CALIFORNilc~. STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE
CHARLES WADDELL CHESNUTT:
SHORT FIC'I'ION ON THE COLOR LINE
A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors in English
by
Mary Anne Stone
/"~
.June 1979 .-:.:. .. '1.: ..
The Thesis of Mary Anne Stone is approved:
California State University, Northridge
ii Dedicated to:
Jana, Wendy and Tim
Creators of the Peanut Butter Avalanche
iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My thanks go to Dr. John Stafford for serving as my advisor in this endeavor, and to my friends Nancy
McCarthy and Tom McGuire for their preliminary editing.
iv TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction ..••••••..•.•. 1
Biographical Information - .A Context .. 4
New York - A Period of Apprenticeship • • • 10
Mature Short Fiction .. . 15
Critical Responses. • • • 3 7
Late Mature Work. . . . 41
Evaluation - His Contribution . . 45
Notes . . . . . • 49
Bibliography. 52
v Introduction
On May 29, 1880, the not yet twenty-two year-old
principal of the Howard School for Negroes wrote in his
journal:
I think I must write a book ... I shall write for a purpose, a high holy purpose, and this will inspire me to greater effort. The object of my writing~ would be not so much the elevation of the colored people as the elevation of the whites--for I con sonider the unjust spirit of caste which is so insidious as to pervade a whole nation, and so powerful as to subject a whole race and all con nected with it to scorn and social ostracism--I consider this a barrier to the moral progress of the American people .... 1 ,,
During the time between 1883 and more than ten years after the Armistice of World War I, Charles Waddell
Chestnut secured his place in American literature as the most important author of black African descent. His con-
tributions to American letters include three novels, a
short biography of Frederick Douglas, a handful of poems, essays, lectures, private journals and correspondence, and a body of short fiction. The critic Benjamin Brawley has
said that ''Chestnutt's novels are not quite as well done as his short stories and occasionally seem forced or unreal ... " and that they are "too full of propaganda to be ultimately 2 satisfying." But, it is in his short works that he excels, 3 meticulously executing the "wild indigenous poetry" for which he is best remembered.
1 2
Chesnutt, the writer, was a product of his milieu; his work reflects the literary trends of his era. He serves as a bridge in that interim between the genteel tradition and the growing concern with realism; he incor porates local color in his short stories. But Chesnutt's local color is unique in that his settings are by.their nature imbued with the most meaningful conflicts and social issues of his time. And, like many popular writers of his time, Chesnutt accon®odates the late nineteenth century fashion of sentimentality.
Though his novels are serious social commentaries,
Chesnutt's short stories often. demonstrate his capability as a satirist. This artistry was surely as welcome- after the turmoil of the Civil War and Reconstruction as it is today.
Charles Chesnutt's personal life, like that of many accomplished artists, went through periods of great flux.
As his circumstances changed, his authorial stance also changed. Though his stories cannot be accurately be ascribed to particular dates in his life, his contribution to American literature can be effectively examined by dividing his life into three general periods. From this it can be clearly discerned that Chesnutt's most artistic short works are those which are divorced from his didactic mission. When he permitted himself the freedom of his striking wit, his masterful irony, and his whimsical satire, 3
then he transcended the limits of didacticism. It is
Chesnutt's capacity for conveying in words the absurdities of human behavior which places him far ahead of other short story writers of his time. In this aesthetic achievement, he exceeds his own contribution to our social history as t.he groundbreaker of the "color line," for he was the first writer to do away with the "Samba" stereotype of the black and to deal with the real social issues of our racially amalgamating society. Biographical Information - A Context
The context into which Charles W. Chesnutt was born is an integral factor in his development as an American author. His posture as a writer develops from motivational forces within him as well as from external pressures inherent in his time. In Cleveland, Ohio, on June 20,
1858, he was born, the first of seven children of free black parents. Chesnutt once stated with some pride that his ancestry was "in the legal line of descent ... always free in both sides as far as my knowledge goes."4 His one sixteenth inheritance of black African blood enabled him to
"pass." Instead, he chose to define his ethnicity as black.
Interestingly, though several of his biographers discuss his ethnicity, none clearly determines which of Chesnutt's ancestors was the free black who was responsible for that heritage. It is likely that there are no accurate records of family history for Charles Chesnutt.
