Their Eyes Were Watching God: Novel Summary: Chapter 3

In Hurston's third chapter Janie marries Logan Killicks, an older African-American man, and goes to live on his sixty acres of land. Janie doesn't love Logan and soon abandons her hope that she will grow to love him eventually. Rather than her "destructive and mouldy" (20) marriage, Janie desires "things sweet wid mah marriage lak when you sit under a pear tree and think" (23). Janie voices her complaints to Nanny to no avail. Soon, Janie loses her only confidante when Nanny dies a month later. Although she retains her idealism - knowing that "the world was a stallion rolling in the blue pasture of ether" (24) - Janie learns the harsh lesson that marriage is not synonymous with love. Certainly, Janie's marriage to Killicks differs greatly than her conception of marriage formed beneath the pear tree in Chapter 2. The end of Chapter 3 indicates a coming change is inevitable, as "Janie's first dream was dead, so she became a woman" (24).