Their Eyes Were Watching God Love Quotes

How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #7

Long before the year was up, Janie noticed that her husband had stopped talking in rhymes to her. He had ceased to wonder at her long black hair and finger it. Six months back he had told her, "If Ah kin haul de wood heah and chop it fuh yuh, look lak you oughta be able tuh tote it inside. Mah fust wife never bothered me ‘bout choppin’ no wood nohow. She’d grab dat ax and sling chips lak uh man. You done been spoilt rotten." (4.1)

Nanny’s prophecy comes true, and Logan stops kissing Janie’s feet, stops bowing down to please her, and begins expecting her to pull her own weight. Janie learns that her physical charms cannot hold a man’s interest for long and that he soon stops sweet-talking, or "talking in rhymes," to her when he finds that she has little to offer in return. Any illusion Janie had of love with Logan is destroyed.

Quote #8

Janie pulled back a long time because he [Joe] did not represent sun-up and pollen and blooming trees, but he spoke for far horizon. He spoke for change and chance. (4.28)

Janie is wary of giving herself over too quickly to Joe because, though he is far more romantic than Logan, he does not really remind her of the ideal of love conjured by her beloved pear tree’s "sun-up and pollen and blooming trees," but he does fill her mind with all the possibilities that the "far horizon" symbolizes.

Quote #9

[Janie]: "S’posin’ Ah wuz to run off and leave yuh sometime."

[…] The thought put a terrible ache in Logan’s body, but he thought it best to put on scorn […]

"Ah’m sleepy. Ah don’t aim to worry mah gut into a fiddlestring wid no s’posin’." He flopped over resentful in his agony and pretended sleep. He hoped that he had hurt her as she had hurt him. (4.43-49)

Even though Logan has trouble showing it in any way that Janie can understand, he does indeed love Janie and deeply fears losing her. That she would voice his deepest fear to him so casually hurts Logan so much that he wants to hurt her back out of spite. This harkens back to the idea of love as painful.