How does Janie redefine the American Dream and how is she successful in her pursuit of this dream?

The opening lines of Their Eyes Were Watching Godpoint out the centrality of the motif of dreaming in the novel. Furthermore, they establish a difference between men's and women's dreams: while men's dreams are "mocked to death by Time," for women "the dream is the truth." Janie Crawford is indeed a dreamer, but also a very practical woman who achieves complete personal freedom, both as a female and as a human being who is...

The opening lines of Their Eyes Were Watching God point out the centrality of the motif of dreaming in the novel. Furthermore, they establish a difference between men's and women's dreams: while men's dreams are "mocked to death by Time," for women "the dream is the truth." Janie Crawford is indeed a dreamer, but also a very practical woman who achieves complete personal freedom, both as a female and as a human being who is the direct descendant of slavery. In this respect, Janie fulfills Nanny's impossible longing for happiness: "Ah was born back due in slavery so it wasn’t for me to fulfill my dreams of whut a woman oughta be and to do. Dat’s one of de hold-backs of slavery" (19). As opposed to Nanny, Janie has the possibility of overcoming her condition of a mere object, as she is considered by her first two husbands, and acquires a public voice and a personal independence unheard of at the time, especially in the case of a woman who is also black.

Hurston reverses in her novel the traditional notion of the "American Dream," which was restricted to white males who achieved material success in life through personal effort, as represented by Horatio Alger's myth of rising from "rags to riches" as exemplified by his Ragged Dick, protagonist of dozens of novels which meant to inspire 19th-century young working-class males to hard work and a decent behavior in order to escape poverty. Such version of the American Dream had no room for blacks, much less for black women. And that is precisely Hurston's radical claim, and also the reason why many black intellectuals in the 1930s, when it was first published, openly dismissed the novel, condemning it to oblivion for several decades.