Sula Sex Quotes

The girls are twelve years old when they start walking past the men in front of Edna Finch's Mellow House, and they are experiencing the first stages of sexual awakening. They know they shouldn't like the stares and comments they get, and they're careful to maintain the appearance of propriety, but the mere prospect of sex excites them.

It's interesting that Eva's legacy to the women in her family is sex. She is completely betrayed by BoyBoy, and yet she is able to separate that from her love of all other men. When Sula fails to see the problem with sleeping with Jude, we can trace it right back to Eva.

Hannah's attitude about sex is one we tend to associate with men. She doesn't confuse sex with love, and her casual and frequent sexual encounters with various men show us that she is indeed her mother's daughter.

Nel and Jude have just gotten married and they can't wait to have sex. This scene represents a more traditional view of sex (we assume that they have not slept together yet, hence the eagerness), and it offers a stark contrast to the images of sex we see in the Peace household.

This rather bawdy talk about this sexually unappealing "Shirley" shows us that while sex carries some pretty heavy weight in the novel, it can also be funny and light-hearted. Talk about sex is one of the ways Sula and Nel reconnect and reminisce, and this passage shows us that it doesn't always tear the women apart.

This is the moment when it all falls apart. Nel at first doesn't understand what she's looking at when she finds Sula and Jude together. But as she pieces it together, we know that things will never be the same. In contrast to the light-hearted banter about Shirley, here sex results in irreparable damage to the lives of the characters involved.

Despite first appearances, Sula's view of sex is different from Hannah's. While Hannah attaches no real feeling to it, Sula does. She still has sex with a lot of men (many of them married), but Sula is actually searching for something. We don't get the same feeling from Hannah.

It's interesting that Ajax likes for Sula to be on top, "towering above him." This suggests that he's willing to give up a little power and control.

This shows how differently Sula and Nel view sex. Nel feels that once Sula has slept with Jude, he's no longer hers, he's gone from her life forever. But Sula doesn't see it that way. If Jude was dead, then he'd be gone. But he's not; he just had sex with another woman.

Sula no longer presents a sexual threat to the women in the Bottom. Although they're glad to see her go, things seemed to go a lot smoother between people when Sula was still around.