Leer
By Rafia Sharmin
General Context
While used as a verb, leer means looking or gazing at someone in an evil, rude, or contemptuous way to make that individual uncomfortable. It is not a neutral look, whereas one is seized with intently suggestive, threatening or negative connotations. This form of gaze might often stem from emotions like scorn, rivalry, or predatory desire from deeply rooted antagonistic feelings.
Leer often takes place in conflict or power imbalance situations, especially by oppressors towards the oppressed, reinforcing hierarchies and control by demeaning or objectifying the oppressed. For example, in a racial capitalist system, a slave owner may leer at an enslaved person to express scorn and superiority.
On the other hand, leer also means to look at someone with a lascivious or sexual interest. For example, as used in this sentence: “Cal was always leering at Rose, which irritated her.”
Connection to Novel
In Part 2, Chapter 37 of the early typescript version of Ernest J. Gaines’s Of Love and Dust, Marcus Payne, who has been released on bail from jail and sent to the Hebert plantation to work in the fields, feels intimidated as he presumes that he was being leered at by someone. While recounting the situation to Jim Kelly, the narrator of the story, Marcus mentions that he was working on the plantation for about an hour when Marshall Herbert, the plantation owner, appeared. Though in this scene, Marcus does not mention that Marshall was leering at him, in Chapter 45 of the published version of the book, Jim depicts a scene when Marshall was leering at Marcus. Jim says, “I could see how Marshall started watching him. Marcus spoke, but Marshall didn’t answer” (228). In Jim’s opinion, it’s clear that Marshall’s gazing toward Marcus was disdainful because though Marcus continued talking, Marshall kept silent with a scornful gaze over him. Throughout the novel whenever Marshall appears in the scene there is dust all over the place. From Gaines’s viewpoint, dust symbolizes death in the fiction, and Marshall is responsible for bringing “death” (Rowell 43).
Following the Civil War in 1865, the 13th Amendment prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude for all in the United States. However, according to Andrea C. Armstrong, it creates a loophole by stating “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted” (Armstrong 872). The Punishment Clause allows for the continuation of a form of slavery for people convicted of crimes, which later on served as the foundation for the convict leasing system. In Of Love and Dust, Gaines portrayed how capitalists like Marshall manipulated convicts like Marcus to fulfill the capitalist agenda of upholding racial hierarchies that serve their interests. Through the concept of leer, we can see how Marshall’s gaze symbolizes the oppressive power dynamics and dehumanization inherent in the convict leasing system in exploiting Black individuals.