After she marries a man she doesn’t love, who her grandmother thinks is suitable, Janie’s first impression of his home is that it looks “like a stump in the middle of the woods where nobody had ever been.” This characterization can be contrasted with the description of a blossoming tree that Janie imagined her love life would be. In particular, after she imagines “the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch,” she thinks “So this is a marriage!” Later, she cries about her loveless relationship and tells her grandmother, “Ah wants things sweet wid mah marriage lak when you sit under a pear tree and think.”