Regional Fiction and the Plantation

Tradition

1870-1900

Definition and Purposes

Focuses on the characters, dialect, customs, topography, and other features particular to a specific region.

Regional character types, use of dialect, themes of old versus new ways

Contributed to the reunification of the country and the building of national identity toward the end of the nineteenth century.

A travel literature that introduced readers to their own nation.

Narrator

The narrator, if present in the tale as a character, is typically an educated observer from the world beyond.

Narrator learns something from the characters while preserving a sometimes sympathetic, sometimes ironic distance from them.

The narrator serves as mediator between the rural folk and urban audience.

Setting

The emphasis is frequently on nature or geography and its limitations.

The plot of the story may involve the incursions of civilization on the place (trains, boats, tourism, etc.)

Settings may become symbolic or mythological tall mountains ancient trees ruins of previous civilizations.

Plantation Tradition

Subcategory of Southern local color or regionalism popular primarily after the Civil War.

The term "plantation tradition" applies to works that look back nostalgically to the times before the Civil War, before the "Lost Cause" of the Southern Confederacy was lost.

Myth: Idealized, well-ordered agrarian world and its values: Chivalry toward women Courage, integrity, and honorable conduct among gentlemen Pride in and loyalty toward one's region

What’s wrong with this picture of “happy” plantation life?

False Portrayals

False metaphor of a plantation "family" with white and African American members, with a white master at the head.

In keeping with its hierarchical ideals, stories of this tradition wrongly portrayed African Americans as happier under slavery.

Settings

The "ruined plantation," a site of desolation and loss. Through the tale, the plantation is reconstructed as an Edenic spot in slavery times for masters and slaves alike.

The plantation may be now overgrown and destroyed by the mercantile north.

As in other local color fiction, the golden age of the past contrasts with a present of loss and desolation.

Characters

The tale is often told by an ex-slave who reminisces fondly about the bravery, kindness, and aristocracy of his owners and fondly recalls the rituals of life before the war.

Customs and rituals of the South appear in a glow of nostalgia, with no hint of the injustices of slavery.

The listener or recipient of the tales is one who does not understand the South (a Northerner, for example)

Names

Honorifics for slaves: “Uncle” and “Aunt” were used by whites for older African Americans as a mark of respect, but of course titles (Mr., Mrs.) were wrongly denied them.

Generic names for whites: “Mr. John” or “Mr. Charlie” and “Miss Anne”

Charles W. Chesnutt

Satirizing the plantation tradition

Charles W. Chesnutt, the first African American writer to be published in The Atlantic Monthly: “The Goophered Grapevine” (1887).

Purposes (from Kenneth Warren, Black and White Strangers )

Fears of social change: "The happy-go-lucky darky images of the antebellum South could be contrasted favorably to the images of impoverished, potentially dangerous blacks of post-Reconstruction. Such contrasts were staples of plantation fiction and minstrelsy, both of which were going strong through the 1890s.”

Primitivism: The needs fulfilled by these images were not solely racial: 'For many white audiences the black African was the creature of a pre-industrial life style with a pre-industrial appetite,' allowing whites to indulge their nostalgia for a lifestyle that was no longer available to them as they congregated in urban centers.

Nostalgia: “The promise of black America was an assurance that old ways and old pleasures were recuperable. Of course the old ways were beyond recovery" (119).

Joel Chandler Harris, Uncle Remus, His Songs and Sayings (1881)

The frame stories--an elderly African-American narrator telling tales to a young white boy--recall the plantation tradition.

Tales themselves, which are based on black folktales, are frequently subversive of the tradition. “Master and Old John” stories

in which “Old John” uses his supposed stupidity to outwit his master using the master’s own prejudices.

Animal fables in which an animal with less power (such as a rabbit) outwits an animal with more power.

HOW MR. RABBIT WAS TOO SHARP FOR MR. FOX

1. "Uncle Remus, " said the little boy one evening, when he had found the old man with little or nothing to do, "did the fox kill and eat the rabbit when he caught him with the Tar-Baby?"

