Jane Harden
The woman who taught Melanctha — thrown out of a college and a teaching post for her conduct, and unforgiving once she is no longer needed.
To be needed. Jane loves Melanctha, teaches her everything she knows, and cannot forgive her once Melanctha has stopped needing the teaching.
The book
At a glance
- The woman who teaches Melanctha Herbert, over about two years, from the time Melanctha is sixteen
- Twenty-three when they meet — seven years older than Melanctha
- Two years at a college for Black students, left over her conduct; later taught at a school for Black children, and left that too
- In a room in the lower part of the town, on a little money of her own
- Jefferson Campbell, who has looked after her through bad trouble more than once
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeJane Harden is the woman who teaches Melanctha Herbert. She is twenty-three when they meet, Black but so light-skinned that the book says hardly anyone could guess it, and she has already been put out of two institutions for her conduct: a college for Black students where she spent two years, and a school for Black children where she taught. She drinks, and the story returns over and over to what the drinking does, in one phrase: it would cover everything all over.
For two years Melanctha spends nearly all her free time in Jane's rented room, sitting at her feet and listening to her stories. What exactly Jane teaches is never spelled out. The book's term for it is the ways that lead to wisdom, it uses that phrase dozens of times, and it leaves the reader to fill in the rest.
How the book draws them
- The teacherEverything Melanctha learns in her late teens she learns from Jane, and not from any of the men she meets. The story states it flatly, and more than once.
- The drinkingIt costs her the college place, then the teaching place, and finally her strength. The book will not let it be hidden either: that, it says, can never be really covered over.
- The reversalBy the second year Melanctha is the stronger of the two, and Jane, weakened and dependent, cannot bear it. She starts abusing Melanctha to anyone who will listen, including Melanctha's doctor.
- The sickbedAttended by Dr. Campbell during an illness, she begins talking about her old times with Melanctha and does not stop. It is the single most destructive scene in the story, and the book says plainly that Jane had no idea what she was doing with all that talking.
- Honest anywayThe story defends her on one point and repeats it: Jane was always honest when she was talking, and she never once denied that Melanctha had a good mind. Her complaint was that Melanctha never used it for anything.
- What she still getsLong after Jane has turned on her, Melanctha keeps coming, keeps helping, and does everything she can when Jane finally goes to pieces. Jane's response is to say she does not want to see her.
Jane does the damage without meaning to. Talking honestly from a sickbed to a doctor she has no idea is in love with Melanctha, she lays out the whole of Melanctha's past, and the story never recovers from it. Jeff Campbell goes home sick, stays away three days, and afterwards can never fully trust Melanctha again. Jane herself simply recedes. The book last has her drinking, still needing a doctor often, still knowing everything that happens to Melanctha, and still refusing to see her.