The Women

The passage on page 87 shows Janie realizing how beautiful she is then yelling out the window “Come heah people! Jody is dead. Mah husband is gone from me.” The context of the passage is Jody is becoming very sick and is close to his time. Janie doesn’t show any sort of sadness when has lost her husband. This sheds light on all the times Jody had controlled Janie from doing what she wants. She goes to the dresser and learns that she is very different from when she was a little girl. “ The young girl was gone, but a handsome women had taken her place” (87). The imagery and figurative language is Janie has an epiphany of her freedom from Jody. She can now become who she wants to be unlike Jody controlling her life. “Let down her plentiful hair. The weight, the length, the glory was there” (87). Jody always makes Janie put her hair up because it shows off her beauty and Jody thinks that she is only for him and no one else. The hair is a motif in the novel because it is a reoccurring object and is symbolizes her inner self and who she wants to be. The little girl in the looking glass is herself at a younger age put on hold because she could not live the life she wanted because she had to get married for someone to take care of her.  The tone of the passage is a little depressing but in the end she has an epiphany that she is free and a strong woman. The words like ironed face, people wanted to see, dead, taken, and long time show sadness because she can not be the person she wants to be and she has flashbacks of herself when she was happier.


Mark