Their eyes were watching Janie

This novel was a bit difficult to get into due to the language used and the accents. But once I got past all that and was able to get to the meat of the book I began to realize that at least in the beginning of the book that this was a story about both the development of Janie and her growth, but also of the growth of the town. Janie noticeably grows up from a troubled and confused teenager forced into marriage for security and not love. She then realizes that she can be happy elsewhere and runs off with a man who seems to understand what she wanted. How ever she soon learns that Jody is more interested in the town than he ever really was with her. That makes her angry but she begins to hold back her anger and becomes more accepting of things the way they are because she has what her grandmother always wanted for her, and that was the security and wealth to protect her. She begins to work and develop into her life as the mayors wife but she still had to struggle with the oppression of her husband. He is trying to keep her away from the lower class people and also away from the prying eyes of the other towns folk. This really hinders Janie's growth and even though there are events where she noticeably acts and thinks in a more adult manner she is still repressed by her husband, and she resents him for it and begins to fall out of love with him. The town develops in somewhat a similar way. With the town being this small group of shacks and then being added to and recruited to in order to make it a more habitable place. This one man is at the center of it all, Jody, and as a result he shelters the town and makes it develop in the way that he wants it to, just like Janie.