Woman
3). Thus, the fi ctional Patesville (based explicitly on Fayetteville, North
Carolina) becomes the setting for most of Chesnutt ’ s “ Southern ” stories; having lived
in and around Fayetteville for nearly twenty years, the author knew it well. He chose
to locate most of the rest of his short fi ction in a place familiar to him as well. Virtu-
ally all of his “ Northern ” fi ctions are set in “ Groveland, ” Ohio, a fi ctionalized twin
for Cleveland, the city in which he lived from 1884 until his death in 1932.
At fi rst glance, many of Chesnutt ’ s short stories, especially those about the ante -
and postbellum South, probably seemed recognizable, even conventional, to many
readers. Indeed, the dialect stories which earned Chesnutt his initial fame – published
in the Atlantic Monthly beginning in 1887 and later collected into his fi rst book, The
Conjure Woman , in 1899 – came familiarly clothed. After all, readers had grown largely
familiar with the so
-
called
“
plantation tradition
”
works of such writers as John
70
Charles Duncan
Pendleton Kennedy, Thomas Nelson Page, Joel Chandler Harris, and Thomas Dixon.
Typically, such stories focused on idealized versions of the antebellum South, a place
(and time) depicted nostalgically as simpler, and more honorable and orderly than
modern life. Thus, plantation life is recalled, often by an ex - slave narrator who regales
listeners – generally white characters and, broadly speaking, white readers – with tales
of plantation life, including generally favorable descriptions of the relationships
between slaves and masters created by the “ peculiar institution. ” Interesting, too, is
the fact that the stories told by the ex - slave characters, who speak in sometimes exag-
gerated dialect, often derive from African American folktales; both Page
’
s
In Ole
Virginia, Or Marse Chan and Other Stories (1887) and Harris ’ s Uncle Remus: His Songs
and Sayings (1881), for example, drew on African American folktales for their “ inside ”
narratives.
Several nineteenth - century African American writers, however, professed to having
found plantation literature distasteful; there are many examples of attempts to respond
to, parody, and rebuke such writings. Frederick Douglass ’ s The Heroic Slave (1853),
William Wells Brown ’ s Clotel; or The President ’ s Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in
the United States (1853), Frances Watkins ’ s The Slave Mother: A Tale of the Ohio (1856),
and Paul Laurence Dunbar ’ s The Sport of the Gods (1902) all, to greater or some extent,
repudiate the racial and social claims implicit in plantation tradition literature.
Many scholars today similarly detect racially charged, even sinister messages under-
lying the plantation tradition. Figures such as Houston Baker, Amy Kaplan, and
Kenneth Warren posit that authors in the tradition overtly attempt to reinforce racial
(and often racist) stereotypes; Kaplan, for example, calls Page ’ s In Ole Virginia “ a col-
lection of dialect stories narrated by a faithful ex - slave who reminisces nostalgically
about ‘ dem good ole times. ’ ” And Eric J. Sundquist suggests that the function of
plantation tradition fi ction goes far beyond idle nostalgia:
The recreated plantation was a perfect topos for lamenting the loss of legitimate white
mastery but also for demonstrating that, though legal slavery was gone, the forms and
hierarchies of a clearly defi ned racial order, with its consequent economic privileges,
could still be maintained. Plantation literature and culture did not simply demand a
febrile return to the past; it was the deceptive screen for keeping contemporary African
Americans in bondage to the whole white race, as Albion Tourgee had said in his brief
for Homer Plessy. (Sundquist 287)
Thus, both nineteenth - century African American authors and modern scholars argue
that the tradition perpetuated unfl attering stereotypes of the past at best and attempted
to maintain a racist social order at worst.
Why, then, would a reform
-
minded writer who identifi ed himself as African
American choose to work in what might have been for him an offensive literary form?
Surprising though it may seem, the plantation tradition – and especially the frame
story as popularized by Harris and Page – provided an ideal platform from which to
try to advance Chesnutt ’ s two primary goals as a writer: to earn money and to educate
Charles W. Chesnutt
71
white readers about African Americans. In using such a well - established literary genre,
one his late nineteenth
-
century readers found familiar and comfortable,
Chesnutt
would be able to accomplish both goals, despite their seeming inherent contradictions.
The stories, that is, would allow him to attain popular success ( The Conjure Woman
did indeed become his best - selling book) by appealing to the expectations of readers
captivated by nostalgic and quaintly exotic descriptions of the Old South; and the
stories would simultaneously amend the attitudes of his white readers about slaves
and the free African Americans who, by the end of the nineteenth century, had come
to form a signifi cant portion of the citizenry. The format thus allows Chesnutt to
demythologize the patrician ideals that seem to inform the plantation tradition, and
it likewise permits the sort of subtle and complex humanizing of African Americans
that became a feature of virtually all of his writings. In addition, the stories, as Joseph
McElrath, Jr., points out, are “ dominantly comical in tone; [their] serious refl ections
… are designed to elicit sympathy in a gentle manner ” ( Critical Essays 4). Such an
approach no doubt refl ects Chesnutt ’ s own nature as well as his savvy.
