Tell My Horse She is Free: Role of Vodou Symbolism in Their Eyes Were Watching

God

{ Their Eyes Were Watching God tells the story of Janie Crawford, an African-American women who embarks on a quest for self-discovery through three different marriages. In her final marriage, she discovers love and learns how to control her own destiny. }

Zora Neal Hurston’s most popular novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, was

written during the seven weeks that the author lived in Haiti, researching and

participating in Haitian Vodou practice. Her research into Vodou became later published

in 1938 as Tell My Horse, a year after her novel was written, yet little scholarship

currently exists that relates Their Eyes Were Watching God to Vodou symbolism and

meaning.

In order to understand how Vodou functions within Their Eyes Were Watching

God, it’s essential to first establish a basic understanding of Vodou spiritual belief and

how it functions in Haiti. For those who don’t study it, Vodou represents a fear of the

unknown associated with images of dark magic, witchcraft, malignant spirits, blood

drinking, and human sacrifice. Due to this wide-spread misconception, Vodou has

remained consistently misunderstood and misinterpreted among the Western world.

Joseph Murphy summarizes Vodou best when he says, “Vodou is a dance of the spirit: a

system of movements, gestures, prayers, and songs in veneration of the invisible forces of

life” (10). Vodou is a complex religion of performative spiritual action, infusing elements

of various African diasporic religions along with certain rites from French colonial

Catholicism. Throughout daily life, the devoted Haitian community performs ritualized

services to the loa, the sacred African spirits revered by Vodouisants. In exchange for

their faithful service, the loa responds to the needs of the community. When the loa wish

to address their community, they “mount” one of their subjects as a rider mounts a horse,

speaking and acting out their will for the community through the body of their “horse.”

We’ve now established how the spirits of Vodou relate specifically to African

descendants in Haiti, but how does that same Vodou spirit function in Their Eyes Were

Watching God? Within the spirit of Vodou, Zora Neal Hurston experiences firsthand the

transformative power that the Vodou spirit possesses during ritualized Vodou ceremony.

Hurston draws specifically on the spirit of healing {won’t talk about spirit of resistance}

manifested through Ezili Freda, the loa of unconditional love, feminine strength, and

beauty, who possesses and empowers Janie in moments of difficult social struggle. Ezili

Freda functions primarily as an African-American cultural healer, tracing their roots back

to antiquity and recreating an identity based in African cultural values.

In terms of physical appearance, Both Janie and Ezili Freda contain perfect

female attributes that incite the men’s desires and women’s jealousies; both have straight,

long black hair; and interestingly both are perpetually youthful mulatta women. Although

Janie does not seek to solicit male attention, we can interpret Janie’s overt sensuality as a

sudden channeling of Ezili Freda. Likewise, we also witness a sudden blossoming desire

for love in the second chapter, ripe with sexually charged metaphors of springtime and

flowers.