Janie Crawford has the hair that I have wanted since I was a little girl. I was captivated by it four years ago when I first read
Their Eyes Were Watching God , and I'm incredibly jealous of it once again on reading it a second time. I'm not sure that there is a passage that describes it thoroughly in the book, but it's always looked thick curly, a long, long braid down her back. I've dreamed of having hair that long for years - I haven't gotten very far haha.
But it isn't just pretty - it isn't just a vain attribute of hers. It's almost a display of her power, of her freedom. And when Joe Starks makes her tie it up under a headscarf, it's criminal. And also conveniently symbolic of how he holds the "power" in her life for the next twenty years.
 |
| Halle Berry as Janie in the movie adaption of "Their Eyes Were Watching God |
Hair is so HUGE in literature - folk tales, fairly tales, mythology.
Samson who's strength was in his hair, Rapunzel and her long magical
locks - it there a single Disney princess (other than Snow White, who I
will note was also my least favorite when I was little on account of her
short hair) who
doesn't have long hair? Mulan doesn't count - hers was long at the beginning.
It's a beautiful, vain, mythic thing.
Griet, the protagonist in Tracy Chevalier's
Girl With a Pearl Earring
chooses to hide her hair on her own underneath layers of scarves; it
becomes this mysterious, almost sensuous object of curiosity to the men
in her life, but it is her power, and no one elses.
 |
| Girls, you know we all thought this what we looked like with our hair blowing n the wind... |
What is it about hair that has always and continues to captivate us? In my earlier fiction writing, I would devote a paragraph if not more to the description of my heroines hair - some of my favorite book passages do that as well. How beautifully interesting.
No comments:
Post a Comment