Janie in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God and Celie in Alice Walker's the Color Purple

The main character and narrator of Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), Janie, has much in common with the narrator and main character Celie within Alice Walker's novel The Color Purple (1982). Each speaks authentically, in her own voice: the too-often ignored voice of an African-American female in a white male-dominated society. For both characters, however, authenticity of voice has come at great cost, and through the surmounting of numerous obstacles, the greatest of these being the fears and the lack of confidence within themselves. I will discuss several common characteristics of Celie and Janie within these two novels by female African-American authors.

As Henry Louis Gates, Jr. suggests, fear and hesitancy by African-Americans, male and female alike, to speak authentically, has deep roots: "For just over two...
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