Journal: Janie's motivation & change
For these two chapters, Janie is motivated by having to prove that she and Tea Cake truly like, if not love, one another. In chapter 11, she has to prove to herself that he only likes her and doesn't have another woman he fancies. Through chapter 12, Janie is proving to Phoeby that she and Tea Cake are in a situation where marrying is alright since they are in love and that he isn't just after her for the money left to her after Jody's death. For both instances, she has to fight determined resistance: first it was herself trying to be convinced that she did not in fact like Tea Cake enough to care that he might have something going on on the side; second it was Phoeby's determination that a 12 year age gap could only be possible if one or both were after something unrelated to love, such as monetary gain.
Janie has clearly changed from the beginning of the tale, where she had to bend to the will of her slave-days grandmother and marry Logan. She has yet again rushed into another relationship with a man and wants to marry him, but it's different since Tea Cake didn't just pull her in with words as Jody had, he used concrete actions to prove that he wanted the best for her instead of just wanting to control her. With Tea Cake, Janie only takes directions from him involving the colors of her clothes, whereas that seemed to be the only instruction that Jody didn't consistently give her while he was alive.
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