The Role of Trees in Hurston’s Seraph on the Suwanee and Their Eyes Wer

The Role of Trees in Hurstons Seraph on the Suwanee and Their Eyes Were Watching idolTrees play integral roles in Seraph on the Suwanee and Their Eyes Were Watching God as sites of sexual awakening for Hurstons heroines, providing a space under which dreams bloom into glistening leaf-buds or over-ripen and die like spoiled fruit. Close readings of Janies pear tree and Arvays mulberry evoke strikingly disparate images of female sexuality despite Hurstons articulation of both experiences as the recognition of a pain remorseless sweet. Depicted within the first quarter of each narrative, Hurston places great emphasis on her charactersinitial sexual experiences as establishment the development of Janie and Arvays identities. As suggested by her pensive pose beneath the pear tree (stretched on her back), Janie possesses agency, navigating the course of her own sexual ontogenesis by searching, inviting, and questioning the tree and herself for voice and vision. Hurstons diction constru cts a purely sensual scene, for like the flower opening up and summoning the dust-beari...