Complicating Desire & Blackness In Jean Toomer's Esther

Trances and Dreams Complicating Desire & Blackness in Jean Toomer’s “Esther” Jean Toomer’s “Esther” is a bildungsroman text that follows the light skinned protagonist, Esther, through four distinct ages in three chapters. “Esther” is full of magical realism coupled with female desire which is often expressed through dreams, visions, and color. From the beginning, the reader can contrast Esther with Karintha, Louisa and other female characters in Cane. Esther is not desired by white or black men due to her mixed-race or gray color. However, she desires Barlo after being enticed by his religious trance that happens at sundown. Barlo’s trance creates a shift in the community and within Esther. For example, “the customary store lights fail to throw their feeble glow across the gray dust and flagging of the Georgia town,” (25). Instead, the “fire” from Barlow’s voice becomes the light that arrives at dusk. Barlo’s vision is significant to how Esther envisions herself as a girl coming to age. She begins to reject how her “gray” life is to be and rethinks her modern maternal and economic destination assigned by her father (the light is not coming from the store but from Barlo). This paper will examine Barlo’s impact on Esther’s dreams and how Barlo’s rejection of Esther represents the modern journey to self-hood’s …show more content…
She wants her conception to not be immaculate, as seen later on in the short story. As I contended earlier in the paper, Esther rejects her maternal and economic roles even as she works them. “Keeping the money in the family,” is slowly causing her to disappear into the “color of the gray dust that dances with dead cotton leaves,” (27). Esther must meet Barlo to avoid falling into the traditional roles of a female of the modern period and not creating difference. Modernity’s ideal for black people to own and have finance is troubled in her