Jeanne
Also referred to as "Lemer" and "Prosper". She is an Ethiopian entertainer in Paris. She constantly struggles with her self-worth because of the color of her skin, and often dresses elaborately to make up for its darkness. She has a sexual relationship with another dancer, Lisette, and one with a rich white writer, Charles. She possesses Lasirén after singing old songs of her grandmother. For one who makes a living based on her beauty and desirability, it is only after having a stroke, losing all mobility in her right side and her lost glamour that she finds true love and self-worth. Lasirén leaves her body after Jeanne dies a happy and loved woman.
"I should be beautiful. Always I am an entertainer" (pg. 172).
"You're dancing well, My Jeanne. Dancing in the groove I've laid for you, dancing a new story to your life" (pg. 354). (Lasirén to Jeanne.)
"I am a woman, and I am loved" (pg. 355).
Read more about this topic: The Salt Roads (novel), Major Characters in The Salt Roads
Famous quotes containing the word jeanne:
“I will tell you what Jeanne was like. She was like a piano in a country where everyone has had their hands cut off.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“May we not assure ourselves that whatever woman’s thought and study shall embrace will thereby receive a new inspiration, that she will save science from materialism, and art from a gross realism; that the “eternal womanly shall lead upward and onward”?”
—Louisa Parsons Hopkins, U.S. scientist and author. As quoted in The Fair Women, ch. 16, by Jeanne Madeline Weimann (1981)