Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Karintha

"Karintha is a woman. She who carries beauty, perfect as dusk when the sun goes down. She has been married many times. Old men remind her that a few years back they rode her hobby-horse upon their knees. Karintha smiled, and indulges them when she is in the mood for it. She has contempt for them. Karintha is a woman. Young men run stills to make her money. Young men go the big cities and run on the road. Young men go away to college. They all want to bring her money. These are the young men who thought that all they had to ho was to count time. But Karintha is a woman, and she has had a child. A child fell out of her womb onto a bed of pine-needles in the forest. Pin-needles are smooth and sweet. They are elastic to the feet of rabbits... A sawmill was nearby. Its pyramidal sawdust pile smoldered. It is a year before one completely burns. Meanwhile, the smoke curls up and hangs in odd wraiths about the trees, curls up, and spreads itself out over the valley...Weeks after Karintha returned home the smoke was so heavy you tasted it in water." (http://www.cockscrow.com/rooster/toomer.html)/(Cane 4)

In this particular section of Jean Toomer's "Karintha" one thing Toomer does is constantly repeat that Karintha "is a woman." This shows the dominance that Karintha has because she is a woman and not thought of as one. Since she is a woman society cannot distill her image as a lady or a woman, due to the way that men fall for her. Karintha is a woman and does what she wants when she wants and does not what society thinks she should do. By constantly restating that she is a woman and expressing the different actions Karintha do and the different qualities she possesses show that she is identitfied by who she is and not her qualities and actions.
This particular section also talks about the different things men are willing to do for her. Karintha is a woman who has men running "stills to make her money" and other illegal activities. Toomer writes that "they all want to bring her money" when referring to the men. This goes to show that men think that she is some type of object that can be bought, a rare object of beauty. However, Toomer asserts that this is not the case because "Karintha is a woman." Which ties back to the original point that Karintha is a woman and she knows this, and she will not be objectified, which is why she "smiles, and indulges them when she is in the mood."

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