Nanny, Leafy, and Strength over Slavery in Their Eyes Were Watching God Anonymous College

Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God follows Janie Crawford’s journey through three marriages and her search for freedom, independence, and love through black womanhood in the 20th century. In the beginning of the novel, Hurston, through telling Nanny’s story, shows how black women of the 19th and 20th centuries have dealt with attempting to find power and be resilient through adversity. In her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston uses Nanny’s journey in trying to protect Leafy and the story of her struggles in doing so to portray how despite those struggles, she can overcome them through finding strength in her vulnerability as a black, enslaved woman.

Hurston first portrays the idea of power in vulnerability through alluding to the historical and cultural context of the lives of black women, and more specifically, of enslaved black women and their female descendants. After Nanny has sat Janie down after reprimanding her for kissing a boy from the neighborhood, Hurston begins to describe the situation of black people, by saying that they are “branches without roots”, especially Nanny and other enslaved, black women (Hurston 16). Hurston’s use of imagery with the phrase “branches without roots” expresses on...