Their Eyes Were Watching God

by Zora Neale Hurston

Their Eyes Were Watching God: Genre 1 key example

Genre
Explanation and Analysis:

Their Eyes Were Watching God is, primarily, a coming-of-age novel. The book is structured around Janie's three marriages, through which Janie establishes her own independence, maturity, and identity as a woman. The book is not, in terms of genre, a romance novel: the story is not about the acquisition of a partner, or even about the acquisition of the three partners Janie has throughout the book. Instead, the book is about the effect those three partners have on Janie as she comes to understand herself better and learns how to interact with other people and the world.