rson who raised her, Nanny feels that it is both her right and obligation to impose her dreams and her ideas of what is important in life on Janie. The conflict between Janie’s idyllic view of marriage and Nanny’s wish for her to marry for stability and position is a confrontation that Janie will carry with her throughout her self-discovery. Janie, prior to her marriage to Logan Killicks, still maintained the romantic notion that marriage is what she witnessed under the pear tree. Nanny’s idea of a good marriage is someone who has some standing in the community; someone who will get Janie to that higher ground. Nanny wants Janie to marry Logan Killicks, but according to Janie “he look like some!
             ole skullhead in de graveyard” (Hurston 13). Even more importantly to Janie, though, was the fact that “the vision of Logan Killicks was desecrating the pear tree (Hurston 14). Nanny leads her to believe that love comes after marriage though love is secondary to the security marriage provides. After they have the fight over Logan Killicks, Nanny says something, by way of an explanation of why Janie needs to marry up the social ladder. She says, “De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see” (Hurston 14). Janie, out of respect for her grandmother, went off to start her role as a wife.
             Janie's marriage to Logan Killicks was the first stage in her development as a woman. She hoped that her forced marriage with Logan would end her loneliness and desire for love. She was naive about love before her marriage to Logan; she thought that love would come with time if she married him but she quickly comes to understand the reality of marriage. Right from the beginning, the loneliness in the marriage shows up when Janie sees that his house is a "lonesome place like a stump in the middle of the woods where nobody had ever been" (Hurston 21-22). This description of Logan's house ...