Gender stereotypes and the redefinition of the self: a study of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes were watching God

Abstract

This study titled Gender Stereotypes and the redefinition of the self: a study of Zora Neale Hurston‘s Their Eyes Were Watching God shows how Zora Neale Hurston reverses society‘s patriarchal culture in Their Eyes Were Watching God to promote gender equality. It portrays the stereotypical categorization of women in a typically twentieth-century American society and proves that the novelist opts for the re-evaluation of culture in order to foster the woman‘s redefinition. The New Historicist approach is instrumental in tracing the cultural, historical and biographical factors that both inspire and inform the author‘s work. Meanwhile, the Womanist approach enables the work to shed light on gender discrepancy in the text and to demonstrate how the author interrogates existing gender categories in order to usher in change. The work proves that Hurston, a twentieth-century American female writer, combats the socio-cultural oppression and the stereotyping of women through her characters. She encourages women to revolt and assert themselves by by-passing all the cultural barriers. She also establishes the fact that, by revolting and standing against handicapping cultural barriers, the woman achieves a new identity. Finally, she advocates a society free from aspects of discrimination and prejudice in which men and women can be complementary to each other. Drawing inspiration from this vision, the study proposes the creation of gender awareness in an ESL class in view of eradicating wrong tendencies from Cameroonian high school students.