2. "Law, honey, ain't I tell you 'bout dat?" replied the old darkey, chuckling slyly. "I 'clar ter grashus I ought er tole you dat, but ole man Nod wuz ridin' on my eyelids twel a leetle mo'n I'd a dis'member'd my own name, en den on to dat here come yo' mammy hollerin' atter you.

HOW MR. RABBIT WAS TOO SHARP FOR MR. FOX

3. "W'at I tell you w'en I fus' begin? I tole you Brer Rabbit wuz a monstus soon beas'; leas'ways dat's w'at I laid out fer ter tell you. Well, den, honey, don't you go en make no udder kalkalashuns, kaze in dem days Brer Rabbit en his fambly wuz at de head er de gang w'en enny racket wuz en han', en dar dey stayed.

4. 'Fo' you begins fer ter wipe yo' eyes 'bout Brer Rabbit, you wait en see wha'bouts Brer Rabbit gwineter fetch up at. But dat's needer yer ner dar.

HOW MR. RABBIT WAS TOO SHARP FOR MR. FOX

5. "W'en Brer Fox fine Brer Rabbit mixt up wid de Tar-baby, he feel mighty good, en he roll on de groun' en laff. Bimeby he up'n say, sezee:

6. "'Well, I speck I got you dis time, Brer Rabbit,' sezee; 'maybe I ain't but I speck I is. You been runnin' 'roun' here sassin' atter me a mighty long time, but I speck you done come ter de cen' er de row. You bin currin' up yo' capers en bouncin' 'roun' in dis naberhood ontwel you come ter b'leeve yo'se'f de boss er de whole gang.

7. En der you er allers some'rs whar you got no bixness,' ses Brer Fox, sezee. 'Who ax you fer ter come en strike up a 'quaintence wid dish yer Tar-Baby? En who stuck you up dar whar you iz? Nobody in de 'roun' worril. You des tuck en jam yo'se'f on dat Tar-Baby widout waintin' fer enny invite,' sez Brer Fox, sezee, 'en dar you is, en dar you'll stay twel I fixes up a bresh-pile and fires her up, kaze I'm gwinteter bobbycue you dis day, sho,' sez Brer Fox, sezee.

"Den Brer Rabbit talk mighty 'umble,

8. "'I don't keer w'at you do wid me, Brer Fox,' sezee, 'so you don't fling me in dat brier-patch. Roas' me, Brer Fox,' sezee, 'but don't fling me in dat brier-patch,' sezee.

9. "'I ain't got no string,' sez Brer Fox, sezee, 'en now I speck I'll hatter drown you,' sezee.

10. "'Drown me des ez deep es you please, Brer Fox," sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'but do don't fling me in dat brier-patch, ' sezee.

11. "'Dey ain't no water nigh,' sez Brer Fox, sezee, 'en now I speck I'll hatter skin you,' sezee.

12. "'Skin me, Brer Fox,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'snatch out my eyeballs, t'ar out my years by de roots, en cut off my legs,' sezee, 'but do please, Brer Fox, don't fling me in dat brier-patch,' sezee.

13. "Co'se Brer Fox wanter hurt Brer Rabbit bad ez he kin, so he cotch 'im by de behime legs en slung 'im right in de middle er de brierpatch. dar wuz a considerbul flutter whar Brer Rabbit struck de bushes, en Brer Fox sorter hang 'roun' fer ter see w'at wuz gwinter happen. Bimeby he hear somebody call im, en way up de hill he see Brer Rabbit settin' crosslegged on a chinkapin log koamin' de pitch outen his har wid a chip. Den Brer Fox know dat he bin swop off mighty bad. Brer Rabbit wuz bleedzed fer ter fling back some er his sass, en he holler out:

14. "'Bred en bawn in a brier-patch, Brer Fox--bred en bawn in a brier-patch!' en wid dat he skip out des ez lively as a cricket in de embers."