Summary
1
Returning home after almost two years, Janie Starks walks past the “porch sitters” who she knows are judging her harshly. Since she believes gossip and jealousy have a way of diminishing one’s strength, she simply continues on without saying a word. The townspeople in Eatonville feel justified taking the moral high ground given that Janie is a 40-year-old woman who ran off with a younger man.
With a plate of mulatto rice in her hands, Janie’s “kissin’-friend” Pheoby Watson welcomes her back with open arms, and, after hearing the news of Tea Cake’s passing, the two settle in under the moonlight and Janie tells her story.
2
Grandma Nanny is the only parent Janie has ever known. Abandoned by her wild teenage mother, Leafy, she’s being raised in the backyard of Nanny’s white employers, the Washburns. Enjoying a carefree childhood frolicking with her white playmates, Janie only realizes she’s a different “color” than they are at around 6 years of age.
Like the buds on tree branches opening to reveal snowy virginal white blooms, Janie’s sexuality awakens beneath a blossoming pear tree. Innocent and 16, she’s eager to express her newfound womanhood by exchanging kisses with Johnny Taylor. The sweet experimentation marks the end of Janie’s childhood.
Having witnessed the young couple’s sensual embrace, Nanny overreacts out of fear for her granddaughter’s future. She tells the story of how Janie’s mother, who, she had hoped would become a teacher, was raped at the age of 17, and turned to drinking and running around after her baby was born.
She prays that by marrying Janie off to the respectable, middle-aged Logan Killicks, she won’t end up with a “trashy” man like Johnny. Seeing life from an ex-slave’s perspective, Nanny is used to dealing in scraps and low expectations.
For Janie, Nanny would only hold her back and keep her from her dreams of finding out what lies beyond the horizon.
3
It’s a fib they told Janie—that she would love her husband. Husbands and wives don’t always love each other. After three days with Logan, her marriage remains loveless, and even if Nanny thinks love is a fool’s game, Janie wants to understand the things the wind, the pear tree, and the seeds falling on the soft ground seem to tell her.
Nanny seems content in knowing her granddaughter is being provided for. They say a woman should be grateful to have a man with property like Logan, but young Janie cares little for material possessions—she wants to experience “the ecstatic shiver” of true love; she yearns for sweetness.
When Nanny dies a month later, Janie is on her own.
Seasons pass, and Janie waits at the gate for the things that no one had told her about, but of which she seems to know. She looks down the road and is certain that love would not come to her marriage with Logan Killicks. By admitting that her “first dream was dead,” she opens the door to her future—and she is able to make her own decisions.
4
Any interest Logan has in physical affection—he no longer strokes her hair—is replaced with fussing about chores. Janie isn’t happy about being told what to do and gives Logan a hard time about his demands. Her boundaries are set and there’s nothing her husband can do about it.
Janie sits in the yard cutting potatoes when she sees a finely dressed gentleman walking up the road. He stops to talk to Janie, who offers him a cool drink of water sweetened with ribbon-cane syrup. He entices Janie to run off to Florida where colored people are building a town of their own.
Joe (Jody) Starks has $300 in his pocket and has waited thirty years for a chance to be “a big voice” in a place where white people don’t have all the say. Though he’s not the “sun-up and pollen and blooming trees” kind of man she’s been waiting for, what he offers is a change. Lying in bed next to Logan repulses her, so she flings her apron into the bushes and heads south toward a place that fits her new way of thinking. At sundown, Joe and Janie wed.
5
Janie and her new husband arrive in Eatonville and are disappointed with its tiny size and run-down houses. Not one to let the grass grow under his feet, Jody rents a house and buys more land so they can build a proper town. He proposes building a store, roads, streetlamps, and putting in a post office.
Resident Amos Hicks is skeptical of the “stray darky’s” lofty claims, but Lee Coker complains that cynical black folks are their own worst enemies. He hopes Jody will deliver on his promises.
Dazzling folks with his leadership skills, he convinces new families to move to town and is soon elected mayor. Jody announces to his constituents that his wife’s “place is in the home”—a public humiliation that takes “the bloom off the rose” of their marriage.
A whirling dervish, hungry for power and status, Jody builds a wall of superiority around his family, leaving Janie lonely and cut-off from real friendships. The town’s resentment grows towards Jody’s arrogance, yet he goes unchallenged for there’s no Eatonville without Jody Starks.
As criticism and suspicion of Janie escalate, she becomes a ghost of her former self. Jody insists she wears a head-rag in public to conceal Janie’s hair from other men in town. His envy oppresses Janie; it’s evidence that she’s not a partner, but a possession.
6
Jody hides his pleasure from his wife, and tries to control her. Six days a week, Janie minds the general store. She’s not engaged in the work, but enjoys the way folks hang out on the porch telling tales and teasing each other. The discourse is colorful; she listens in, but knows Joe doesn’t want her to participate in the friendly banter.
Sexual pleasure no longer has a place in their marriage. Janie and Jody argue often. When he begins to strike her, Janie decides it’s best to agree “with her mouth,” but not with her mind.
After one episode when Jody hit Janie hard, unsatisfied with the meal prepared for him, she looks deep inside herself and comes to realize that she has yet to fulfill her dream. She knows that she has yet to meet that man with whom she’ll truly share herself.
Feeling indignant, Janie asserts herself a little more, and one day even tells the men on the porch that they don’t know half as much as they think they d...
