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15. Portrait in Georgia
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Cane, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Navigating Identity
Racism in the Jim Crow Era
Feminine Allure
Nature vs. Society
The Power and Limitations of Language
Summary
Analysis
Under the light of a full, red-tinted (and therefore ominous) moon, Louisa walks home from the house of the White family for whom she works. Louisa is a young and beautiful Black woman, so beautiful, in fact, that the younger son of employers, Bob Stone, has fallen in love with her. A Black man, Tom Burwell, loves her too, but he’s having a harder time wooing her. Louisa is planning to meet Bob later, in the cane fields. But she feels a stab of ominous foreboding. When she starts singing to herself, her song is offkey. Nearby chickens start cackling and dogs howl at the moon.
The blood-burning moon is a reference to Revelations 6:12 in the Christian Bible. Even as Cane tries to draw on Black folk traditions in order to give voice a new expression of American art and identity, it relies heavily on the cultural store of White society, in the way the short poem “Conversion” implies. Like Becky, Louisa is in an interracial sexual relationship. Unlike Becky, however, Louisa’s race offers her no potential protection: it only renders her more vulnerable. While the story suggests that Louisa is a willing participant in her affair with Bob, the fact remains that he is both her employer and that he’s White and has more social capital than she does as a Black woman. Everything in the opening scene, from the red-tinted moon to Louisa’s off-key singing, suggests that the situation is wrong and dangerous.
Themes
In factory town (where the Black people live), men—including Tom—gather at the sugar factory to socialize and gossip. When gossip turns to Louisa’s relationship with Bob, Tom gets into a fight with the gossipers. As he storms off in disgust, he hears the howling dogs and cackling chickens. Tom finds Louisa sitting in front of her house. He professes his love for her and asks her if the rumors about her and Bob are true. Louisa, knowing that Tom might attack Bob, avoids answering, but she allows him to sit beside her on the step.
Tom feels possessive of Louisa even though, as far as readers know, she has genuine feelings for Bob. Like the men in “Karintha,” and “Fern,” Tom objectifies Louisa, acting as if his feelings for her make her his property. Louisa indulges his company less because of her interest than because of her fear that Tom might do something to Bob. Her desires and wants are secondary to those of the men around her.
Themes
A frustrated Bob sets out for the cane fields. Back in the old days, when his family enslaved their Black workers, he wouldn’t have had to sneak around to have sex with Louisa. It would have been his right. Nowadays, it’s too hard to explain—even to himself—why he feels so drawn to Louisa despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that she’s Black, so he keeps his feelings secret. As he cuts behind the sugar factory, he overhears talk about Tom’s feelings for Louisa and about Tom’s threats against Bob. The idea that a Black man loves “his girl” sickens Bob.
The story presents Bob’s feelings for Louisa as both genuine and inescapably inflected by race. His frustration speaks, too, to the strength of social and legal taboos against interracial relationships in the Jim Crow era. His yearning for the good old days when he and Louisa could have had an open relationship because he would have been her enslaver is an uncomfortable reminder of his assumed White privilege, as is his disgust over finding himself in competition with a Black man.
Themes
Enraged, Bob heads into factory town, looking for Louisa. He finds her on her front step with Tom, whom he immediately attacks. Tom doesn’t fight back until Bob makes it clear that he won’t stop. And soon, Tom has cut right across Bob’s throat. Louisa faints. Shocked, Bob stumbles back toward the White part of town, managing to croak out the name of his murderer before he dies. The White citizens immediately form a lynch mob that storms factory town and arrests Tom. They drag him to the sugar factory, tie him to a post, pile logs around his feet, and set him on fire. Tom is silent as they burn him to death, but the mob cheers. At the sound of the cheer, Louisa opens her eyes and begins to sing to the moon.
Tom’s attempts to avoid conflict speak less to his self-control than to his awareness of the power imbalance between White and Black people. The threat of violence is one way that White people sought to maintain power and control over Black people in the South long after the end of slavery. Tom might be Bob’s physical superior, but the White lynch mob reminds him—and readers—that real power lies in racial privilege. And all of this serves to further objectify Louisa, whom the story ultimately reduces to little more than the passive cause of two men’s deaths.
Themes
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