“She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was a marriage! She had been summoned to behold a revelation. Then Janie felt a pain remorseless sweet that left her limp and languid.” (p.11)

16-year-old Janie is feeling all of her feelings, and a mere half a page later, she steals a kiss from Johnny Taylor, who just happened to be walking by. Nanny, who catches the youngsters in the seemingly innocent act, doesn’t like what she sees and immediately seeks to see Janie married.

This won’t be the first time we see Janie acting according to her desire, which Hurston explores quite frankly in the Their Eyes Were Watching God, often using the imagery of flowers and nature. Even today, and certainly in 1937, when the novel was published, explicit discussion of women’s desire can be seen as transgressive, yet here is a female author doing just that. To both Nanny in this scene from the novel and to American society at large, women’s desire is often considered a thing to be monitored and managed.

Why might women’s desire be seen as so dangerous, either to Nanny or to society at large? Respond in whatever medium seems most apt...