On the "outside," she shows and does everything she is supposed to do. She "starched and ironed her face" which was like "a wall of stone and steel." Janie's exterior is hard and cold, like death, but it is to protect, to conceal what is happening inside. "Inside," she is "calm" and "the things of death reach" but cannot disturb her for "all things concerning death and burial were said and done." Hurston continually contrasts Janie's interior to her exterior as to show her rebirth within while maintaining a solid appearance to please those around her. However, the first thing Janie does after the funeral is get rid of everything that reminds her of her old self. She "burnt up every one of her head rags" and went about with her hair down to her waist. Janie's hair has always been one of her most striking features and now Janie finally can exhibit her femininity. The funeral is the beginning of a great change in Janie where, with Joe gone, "she would have the rest of her life to do as she pleased.".
Janie, now free with Joe's death, begins to ask herself questions and thinks back to her past which she despised so greatly. Hurston uses this long paragraph of Janie's memories of her grandmother to show the extent of her suffering in the past and what may lie ahead in the future. As a child, Janie was very hopeful and dreamy. She had been "getting ready for her great journey to the horizons in search of people." She was not the type of girl satisfied being a housewife and striving to live a secure life. No, Janie felt "it was important to all the world that she should find them and they find her." However, in a single action, Nanny, her grandmother, shattered these hopes. By marrying Janie to Logan Killicks, Nanny was committing Janie to a life she wanted nothing of. In doing so, Nanny had "taken the biggest thing God ever made, the horizon," which Janie sought for so long, "and pinched it in to such a little bit of a thing that she could tie it about her granddaughter's neck tight enough to choke her.
