¶ … bell hooks, the celebrated Black feminist writer and thinker, recently penned a book called Feminism is for Everybody. It is a provocative title to be sure, but hooks is not the first writer to tackle the subject of how so-called "women's issues" can often have profound consequences on men. Literary works of fiction have long struggled with this central theme. In particular, Jean Toomer's Cane includes some powerful vignettes which highlight just how damaging it can be for men when they do not understand and appreciate women as whole, 3-dimensional beings. Although the negative consequences the male characters suffer in "Karintha," "Becky," "Carma" and "Blood Burning Moon" are as varied as the men themselves, one could argue that the common thread amongst these men is isolation. It is ironic to the extreme, but each of central male characters in Toomer's vignettes actually themselves create a distance and isolation from the very "thing" they obsess about getting so close to....woman. The anonymous "young men" and "old men" in "Karintha" all long in vain to have the lovely young beauty whose "skin is like dusk, when the sun goes down."

Karintha is put on a pedestal, her idyllic beauty allowing men to project onto her all the ideals associated with beauty, like goodness and innocence. They ignore any aspect of her personality which doesn't fit with their idea of Karintha; her mischievousness, even her proclivity for cruelty. The men adore Karintha blindly, faun over her and give her money, but instead of making her love them, they cause the opposite affect. We are told that Karintha "has contempt for them." Implicit in Karintha's reasoning for hating men, one could argue, is the fact that no one ever really saw her for who she was, let alone loved her for who she was. She could never return the love of a man, because no man ever loved Karintha, only the idea of Karintha....

We know that no man will ever have Karintha, at least no man who tries to love the hollow vision of a perfect Karintha, the way the male characters in the story persist in doing.
Isolation is clearly also a central theme of the vignette, "Becky."

The isolation of the young "white woman who had two Negro sons" and then is cast out by both the Black and white communities is obvious, but you must dig a little deeper to find the suggestion of male isolation which is implicit in the text. Although there is no explicit mention of the father(s) of Becky's two boys, his absence is felt. There is, however, mention of a number of different males who show seeming kindnesses to Becky. One man builds her a cabin in the woods, another donates the building supplies, another sometimes brings her "sugar sap," etc. Could one of these men be the father of Becky's children? It's definitely possible and, if so, then it is also possible that Becky's children were born out of love with one of these kind men who simply didn't have the courage to be with her - a fallen, white woman - because of societal pressures. Perhaps it's too optimistic a reading, but the story of "Becky" seems at times like a fairytale that just didn't quite happen.

Becky lives with her two boys in a quaint, almost picturesque little cabin in the woods with a "leaning chimney" from which "smoke curled up." Kind neighbors drop by leaving gifts of food. If only the missing daddy were in the picture, the story would indeed be a perfect fairytale. But, the father(s) is out there somewhere, separated from a woman he could, maybe even does, love and from his two children. He too is isolated, unwilling or unable to be with his family because the world views Becky as somehow less than woman, maybe even less than human, for having sexual…