If it's not growing, it's rotting, yet in the case of generational trauma, it both grows and rots to the point of cyclical trauma. Whether it's shared trauma, reactive trauma, or even more so, cyclical trauma, there are no winners. In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, the main character Janie, an African American woman, is constantly used as a vessel for everyone else's insecurities, trauma, or maladaptive behaviors. The novel is set in a post-civil war America, where women, especially Black women, had little say in their lives or roles within this "new society." Consequently, the generational struggle among African Americans for money, power, and respect is a recurring theme throughout the novel. This affects Janie's life as a woman whose intersectionality lies within being a mixed-race Black woman who is a by-product of interracial power-play dynamics and rape. Janie and her predecessors' stories showcase a deeper truth to the dynamics of women, race, and class. Due to Janie's predecessors' trauma of being raped and abused through the institution of slavery and education, Janie's grandmother and sole legal guardian, Nanny, became emotionally abusive to Janie by marrying Janie off at sixteen years old to a grown man. This display of abuse constantly reformats itself through the misguidance of protection, safety, and overcompensated insecurities. Throughout the novel, Janie tries to navigate her life through these traumas while proving that dysfunctional core relationships will only manifest over time if not healed. Through the use of external dialogue, which shows how other people perceive Janie's characteristics, Hurston explores how women, especially Black women, will never truly be free under White supremacist societies.

At the novel's beginning, Nanny, Janie's sole guardian, does not allow Janie to grow into her womanhood properly because she views Janie's behaviors as a way to reiterate the White supremacist ideology of capital and production. This occurs because Nanny sees Janie kissing a boy named Johnny Taylor at sixteen. While this may seem culturally insignificant to modern times, it is especially significant toward's Janie's journey as a Black woman. This is because when Nanny sees Janie kiss Johnny Taylor, Nanny perceives Janie as a fast and naive girl who needs security rather than a growing woman who is expressing a romantic interaction. While Janie had a naive sense of the world at the time, she was not a fast woman. However, due to the cyclical trauma of slavery and the idea that Black women are tools of capital and reproduction, Nanny wants Janie to be more than that, but on Nanny's terms, not on Janie's. In order to express this idea that Janie is growing into her womanhood too 'fast,' Nanny trauma dumps on Janie and invalidates Janie's feelings through this process. For example, Nanny states, "Yeah, Janie youse got yo' womanhood on youh (...) Ah wants to see you get married away" (Hurston Ch.2). This causes Nanny to marry Janie off to a much older man named Logan Hillicks, who does not see Janie for herself and, just like Nanny, sees Janie through the lens of capital and reproduction. Ultimately, Janie submits to Nanny's ways and creates a shallow grave for her girlhood and womanhood. It is very hard to unlearn the problematic and oppressive tools White supremacist constructs have created, and through Janie's kiss, the only loved one in her life deemed Janie as ' fast' and glowingly unpure as a result. Thus, perpetuating that the idea of womanhood begins by bruising the culture of purity and naivete that the idea of girlhood begets. Since Janie is now a woman to the outside lens, Janie now has to suffer from the oppression of being a Black woman in post-civil war America begets. 

Through objectifying and commodifying Janie, she becomes an extension of the people in her interpersonal relationships. This is shown through her relationships with Nanny and her husbands. Consequently, this does not allow Janie to become her own person. When Janie was sixteen years old, Nanny projected her generational trauma that stems from her lacking the security a man provides during post-civil war America. Due to this, Janie becomes a vessel for these insecurities and gets married off at sixteen to Logan Hillicks. Throughout that marriage, Janie yearned for more, and when the time came, she ran away from her first husband to join arms with her prosperous and abusive second husband, Joe Starks. The abuse Janie suffers in this relationship is similar to her relationships with Nanny and Logan, as none of them view Janie as an equal. However, in Joe's case, Janie is being used as capital for his masculinity. In the early years of Janie and Joe's relationship, he was in a position of power by being her husband and the mayor of their town. Moreover, Joe constantly reiterates his control over Janie by eradicating her existence in social affairs, even when others want Janie to contribute towards discussions, " mah wife don't know nothin' about no speech-nmakin'. Ah never married her for nothin' lack dat. She's uh woman and her place is de home" (Hurston Ch. 5). Throughout their marriage, Janie is treated like a slave, and even more so an intimate object, whose sole existence was to persuade the desires of an emasculated man. During their marriage, Janie separates who she is from an outside perspective and who she is inside ( Hurston Ch. 6). When Joe dies, Janie has to put on the mask of a mourning wife. Due to Janie being an extension of everyone else, Janie is a mere side character, a fink, a perpetual fallacy of the idea of being free as a Black woman. The emotional labor Janie endures is a cause of cyclical injustice, and her lack of character, personality, and existence outside of the people close to her showcases this reality. 

Throughout the novel, perception is existence, and Janie is consistently perceived as a damsel in distress. After Joe's death, Janie is consistently told, " God never meant 'em tuh try tuh stand by theirselves (..) You been well taken keer of, you needs uh man" (Hurston Ch.9). Throughout the novel, Janie has never asked others to help her. Yet, because she is a woman, through the lens of her townspeople, she will never be free. Although Janie is financially free, she is not socially free. Consequently, her freedom is at the cost of her integrity, as she is accompanied by outside thoughts about what she, a grown woman, needs to do. Moreover, for Janie to submit to the cycle of abuse that being a Black woman provides, she must deliver to ulterior notions behind each ill-conceived idea the townspeople, men, and the general society in Janie's lifetime have. Janie never gets to be perceived as Janie. Throughout the novel, Janie is not a person, but a role, a caricature of the desirable and ineffable human everyone expects her to be. She was ultimately an object that could be anything, everything, and all at once, so long as she wasn't Janie. Due to Janie's sole existence being through the lens of others, Janie is not free. 

Throughout the novel, Zora Neale Hurston highlights that women are not spoken to but spoken of, making the entirety of a woman's existence non-existent. However, Zora's point of Janie's non-existence shows that existence is not binary and that there is a reality through non-existence. However, freedom is also not binary, and it is from the perspective of an authoritarian status, thus making Janie's freedom unattainable, as is her sole existence. After all, if Janie were free, how come society still erases the existence of Black women?