In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, the main character, Janie, is a woman who develops her identity throughout the novel by using the knowledge and experience she obtains from her three marriages. Janie's marriages to Logan Killicks, Jody Starks, and Tea Cake are the most crucial elements in her development as a woman. After each relationship is over, her attitude undergoes a metamorphosis, directing her towards her eventual independence. Janie, through youth and lack of empowerment, is mislead to believe other people’s definitions of love and marriage until she is strong enough to find a relationship on her own which satisfies her personal definitions of love and marriage.
             The earliest influential moment on Janie’s view of love and marriage occurred at the age of sixteen in her Nanny's back yard. Janie lies beneath the pear tree when, "the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was a marriage! She had been summoned to behold a revelation" (Hurston 11). Janie's youthful idealism leads her to believe that this intense sensuality must be similar to the intimacy between lovers, and she wishes "to be a pear tree - any tree in bloom!" (Hurston 11). The image suggests a wholeness - as bees pollinate blossoms paralleling human sexual intercourse. From the beginning of her story under the pear tree, Janie undergoes the process of self-discovery, as she evolves through her experiences with three distinctly !
             different husbands.
             Janie’s first marriage to Logan Killicks is the result of an arrangement by Nanny, Janie‘s grandmother. Nanny’s dream is for Janie to attain a position of security in society, “high ground” as she puts it (Hurst...