Lesson Plan
The following is a lesson plan to address the Feminist Literary Criticism approach to novels and to give students practice in analyzing novels with this theory as a lens. Students will be taught what aspects of characters to look for in their reading of Their Eyes Were Watching God and will eventually be able to identify events in the novel that incorporate social divisions or equality based on sex and gender. They should be able to understand Janie’s progression from the spitting image of a “typical southern woman,” defined by the role determined for her by her sex, to a free woman with complete equality to her husband.
Activities for classwork:
1. At the beginning of class, students will be asked to list situations found in everyday life in which one gender may have an advantage over the other. This will allow them to get comfortable with identifying such inequalities. [individual work; 5 minutes]
2. Students will then be shown a quote from Their Eyes Were Watching God (see bottom of page) and asked to identify the gender inequality, similarly to the previous activity. They will then be divided into groups of four to five and proceed to find passages on their own. They will be asked to interpret what each passage means in terms of feminism literary theory and how it provides meaning to the novel as a whole. [group work; 20 minutes]
Guiding question for this activity: “How does Janie’s life move towards sexual equality?”
Each group’s findings will be shared with the class. [10 minutes]
3. Students will then reread chapter 15 and the first two pages of chapter 17 to interpret Janie’s relationship with Tea Cake and contrast it with that of Jody. [class discussion; 15 minutes]
This lesson is, in total, 50 minutes long.
Quote to be used in Part 2 (teachers may choose to project this to the front of the room or give each student a handout including the quote):
“Thank yuh fuh yo’ compliments, but mah wife don’t know nothin’ ‘bout no speech-makin’. Ah never married her for nothin’ lak dat. She’s uh woman and her place is in de home” (43).
Activities for classwork:
1. At the beginning of class, students will be asked to list situations found in everyday life in which one gender may have an advantage over the other. This will allow them to get comfortable with identifying such inequalities. [individual work; 5 minutes]
2. Students will then be shown a quote from Their Eyes Were Watching God (see bottom of page) and asked to identify the gender inequality, similarly to the previous activity. They will then be divided into groups of four to five and proceed to find passages on their own. They will be asked to interpret what each passage means in terms of feminism literary theory and how it provides meaning to the novel as a whole. [group work; 20 minutes]
Guiding question for this activity: “How does Janie’s life move towards sexual equality?”
Each group’s findings will be shared with the class. [10 minutes]
3. Students will then reread chapter 15 and the first two pages of chapter 17 to interpret Janie’s relationship with Tea Cake and contrast it with that of Jody. [class discussion; 15 minutes]
This lesson is, in total, 50 minutes long.
Quote to be used in Part 2 (teachers may choose to project this to the front of the room or give each student a handout including the quote):
“Thank yuh fuh yo’ compliments, but mah wife don’t know nothin’ ‘bout no speech-makin’. Ah never married her for nothin’ lak dat. She’s uh woman and her place is in de home” (43).