nanny finds Janie kissing a boy named Johnny Taylor and her “head and face looked like the standing roots of some old tree that had been torn away by storm” (12) . Nanny can think of no better way to protect Janie than by marrying her to a middle-aged black farmer whose prosperity makes it unnecessary for him to use her as a ‘mule’ (Bush 1036).Nanny makes Janie believe that marriage makes love and forces her to wed a much older man, Logan Killicks. Jones believes that Janie’s first efforts at marriage show her as an “enslaved and semi-literate” figure restrained to Nanny’s traditional beliefs about money, happiness and love (372). Unfortunately Janie’s dream of escasty does not involve Killicks. Her first dream is dead. Janie utters, “Ah wants things sweet wid mah marriage lak when you sit under a pear tree and think” (Hurston 23). Logan began to slap Janie for control over his marriage. He bought her a mule to plow with. Nanny’s idea of marriage comes crashing down. Hurston accedes that Janie notices her husband “has stopped talking in rhythms to her,” she sees the companionship of second husband Joe Starks, who promises her a life without the responsibility of plowing with a mule (25). The significance of this marriage for Janie’s progression toward self-awareness seems to crystallize when she decides to leave Logan for Jo...
