SOURCE: “Gothic Conventions in Jean Toomer's ‘The Eye,’” in Studies in American Fiction, Vol. 20, No. 2, Autumn, 1992, pp. 209-17.

In the following essay, Jones provides a laudatory assessment of “The Eye,” asserting that the unpublished story “is unique in its evocation of terror in the Gothic tradition.”

Among the scores of unpublished short stories written by Jean Toomer, a newly discovered one is unique in its evocation of terror in the Gothic tradition. Deciphering the facsimile copy is tedious and laborious. Comprising eighteen pages of typed manuscript, with extensive and numerous corrections on every page, the text contains strikeovers, deleted (and inserted) words and sentences, typographical errors, interpolated pages, and handwritten emendations often bordering on illegibility. A disturbing tale of violence, guilt, and insanity, “The Eye” unfolds as a psychological drama of two Victorian spinster sisters, Edith and Eula Ogden.¹ While the action focuses on Edith's steady descent into...