Janie Crawford, the protagonist in Zora Neale Hurston‟s Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), never fully grows up or integrates completely into any of the communities of which she is a part in the novel. She therefore remains “infertile” in several relationships and communities that showcase diverse kinds of “fertility,” whether that fertility is Logan Killicks‟s productivity with his farmland, Jody Starks‟s successes in building Eatonville, or even Tea Cake‟s skills at gambling and guitar-playing. No matter her environment, Janie remains outside of systems of fertility, more child-like than adult, which means that the blossoming pear tree image that surrounds her, and which seems to epitomize sexuality and fertility, is wasted on Janie, because she refuses to grow up and become fertile either by procreating or by contributing creatively to the communities in which she lives.
