The Heroine's Bookshelf: Life Lessons, from Jane Austen to Laura Ingalls Wilder

Does God even care? Why must we start over and over, transcend ourselves again and again?

Like Janie, Zora had reason to question God in the years following the publication of her now-indelible classic. She needed all the faith she could muster to face the years that awaited her. Her growing literary fame and colorful persona had their price. In 1948, she was not only accused of molesting three boys but was the victim of a brutal slander campaign by an unrelated party whom she had met only once. The claims were entirely fabricated—Zora was in Honduras at the time of the alleged attacks—but it took six months to acquit herself, and the rest of her life to overcome the effect of the attacks. Though Zora prevailed in court and all charges were dropped, the rumors surrounding this incident just wouldn’t die with the case. Her tattered reputation never managed to recover. Exhausted by a legal battle that had become so cruelly personal, Zora struggled to bounce back.

Zora lived out the last years of her life in almost complete obscurity, fading into forgotten territory along with other lights of the Harlem Renaissance. Overshadowed by new modes of expression, she was mocked for her dramatic, dialect-focused writing style. Her name was entirely neglected by the 1950s, her powerful books long out of print. Plagued by failing health and uncertain finances, she focused instead on her spiritual search as she worked as a substitute teacher and even a maid. But time did not rectify her financial position or mend her fragile health. Tragically, her former friends had almost totally abandoned her by the time she died in 1960. She didn’t leave anything behind, not even money enough to be buried in a marked grave.

She may have died impoverished and irrelevant, but Zora’s faith in herself and her God brought forth great things during her lifetime. By fusing her talent with a restless spiritual quest, she was able to document and further the beauty her God had made. She took that old bet with God one step further, translating the sights she saw and the sounds she heard into a powerful vernacular.

Ironically, Zora’s choice of self-expression—the dialect of the people for whom she fought so hard professionally and personally—was criticized, even mocked, in her own day. But the last thirty years have revived her reputation, thanks in part to the relentless efforts of Alice Walker, another dialect-driven woman writer whose work has changed the face of American literature. Back in print and deserving of a place on any modern heroine’s bookshelf, Their Eyes Were Watching God was made into a TV movie produced and hosted by Oprah Winfrey and has been read by countless students. It’s a book that was written to be reread and constantly rediscovered, interpreted through the lens of our own diverse spiritual experiences. And it lost none of its power as it traveled from popularity to unsung obscurity and back again. “There is no book as important to me as this one,” wrote Alice Walker. “There is enough self-love in that one book—love of community, culture, traditions— to restore a world. Or create a new one.”

Fraught with meaning and laden with doubt and emotion, faith and spirituality can be touchy topics for even the bravest heroine. Some leap straight into the fire, eager to find themselves in the flames. Others dance around faith, play with it for a moment before dropping it with scorched fingers. But whether the road to spiritual fulfillment is one of religious belief or strong inner conviction, it’s one each heroine must travel, be its result faith, atheism, or something in between.

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

Chapter 3 Happiness

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