Chesnutt obviously believed he could make productive use of the genre – he uses
it to structure fourteen “ conjure ” stories (a signifi cant share of his entire short story
output), the seven collected in The Conjure Woman and seven others published between
1887 and 1925. Like some of his predecessors in the genre, Chesnutt bases many of
these so - called “ conjure ” stories on African American folktales, and, as the title of his
collection suggests, he imbues the tales with magic (or, as Julius calls it, “ goopher ” ).
The stories typically rest upon the interaction of three central characters: John, a white
Ohio businessman who has moved to North Carolina after the Civil War to purchase
and operate a vineyard; Julius, an ex - slave raconteur and now coachman who had lived
and worked on the property when it had been a plantation; and Annie, John ’ s wife,
who seems to serve in many ways as the proxy for the kind of open - minded white
reader Chesnutt hoped to cultivate. Each story typically opens with John as narrator
of the “ outside ” story, but it is Julius ’ s “ inside ” narrative – told in dialect – that forms
the crux of the story. Each of Julius ’ s tales recounts events on the plantation before
the war, while John and Annie li
sten; after Julius concludes his tale, both fi gures
typically comment on, interpret, question, and debate the merits – both literary and
historical – of the tale (and Julius ’ s telling of it). Perhaps the best description of the
tales comes from John, who summarizes them this way:
Some of these stories are quaintly humorous; others wildly extravagant, revealing the
Oriental cast of the negro ’ s imagination; while others, poured freely into the sympathetic
ear of a Northern - bred woman, disclose many a tragic incident of the darker side of
slavery. ( Conjure Woman 40 – 1)
In “ The Goophered Grapevine, ” the fi rst story in The Conjure Woman collection,
Chesnutt introduces the three central characters and, indeed, the governing paradigm
of all fourteen of his conjure stories, and it certainly discloses a darker side of slavery
than one might fi nd in a traditional plantation tale. Having recently relocated from
72
Charles Duncan
the North and in search of some land in North Carolina to cultivate, John and Annie
decide to buy a plantation that has suffered from neglect since the Civil War, which
had ended a considerable, if never specifi ed, number of years earlier. There they meet
Julius McAdoo, an ex - slave who has apparently been living on the plantation and
subsisting in part by tending what ’ s left of the vineyards on the property. As in all
of the conjure stories, the frame story is narrated by John, a white Ohio businessman,
while Julius narrates the “ inside, ” or embedded, story. In short, Chesnutt developed
a narrative paradigm which allows him both to counter romantic depictions of slavery
but also – more interestingly – to explore his own fi ctionalized version of “ Reconstruc-
tion
”
; here, as in the other conjure stories, blacks and whites, Northerners and
Southerners come together and share stories of the past as they attempt to remake
the country following the Civil War.
Thus, when Julius learns of John ’ s plans to purchase the estate, he tells the couple,
in dialect and without interruption, a long story about the plantation ’ s pre – Civil War
days. The tale recounts the grim consequences that accrue when the plantation owner,
Mars Dugal ’ McAdoo, hires Aunt Peggy (the conjure woman of the title of the collec-
tion) to bewitch the vineyard as a means of preventing local slaves from stealing his
grapes. The spell, which putatively causes anyone who eats the grapes to die within a
year, works wonderfully well as a deterrent until Henry, a recently acquired slave
unaware of the vineyard ’ s “ goophered ” condition, eats some of the grapes. Moved to
spare Henry, Aunt Peggy puts a protective spell on him, but one that confl ates his
physical well - being with that of the plants; in the summer, therefore, Henry and the
vineyard thrive, while both are sapped of their energy in the winter. Recognizing
Henry ’ s magic - induced organic cycles, the plantation owner seeks to maximize profi t
by selling Henry every summer during his peak condition, and then buying him back
in every winter, at a greatly reduced price, when Henry, like the plants, is frail and
unproductive. This profi table enterprise eventually comes to an end when Mars McAdoo
falls victim to a Yankee confi dence man and his own greed; when he takes the Yankee ’ s
advice on how to exploit his land and slaves even more, the crops and Henry both die.
Julius ’ s tale about Henry thereby literalizes the confl ation of African American
slaves and property, in this situation transforming a black man into the very land he
works. Henry, that is, literally becomes just another crop that McAdoo cultivates,
harvests, and profi ts from every season. With Henry functioning as little more than
a disposable commodity – after Henry ’ s death, McAdoo curses the Yankee only for
costing him money – in the business of plantation ownership, Julius thus introduces
John and Annie to an incisive lesson on the treatment of African Americans and the
very economics of slavery in the Old South. It ’ s no surprise, then, that “ The Goophered
Grapevine ” and, indeed, virtually all of the conjure stories, focuses on the grim con-
sequences of an economic system predicated on the buying and selling of humans.
