Their Eyes Were Watching God is a bildungsroman (or coming-of-age novel) that follows Janie’s development from teen to mature woman and raises significant issues related to the representation of African American women. Janie increasingly rejects the racial and gender norms of her community, chooses love over material prosperity, and seizes a freedom rarely achieved by any woman of the day, regardless of her race.

Her first marriage to Logan Killicks, a crude but relatively prosperous man, fulfills Nanny’s dream that Janie secure her future by marrying a property owner. For Nanny, a woman who has owned little—not even herself during her enslavement—the idea of property as security is irresistible. Nanny’s experiences include being sexually coerced by her enslaver and then threatened by his jealous wife, and seeing her daughter exhibit untreatable psychiatric symptoms after being raped. Nanny hence believes that love and desire are threats best neutralized by conventional morality. Through Nanny’s story, Hurston demonstrates the lasting and damaging impact of sexual exploitation on African American women, even after the arrival of freedom. Despite having escaped slavery, Nanny never feels secure enough to value love, romance, and the free play of sexual desire in the way Janie eventually embraces. Through Nanny, Hurston conveys how the double oppression of racism and misogyny affect Black women’s identity.