This was another reason why her writings were often criticized and the point of the story was overlooked. As a folklorist, Hurston knew that to portray characters correctly, she had to show what they would have been like during the era she was writing about, to open people to the truth ("Harlem Renaissance). Growing up she was surrounded by successful African-American men and , especially, women, so in her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston describes the experiences of an African American woman named Janie, who struggles to develop her identity, Janie is forced into marriage by her grandmother who raised her since her mother abandoned them due to life in slavery, her worldview has been transformed and marrying Janie is considered crucial for her to gain security and status and Janie becomes unhappy and runs away with another man named Jody. , she falls in love with him and marries him. When he becomes mayor, he soon after forces Janie to submit to his idea of ​​how he thinks she should behave. Eventually, she develops the courage to stand up to him as he belittles her in public, Janie experiences something she doesn't she had never had before, a sense of independence and begins a relationship with God. Realizing how life is changing, after Jody's death, Janie remains unmarried for nine months, enjoying the freedom. She continues like this, until she falls in love and remarries a man named Tea Cake, a gregarious, free-spirited man who respects her. Later in their marriage a tornado hits and he is bitten by a rabid dog, descending into madness, and is forced to kill it, when he pulls a gun on her. At the end of the novel, after being found not guilty of Tea Cake's murder, Janie finally finds peace with him and with her identity as a confident African-American woman, capable of