Erin Blakemore - The Heroine's Bookshelf - Life Lessons, from Jane Austen to Laura Ingalls Wilder

Janie’s trials would bring down a stronger woman with nothing to believe in. Part of the reason her story has remained raw, compelling, is that she doesn’t have all the answers. When faced with the full force of God’s wrath, Janie questions, reconsiders, uncovers something inside of her that’s as elemental as a hurricane. Her faith in herself is as strong as her faith in God, and she couldn’t withstand what she has to endure without both. But Zora doesn’t just leave us with questions: she shows the answers, too, in an ending that is mournful and lonely and comforting all at once. Their Eyes Were Watching God finishes with reassurance, but also with a challenge to honor the world in all its beauty and confusion, to draw it as close to us as we dare, to sit with its power even as we face down our own questions about faith.

Not that the questions ever really subside—I for one am a woman whose spirituality is as much about doubt as conviction. But even I find relief and comfort in Janie’s steadfast search for the truth, her willingness to face even a hurricane if that’s what it’s going to take to be at peace with her God. Again and again, she demonstrates a readiness to learn, to understand, and question. And over and over again, she is shown something far greater and more mysterious than anything she can muster, bigger and more powerful than the men who dominate her or the culture that subordinates her. It’s during these frequent moments of humility that Janie emerges as a force of greatness. Her power as a heroine doesn’t beat you over the head; it smolders quietly, unseen and unacknowledged by all except the forces that count in the end.

A modern heroine’s trials may seem more internal than sweeping, but each one is an opportunity to prove her own mettle. The destination, the vehicle, are beside the point: faith can be expressed in one’s self as well as in any church. It’s all in the balance between inner conviction and external storm. Even the most faithful among us have their occasional crises, whether brought on by spiritual malaise or moral quandary. And Zora Neale Hurston has given us something to take with us on the way: a document of her own conviction, struggle and doubt, a heroine who questions and fights right alongside us, staring down the hurricane that exposes both her frailty and her faithfulness.

I know I’m not the only person who finishes Their Eyes Were Watching God with a sigh of mixed relief and longing. It can be intimidating to walk into faith with a woman who pursued it in its most extreme and forceful expressions and who articulated hers so fearlessly. It’s certainly exhausting to place ourselves in the hands of an author for whom work, life, and faith melded and meshed so seamlessly. But Zora is a good guide, offering two alternatives in one heroine who forges through a hurricane even as she questions her purpose on Earth. Zora didn’t shy away from the ancient ritual, the pungent fruit, but she hands us our share in manageable bites. In the pages of Their Eyes Were Watching God, she’s always there to remind us that, even if the storm gets up in our nostrils and tears out all our hair, we’re still protected, still capable of moving forward on faith’s road.

A keen anthropologist, a wordsmith with a divine mission, Zora admired her culture for daring to “call old gods by a new name.” As heroines, we must practice that courage daily as we seek our own truths. The flip side of faith is having faith placed in us by others. Sadly, neither Zora nor Janie really received that honor during their lifetimes. That’s something we can rectify as we look for company on our way down faith’s path. As I cultivate faith in myself and strive to deserve the trust others place in me, I have two companions at the ready: both Janie Crawford and the truth-stretcher and truth-seeker that cohabited Zora’s vibrant soul.

READ THIS BOOK:

• When you’re not sure if you’re going to church or going through the motions

• At first sight of external or internal hurricanes

• When your cares seem trivial in the face of depressing world events

JANIE’S LITERARY SISTERS:

• Maya Angelou in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

• Edna Pontellier in The Awakening, by Kate Chopin

• Kristin Lavransdatter in The Wreath, by Sigrid Undset

Anne Shirley in Anne of Green Gables,

by Lucy Maud Montgomery

“You see before you a perfectly happy person, Marilla,” she announced. “I’m perfectly happy-yes, in spite of my red hair. Just at present I have a soul above red hair.”

LUCY MAUD MONTGOMERY, ANNE OF GREEN GABLES

The winter of 1905 wasn’t exactly what you would call happy; in fact, it was the worst winter in recent memory. Cavendish, Prince Edward Island, had frozen from picturesque small town to somber icicle, its quaint roads and houses shut in by huge drifts of snow. The fitful ocean had long since frozen over in spots, preventing even the hardiest icebreakers from reaching the island with their vital cargoes of food and mail. Trapped inside her grandmother’s kitchen, Lucy Maud Montgomery may have been the snowed-in town’s most discontented resident.

Maud had good reason to be unhappy. Her thirtieth birthday had come and gone the year before, leaving her no closer to a settled, independent life. Still unmarried, she depended on her crotchety grandmother, Lucy Woolner Macneill, for shelter. The cabin fever of that winter was just another chapter in a life so far marked by abandonment, loss, and lack of stimulation.

Restless, testy, and depressed, Maud wasn’t exactly poised to live up to a heroine’s promise. And nobody in frozen Cavendish—not even Maud herself—could have predicted that this troubled woman would create one of the happiest heroines in literature.

She inherited her propensity for great despair, but also great happiness, from the stormy islet itself. Prince Edward Island wasn’t always an icy prison: in summer, it was a verdant paradise full of flowers, fields, and landscapes that perfectly suited a moody, almost-orphaned child. Maud didn’t lose both parents as a baby like the typical charity case, but she still received an orphan’s upbringing. Her mother Clara died of pneumonia when Maud was only two, leaving her to the occasional care of a dashing and neglectful father, Hugh “Monty” Montgomery. Unwilling or unable to take responsibility for his daughter, he left Maud with her maternal grandparents, Alexander and Lucy Woolner Macneill, and set out to make his fortune without the encumbrance of a dreamy young child.

Lonely and confused by her father’s wayward life, Maud found it hard to live with her grandparents. The couple was old, strict, irascible—qualities that sometimes threatened to stifle their expressive granddaughter’s spirit. Though there was some pleasure in those early years, Maud was never allowed to forget that she was homeless and unloved. She dreamed of joining her father and escaping her stern upbringing forever.

When given the opportunity to rejoin Monty, who had remarried and moved to Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, 2,700 miles away, she jumped at the chance to buck her grandparents’ iron rule. The long train ride was full of hopes and dreams. Emotionally starved, she gave her father all of the qualities her current life lacked—sensitivity, flair, and romance. Little did she know her trip would be a journey to nowhere.

Maud arrived in Prince Albert and found her father preoccupied, her stepmother distant. Their expectations immediately clashed. Instead of the welcome she had craved, Maud found a family relieved to have another set of hands. The realization that she was to be no more than a glorified babysitter—and that her education would gladly be placed on hold so that she could carry out this expected drudgery—was a crushing blow to sensitive Maud. Her family fantasy shattered, she returned home in less than a year. Even the strictures of the Macneill household were infinitely preferable to her father’s scattered and conditional love. She returned to her grandparents’ home to study, teach school, and wait for life to improve.