The Legacy of Romanticism: the Pear Tree and Janie Crawford in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God

Hurston’s masterpiece, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and its protagonist, Janie Crawford, have mostly been studied under the rubrics of African American culture. That is why the readings are typically concerned with the analysis of the protagonist’s personality in her African American society, e.g., the study of such issues as language, racial discrimination, and male authority, to name but few. Emphasizing the protagonist’s connection with the pear tree as a synecdoche for nature, the authors endeavor to examine the novel and its heroine in a romantic context. It will be argued that Janie’s personality is subject to a tri-partite development. A connection will be drawn between her infatuation with the pear tree as her source of inspiration and the three stages of her life to demonstrate her growth from innocence to experience to organized innocence. Analyzing Hurston’s masterpiece from this perspective provides a better understanding of the mechanism that leads to the protagonist’s development. © 2015, Springer Science+Business Media New York.