Most picaresque novels are characterized by social criticism, autobiographical narrative, and a protagonist seeking renewal and justice from the outside. Zara Hurson’s fictional narrative, Their Eyes Were Watching God, tells the story of Janie's trauma and transformation within the context of her life as a Black woman in the 1930s. Using a fictional narrative, the novel examines traditional gender roles and the relationship between men and women. Janie's first husbands, Logan Killicks and Jody Starks believed Janie's identity should be determined by the man she married. Janie’s grandmother Nanny advises her not to marry a man just for love, but for protection, while Janie wants intimacy, which is the love she was unaware she could give herself. Typical picaresque novels convey an adventurer's journey as he moves from place to place and from the frontier to the next, trying to survive. A woman-centric picaresque novel twist on the male lone hero, Hurson creates a feminist interpretation of the lone hero with Janie’s life story. Janie’s travel frontiers consisted of embracing her individuality and her needs unapologetically as a centering point of her crusades for self-proclamation. Watching Janie grow into a woman town spectatorship undercut her strength, which was a continuing challenge she faced. Alice Walker’s Watering Her Mother’s Garden, which explores black women and their narratives of traumatic experiences, can conceptualize Janie’s personal story. Janie's literary life experience harmonizes with Walker's feminist fiction narrative, attributing to Janie’s discovery of her freedom and saving herself in the end. The most prominent obstacles exemplified by Janie’s life are transcendent sexuality beyond the environment, the role of the female body within toxic masculinity, and the difference between individuality and spectatorship.

             The gardens in both Janie’s life, as well as Walker’s, refer to metaphorical gardens. Walker refers to her mother's garden, which she tended to within her limited free time with lots of diligent care, as well as Janie. Janie’s experience with sexuality helped her transcend above her role in the environments she would be in. “Oh to be a pear tree—any tree in bloom! With kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world! She was sixteen. She had glossy leaves and bursting buds, and she wanted to struggle with life, but it seemed to elude her. Where were the singing bees for her?” (Hurson, 43). As Janie begins to realize her sexual awakening, the narrator relates it to the world of plants, which Janie understands only vaguely. In anticipation of this missing element, Janie knows something is missing and hopes it will be delivered soon. She wants to experience this aspect of life, symbolized by the bees interacting with the tree's blossoms, for herself. Through her mother’s pain, Janie was born as a revelation of hope and growth through trauma. Leafy had this held within her, and though Leafy’s appearance in the novel was brief, she was significant in rebirthing her pain into power and forgiveness. Much like Janie had to explore for herself, understanding pain and the transcendence of her sexual intimacy, brought both pain and numbness from men, as well as strength and reclamation from herself.  

Black women whose spirituality was so intense, so deep, so unconscious, that they were themselves unaware of the richness they held. They stumbled blindly through their lives: creatures so abused and mutilated in body, so dimmed and confused by pain, that they considered themselves unworthy even of hope. In the selfless abstractions their bodies became to the men who used them, they became more than"sexual objects, more even than mere women (Walker 1).

Gardening is both a metaphor for Janie's life, as well as Walker's. Janie's garden is a reference to her mother, who tended to it in her limited free time with an abundance of care, as well as Walker's garden. Janie’s transcendence within sexual intimacy and self-stimulation was her rite of passage as an adult. This aspect of life, symbolized by the way the bees interact with the tree's blossoms, must become part of her experience of sexual intimacy. Nanny did not want Janie to fall victim to the same misfortune she had experienced when she had Leafy by her enslaved master. Her grandmother and mother had their sexual freedoms taken away through abuse and rape. During Nanny’s pregnancy with Janie’s mother, she had given her the name Leafy. The beginning of Janie's conscious existence begins in the woods, with her mother Leafy, who conceives her there. The second chapter of the novel begins with Janie describing her life in terms of a tree, showing her empathy with nature.  In terms of their life's direction or love, Jane's grandmother Nanny, and her mother Leafy were not in a position to choose. Hurson’s use of sexual self-exploration is the height of Janie’s ownership of her decisions and happiness. Hurson is alluding to the comfort Janie has in her body to feel and touch it innocently. Hurson has written the experience of Janie’s masturbation in a delicate artistic way, by making it natural, much like nature. Writing Janie in such a way gives back to Black women her assets and pleasures, which were bound and set her free from guilt. Hurson erases the perversion, objectification, and abuse of Black woman’s body and expresses it in beautiful literary poetry and stark parallelism with the world around her. 

           Throughout Hurson’s novel, Janie has dealt with toxic masculinity within her relationships. Walker’s text creates the foundation for an interpretation of Janie’s journey as a Black woman, how those see her, and how she sees herself based on these pressuring expectations and harsh stigmas. Controlling life’s narrative and producing great fruit, as did Janie, once she realized her power and learned her narrative is hers to create.  Love had been a misfortune, and Nanny did not want the same to happen to Janie. Walker alludes to generational trauma, which Janie had to break from what love is, and the abuse she was warned about,

 For these grandmothers and mothers of ours were not Saints, but Artists; driven to a numb and bleeding madness by the springs of creativity in them for which there was no release. They were Creators, who lived lives of spiritual waste because they were so rich in spirituality-which is the basis of Art-that the strain of enduring their unused and unwanted talent drove them insane (Walker, 2).

