A Lesson in Innocence and Adulthood

"Janie's first dream was dead, so she became a woman."

Chapter 3 is very short but I think it is an important transition in Janie's life.  Hurston starts the chapter by constantly implying Janie's innocence:

"Yes, she would love Logan after they were married.  She could see no way for it to come about, but Nanny and the old folks had said it, so it must be so.  Husbands and wives always loved each other, and that was what marriage meant.  It was just so.  Janie felt glad of the thought, for then it wouldn't seem so destructive and mouldy.  She wouldn't be lonely anymore."

Readers can see the childlike approach Janie has toward her very adult problem of being married and trying to love the person who she is wed to.  However, by the end of the chapter, she realizes that she will never love her husband, and her childhood dream of being in love with the person you marry is crushed.

From an English major's perspective, I think Hurston makes this such an abrupt chapter because Janie's transformation into an adult seems so quick.  Even her Nanny's death is glossed over.  Janie speaks to Nanny about not loving Logan and "a month later she was dead."  The whirlwind of Janie's change into a woman and her loss of innocence after seeing the world as lonely and unloving is represented in Hurston's fast-paced chapter.

I think the last paragraph of the chapter really shows how Janie's childhood ends and her adulthood begins.  Hurston uses "rebirth" imagery to show this change.  She writes, "She knew that God tore down the old world every evening and built a new one by sun up.  It was wonderful to see it take form with the sun and emerge from the gray dust of its making."  Hurston is making it clear to readers that there will be a new Janie that emerges and though it seems dismal at the moment because Janie realizes that there is no love in her marriage, the imagery in these sentences is hopeful.  This makes me think back to the tree imagery that is constantly used (and it is used in this chapter as well).  Janie has lost her youth and is forced into becoming a woman, but I sense some hope in Janie's life through Hurston's writing.