Julius stresses not only the tangible effects on the slaves, but he also emphasizes – as
Annie repeatedly recognizes – how the system dehumanizes the white characters as
well. After Henry ’ s death, for example, Julius describes the slaveowner ’ s responses:
“ ‘ Mars Dugal ’ tuk on might ’ ly ‘ bout losin ’ his vimes en his nigger in de same year.
Charles W. Chesnutt
73
… He say he wuz mighty glad dat de wah come, en he des want ter kill a Yankee
fer eve ’ y dollar he los ’ ‘ long er dat grape - raisin ’ Yankee ’ ” ( Conjure Woman 32).
Taken together, the plots of the conjure stories offer a range of tone and interpretive
possibility. In stories such as “ Po ’ Sandy ” and “ Dave ’ s Neckliss, ” Chesnutt describes
brutalities inherent in the slavery system that lead to psychological devastation,
murder, and suicide. In the latter, for example, the title character takes a degrading
punishment so much to heart that he ultimately kills himself. Clearly, Chesnutt
intends for readers to fi nd such events shocking. But other stories emphasize instead
the more positive implications of blacks and whites – in the forms of Julius, John, and
Annie – learning to live and work together in a new America. Although John often
questions or even dismisses Julius ’ s motives for telling his tales, Annie ’ s interpretations
of the tales often demonstrate not only her sympathy for those who had been enslaved
but also a perceptive comprehension of the human motivations that pervade each tale.
In many ways, the conjure tales look back critically on the antebellum South, but the
stories also evoke more encouraging implications – the main characters may well rep-
resent the beginning of a new understanding of, and appreciation for, the “ other. ”
Several of Chesnutt ’ s other stories also borrow from familiar literary genres, only
to be manipulated into a new form by the author. In “ The Passing of Grandison, ” for
example, Chesnutt once more appropriates, but modifi es, another literary form, this
one distinctly African American: the slave narrative. Charles T. Davis and Henry Louis
Gates, Jr., defi ne the slave narrative as “ [t]he written and dictated testimonies of the
enslavement of black human beings ” (Davis and Gates xii), and the genre constituted
a signifi cant portion of the African American literary tradition well into the nineteenth
century. As James Olney and others have pointed out, traditional slave narratives,
which are generally autobiographical in form, have a number of shared characteristics:
an account of the slave ’ s life in bondage, a “ description of successful attempt(s) to
escape, … guided by the North Star ” (Olney 153), and a brief commentary on the
ex - slave ’ s life in the North. As with plantation tradition literature, nineteenth - century
readers would have been familiar with slave narratives; thousands reached print in the
United States before the Civil Wa
r. Black authors such as Frederick Douglass (about
whom Chesnutt published a biography), Henry Bibb, William Wells Brown, Solomon
Northrup, and Harriet Jacobs, among many others, published autobiographical
accounts of their slave years. Traditional slave narratives have at their core a shared
rhetorical goal – to convince white readers that slavery should be abolished.
By the time “ The Passing of Grandison ” reached print in 1899, of course, slavery
had long since been abolished. Thus, Chesnutt clearly has another purpose in mind
for the work. Although broadly comic in tone and far different in narrative strategies,
the plot of “ The Passing of Grandison ” may nevertheless initially seem familiar to
readers of slave narratives; it focuses, after all, on a particular slave, Grandison, who
lives on a Kentucky plantation and who eventually escapes to the North; he even
makes use of the North Star in one of his treks. That ’ s where the similarity ends,
though, as the rest of the story adds a farcical element to a genre not known for its
use of comedy.
74
Charles Duncan
The action of the story derives from the attempts of the son of the plantation owner
to “ free ” one of his father ’ s slaves as a means of impressing his fi anc é e. But despite
the young man ’ s elaborate efforts – including secretly plotting with abolitionists and
leaving Grandison alone (with a drawer full of “ escape ” money) for days at a time in
a Boston hotel – Grandison proves unfailingly loyal to his masters, so much so that
the son ultimately hires thugs to kidnap the slave and take him to “ freedom ” in
Canada. Even that desperate measure works only temporarily as Grandison escapes
from Canada, and in a startlingly ironic plot contrivance, uses the North Star to navi-
gate (South!) back to captivity in Kentucky. Ultimately, however, Grandison proves
not quite the model slave after all; having gathered his family, he re - escapes with
them to the North, leaving his “ master ” deeply disappointed in the fi delity of his
slaves. Easily one of Chesnutt ’ s best stories, “ Grandison ” is both surprising and very
funny, two traits not normally associated with slave narratives.
In refi tting, more than thirty years after the abolition of slavery, the slave narrative
A Companion to the American Short Story Page 17