What is love? I am only about 40 pages into Their Eyes were Watching God, and I can already tell that this will be the central question in the novel. Janie’s first marriage to Logan was not true love. It was forced and arranged by her grandmother. Janie accepted this arranged marriage at first by assuming that husbands and wives automatically love each other, but she soon finds that this is not the case. When Janie runs off with Joe, I feel uneasy about it. Joe seems to be concerned with appearances and control, and may not treat Janie as an equal in the end. When Hicks shows interest in Janie and tries to make her notice him, it seems to foreshadow that perhaps Joe isn’t Janie’s last love affair in the novel. She is on a quest to have and understand true love, and I don’t think Joe is it.