femaleness. Their botched suicide is Whartons comment on the real-world impossibility of wedding male and female aspects of the self in 1911 (Goodman 74). Whartons blatant statement here is that one cannot seek him or herself in another human being but must love someone for who they are. One cannot simply pick out their favorite qualities about him of herself in another person, but one must learn to find a new identity in that person. Zeenas character represents Whartons mother in many ways. Feeling that her mother, Lucretia Jones, withheld love and approval, Wharton frequently characterized her as cold, disapproving, and distant all adjectives that could be applied to Zenobia (Goodman 75). Zeenas character appears heartless. Her hypochondria, her temper, and her total lack of compassion all seem relative to Whartons mother. Wharton portrays women in a direct light reflective of the real women in her life and as channels to convey a message of self worth. Zora Neale Hurston portrays Janie in Their Eyes Were Watching God as the epitome of assertive female individualism. Janie experiences the constraints of tradition in a materialistic world that infringe on her own quest of personal happiness. While in her childhood Janie is submissive to her Nannys wise folk talk Villareal 6and accepts it as truth, these oppressing thoughts cannot hold back Janies free spirit and her imagination (Peters 132). When Janies grandmother reprimands her for kissing the boy over the fence, Janie does not experience remorse. She only feels more constrained than ever and her desire for change grows stronger. Jody impresses the most overwhelming burden of oppression on Janie. Her second husband provides economic stability and love at first, but Jodys anger at Janies growing verbal empowerment is evident when he prevents her from participating with him and the townsmen in the oral ritual of exaggerated talk accompanying the dragging-out ceremony f...
