In a way, she did use men to advance herself, but I personally see it in a different way. Since Janie was forced to marry Logan, Janie did not love Logan, and Logan's treatment toward Janie did not show love. When she finds Joe, she falls in love with his smooth words rather than the actual person. Joe shows his true colors, and attempts to control, change, and shelter Janie. A man that attempts to change a woman does not truly love her. Janie becomes tired of Joe's controlling personality, and she stands up for herself. When Joe dies, she has no desire to be with a man, but enjoys her independence. When Tea Cake walks into her life, she now began to have a mutual attraction with him. In the beginning, Tea cake treats her badly by taking her money and leaving her. The difference in this relationship was that Janie and Tea Cake worked through their relationship by speaking their minds to each other. The gloomy part of the story is when Tea Cake gets rabies and turned violent towards Janie. This is not due to his usual personality, but the result from a virus. Overall, the Janie was just trying to find true love, which most women in this world want to find.
Janie conveys throughout the book a difference between true love verses societies portrayal of what love is. For example, her first marriage was not out of love, but based on what her grandmother believed to be a good relationship based on social society. Her grandmother believed that her first husband would make her happy because she would be taken cared by a man and excepted socially. She leaves her husband to run towards something she believed to be love.
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