 Due to her grandmother’s understanding of love and the world, her concern was only that Janie was provided for by an established man, whereas Janie wanted to experience real love and intimacy.

 Yes, she would love Logan after they were married. She could see no 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 of the thought, for then it wouldn’t seem so destructive and mouldy (Hurson, 53).

 Since Janie's grandmother understood love and the world differently, her concern was simply that she was provided for by a man who had established himself, whereas Janie wanted to experience real love and intimacy. As a result, she begins her search for love instead of self-discovery. Despite the pain caused by men she chooses through control and abusive behavior, she emerges stronger in the end.  The volatile social and political issue for many Black women was rape and abuse from a patriarchal and racist society. Hurson’s use of showing Janie, as well as her mother and grandmother, experiencing varying levels of assault and abuse by men, represents a real phenomenon. While most picaresque novels were written by men about redemption and being the savior of their communities, Hurson wrote a reflection of herself and what she may have seen through many black women before her. Walker has humanized literary narratives concerning black women and their experiences.

            Throughout her life, Janie faced how she saw herself, in contrast to how a community of people had seen her. Being a biracial woman, she suffered from the bullying of her complexion, and as she got older, how the townsfolk of the village had seen her within the confines of relationships. The scene in chapter one of Hurson’s novel introduces Janie as a confident, indifferent woman unbothered by the talk,

 What she doin’ coming back here in dem overhalls? Can’t she find no dress to put on?—Where’s dat blue satin dress she left here in?—Where all dat money her husband took and died and left her?—What dat ole forty year ole ‘oman doin’ wid her hair swingin’ down her back lak some young gal? Where she left dat young lad of a boy she went off here wid? (Hurson, 33)

Janie leaves them to answer these questions between themselves, rather than submit to their speculations. Janie’s recollection of her life after she left the town (as she expresses it to Peony,) is the story of her insecurities and constant scrutiny beneath the eyes of spectators within the school or the town. In her text, Walker asserts that Black women are often portrayed as a derogatory archetype and held up to a certain standard. In Walker’s words, 

Black women are called, in the folklore that so aptly identifies one's status in society, "the mule of the world," because we have been handed the burdens that everyone else-everyone else-refused to carry. We have also been called "Matriarchs," "Superwomen," and "Mean and Evil Bitches." Not to mention "Castraters" and "Sapphire's Mama." When we have pleaded for understanding, our character has been distorted; when we have asked for Simple caring, we have been handed empty inspirational appellations, then stuck in the farthest comer (Walker, 5).

 This is the essence of Janie having an outer persona. In the beginning, she had to maintain it for the sake of her relationships with the men she was with. Society's stigmatized expectations constantly control Black women through behavior, love life, and appearance. Symbolizing Black women's place at the intersection of race, gender, class, and other identities, black women’s consciousness encompasses a wide range of perspectives. Janie became her saint, through the mockery of town spectators, which dictated most of her relationships.  She began to thrive in the resilience of domestic abuse, and struggle. As Walker notes, these black women were not saints but were transformed into saints by the cruel treatment they received from others. Janie’s grandmother Nanny and her mother Leafy were not fortunate to have a choice in their life’s direction or within love. Leafy had withered away, due to the pain and alcoholism she had unfortunately perished by, as Walker had stated,  “Let us mourn the death of our mother, the death of a queen…the creator of our stool is lost! And all the young women have perished in the wilderness” (Walker 231). There is hopelessness in this piece. They endured trauma that never brought them a new day. Black women paradoxically have molded their efforts to transform themselves according to the values that condemned, enslaved, and degraded them. Leafy had died, As Jane broke free from this mold, she found redemption for herself. Janie became a powerful heroine, symbolizing Black women’s resistance against a racist judgmental society. 

              Hurston’s interpretation of platonic love figures into the novel through identity (coming of age), seeking renewal, and social criticism constructed as a personal narrative and a picaresque novel. Throughout Hurston’s novel, Janie is the lone hero who has gone through a great transformation into her self-identity with external challenges. Hurson has done a great deal to reclaim Black women’s identity in a humanizing way. Against white society's representations of black women in literature and other scholarly works, a picaresque novel combined feminism and black women's explorations of their rights over their bodies and sex.  Hurson takes literary ownership of how Janie – a representation of Black women’s experience – has been disregarded through the years of slavery and post-slavery America. Much like Hurson, Walker’s edifying Black women’s hurt and establishing it into the art of recovery and mercy through acceptance has contextualized all the stigmas placed on them. Hurson has painted Black women as artists and saints, comparative to fantasy archetypes, and granted them forgiveness. This is the humanity we see in Janie. Walker’s text creates the foundation for an interpretation of Janie’s journey as a Black woman, how those see her, and how she sees herself based on these pressuring expectations and harsh stigmas. The reimagining of Black literary women and the historical suffering of black women shown in Walker's novel is an examination of how Janie overcomes toxic masculinity, societal limitations, and sexual transcendence to become a heroine.

Works Cited

Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Publ., 1969. 

Walker, Alice. In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose. United States: Open Road Media, 2011.