Joe Starks provides Janie with an escape from the protective and unsatisfying love of Logan. Joe is a man with lofty goals and charisma. Janie feels for the first time in her life that she may be able to find true love with this man who wants her to be treated like a lady, rather than as a subservient farmer's wife. After being married just a short time, however, Janie realizes that she is once again lacking the love that she has longed for. The love that Janie experiences with Joe is a possessive love. Joe views Janie as his possession, his trophy wife. He expects Janie to follow his orders, just as the townspeople abide by the laws he creates as mayor. Joe forbids Janie to interact with the porch sitters or to play checkers on the porch of the crossroads store. Janie feels trapped by Joe's love, but she remains with him until his death.
Following Joe's death, Janie meets the man who represents the true love of her life, Tea Cake Woods. He arrives in Eatonville as a fun-loving man who quickly falls for Janie's beauty and charm. Although Janie fears that she is too old for Tea Cake, she cannot help but fall in love with this man. Janie leaves behind everything that she has ever known to embark on a new life with Tea Cake. She adores him, as he adores her. After moving to the Everglades with Tea Cake, she embraces this new life as well as her new friends. Finally, Janie has found the love like that between the bee and its blossom. She declares that Tea Cake could be a "bee to a blossom — a pear tree blossom in the spring."
