Fern by Jean Toomer
"Fern" by Jean Toomer is a poignant narrative that explores the complex emotional landscape between a white northern narrator and a Black woman named Fern in Macon, Georgia. The story is centered around the narrator's profound fascination with Fern, particularly her captivating eyes, which symbolize both her connection to the land and universal human experiences. Fern's presence evokes a sense of obligation and longing in the men who encounter her, yet she remains emotionally distant and weary from their advances.
The narrator’s chance encounter with Fern leads him to a moment of intimacy and shared vulnerability as they walk together and sit beneath a sweet-gum tree. This connection, however, is fraught with tension and societal disapproval. As night falls, Fern's sudden emotional outburst culminates in her fainting, leaving the narrator to grapple with the unfulfilled potential of their relationship. Ultimately, the story raises questions about the nature of connection, longing, and the societal boundaries that inhibit true understanding between individuals from different backgrounds. Through this brief yet impactful relationship, Toomer invites readers to reflect on the enduring complexities of race, identity, and human connection.
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Fern by Jean Toomer
First published: 1922
Type of plot: Psychological
Time of work: The early 1920's
Locale: Macon, Georgia
Principal Characters:
Fern , a young African American woman living in GeorgiaThe narrator , a Northern businessperson who once visited Georgia on business
The Story
The narrator, a northern white man, recalls an unforgettable black woman named Fern whom he once met in Macon, Georgia. Everything about this young woman is defined by her captivating eyes, which link all of her to the Georgia soil and to universal human needs. "Her face flowed into her eyes." Indeed, "like her face, the whole countryside seemed to flow into her eyes."
Fern's eyes tell men that she is easy. When she was young, a few men took her but got no joy from it. Afterward, they felt bound to her, obligated in ways that they could not explain. As Fern grew up, men kept bringing their bodies to her, but she only grew weary of them, turning them off. Nevertheless, they felt a need to return to do some fine thing for her. She did not deny them, but they nevertheless were somehow denied. She seemed somehow above men.
The narrator happened to pass Fern's house one day while walking with a stranger. When he saw her sitting on her front porch, sad and listless, with her head leaning on a post, slightly tilted to avoid a protruding nail, he asked the stranger who she was. Because local people already regarded the narrator as stuck-up and nosy, her name was all the information he got, so he let the matter go. Nevertheless, he immediately felt bound to Fern.
One evening the narrator went out of his way to walk by Fern's house and stopped to say hello. Her family was there, but they left quickly as if accustomed to giving men room. Not knowing what to say to avoid giving the impression that he wished to seduce Fern, the narrator asked her to walk with him. She seemed to understand his intentions and to want to trust him.
As they walked, they become more comfortable with each other, although people gaped at them, and crossed a cane field to a stream, where they sat under a sweet-gum tree until darkness fell. Growing pensive in the Georgia night, the narrator felt strange, as he always did in Georgia at dusk, and began feeling that unseen things were becoming tangible. He had heard stories of strange happenings at night in Georgia, such as a black woman who saw the mother of Christ and drew her image on a courthouse wall.
Almost unconsciously, the narrator put his arms around Fern. Her eyes, "unusually weird and open," seemed to hold him, and even God, in their gaze. Suddenly she sprang up, ran, then dropped to her knees and swayed back and forth, as if her body were tortured with something that it could not release. Then she began to sing—like a Jewish cantor with a broken voice. She seemed to be pounding her head on the ground in anguish. When the narrator rushed to her, she fainted in his arms.
Afterward, the narrator got ugly looks from men in the town and there was talk about running him out of town. Eventually he returned to the North. As he left the town, he saw Fern: She was again sitting on her porch, with her head tilted to avoid the nail, her eyes on the sunset. Nothing ever really happened, and nothing ever came to Fern—or to him, no fine unnamed thing that he would do for her. "And, friend, you?" he asks the reader. "She is still living. I have reason to know. Her name, against the chance that you might happen down that way, is Fernie May Rosen."
Bibliography
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Fabre, Geneviève, and Michel Feith, eds. Jean Toomer and the Harlem Renaissance. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2001.
Ford, Karen Jackson. Split-Gut Song: Jean Toomer and the Poetics of Modernity. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2005.
Hajek, Friederike. "The Change of Literary Authority in the Harlem Renaissance: Jean Toomer's Cane." In The Black Columbiad: Defining Moments in African American Literature and Culture, edited by Werner Sollos and Maria Diedrich. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994.
Kerman, Cynthia. The Lives of Jean Toomer: A Hunger for Wholeness. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988.
O'Daniel, Therman B., ed. Jean Toomer: A Critical Evaluation. Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1988.
Scruggs, Charles, and Lee VanDemarr. Jean Toomer and the Terrors of American History. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998.
Wagner-Martin, Linda. "Toomer's Cane as Narrative Sequence." In Modern American Short Story Sequences, edited by J. Gerald Kennedy. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1995.