THE DENUNCIATION OF PATRIARCHY AND CAPITALISM IN ZORA NEALE: HURSTON?S THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD

This essay premises its argument on the assertion that Their Eyes protests entrenched patriarchy and middle class or bourgeois capitalism. These two ideologies dominate Janie?s grandmother?s mind, and compel her to teach the protagonist to submit and accept inferior gender status, hence affirming the argument that women as well as men contribute to the existing patriarchal order. Indoctrinated into this system by her grandmother, Janie experiences three marriages that make her realize that she can no longer live according to her grandmother?s wishes. Instead, she makes personal efforts to denounce capitalist patriarchy in order to live her live to the fullest. She explicitly tells her friend Pheoby, ?Ah done lived Grandma?s way, now Ah means to live mine? (114). Janie?s process of self discovery brings to the surface complex gender oppression which cross the racial and class divide.