It was in 1866, the period of Reconstruction after the Civil War, that Chesnutt's family moved from Ohio to
Fayetteville, North Carolina, in order to take over the management of his ailing grandfather's general store. Here
Charles began his education at one of the new public schools which had been established for the education of
Negroes under the Freedman's Bureau. At the Howard School,
4 5
young Charles came under the guiding interest of the
school's principal, Robert Harris. In addition to
attending school, Charles worked for his father in their
general store, looked after his younger siblings during his
mother's lengthy illness, and the proprietor of the local
bookstore gave Charles free run of the shop. In the
absence of a public library, this was Charles' only access
to literature, and he spent all of his free hours there.
An incident took place at this time in Chesnutt's
life which could not help but influ~nce his developing mind.
One day when nine year-old Charles was minding his father's
store, he heard a commotion outside and ran out to the crowd
in time to witness the cold-blooded shooting of a black man
by a white. The murderer was subsequently convicted of
homicide; justice was accomplished. But the impact of
Charles' first introduction to violent racial conflict was
both forceful and lasting.
Charles' mother died when he was fourteen years old.
Soon after, his father insisted that Charles leave school in order to supplement the family income. Robert Harris, principal of Charles' school, was so distressed upon hearing
this news that he dismissed his class in order to go and
speak immediately with Charles' father. Through Harris'
efforts, Charles was appointed pupil-teacher at the Howard
School, whereby he could continue his education part-time
and earn a modest salary as well. It was also at this time 6
that Charles' first story was published in a small, black-
owned newspaper.
As the family's need for money increased, Charles
was invited to move to Charlotte, North Carolina, to teach
under the direction of Harris' brother. Here he was able
to make strides in his own education, studying algebra,
Latin, music, American and English history and literature.
At the request of Harris, he was returned to Howard School
to serve as assistant principal when he was only seventeen years old.
The forces of prejudice had already been at work on him. In his journal entry on October 16, 1878, he acknow-
ledged some of the difficulty he faced as a man who was neither fully black nor white:
I love music. I live in a town where there is some musical culture; I have studied and practised till I can understand and appreciate good music, but I never hear what little there is to be heard. I have studied German, and have no one to converse with, but a few Jewish merchants who can talk nothing but business. As to procuring instruction in Latin, French, German, or music, that is entirely out of the question. First class teachers would not teach a 'nigger,' and I would have no other sort.S
In itself, prejudice is an obstacle which few people can surmount. As an intellectual, set apart from the majority of his social contacts simply because of his
interests, Chesnutt experienced another sense of isolation in his unfulfilled need for intimacy. In his journal he states: I hear colored men speak of their 'white friends.' I have no white friends. I could not degrade the sacred name of 'friendship' by associating it with any man who feels himself too good to sit at a table with me, or to sleep at the same hotel ... I hope yet to have a friend. If not in this world, then in some distant eon, when men are emancipated from the grossness of the flesh, and mind can seek out mind; then shall I find some kindred spirit, who will sympathize with all that is purest and best in mine, and we will cement a friendship that shall endure throughout the ages.6
It is interesting that the preceding journal entry was made when Chesnutt had been married for four years.
His wife, Susan Perry, who was a school teacher and the daughter of a well-respected black barber shop proprietor, was to become the mother of his four children and the center of close and happy home life. For all this, he always felt the sting of prejudice and its resulting isola- tion. He also knew the weight of responsibility, for he had nurtured and provided financially for his siblings from his fourteenth year. It was his family's economic needs which led him to educate himself in the new field of legal stenography, and which ultimately led him to the successful completion of the Ohio bar examination in 1887.
Chesnutt was not only inwardly driven to educate himself and to provide for his loved ones, he was at the
same time being manipulated by forces outside himself. A most powerful example of the oppressive stress from without
is found in an incident which Chesnutt related in his
journal. His black friend, Robert Hill, had described a 8
conversation which had passed with a white man, wherein they had discussed Chesnutt. The white man, McLaughlin, ended the conversation with a declaration which summarizes the whole of Chesnutt's impasse in the South:
'Well, he's a nigger; and with me a nigger is a nigger, and nothing in the world can make him anything else but a nigger. •7
This sentiment was pervasive in the South, for the white population had been in. the process of re-enslaving the black from only a year after Appomattox. The "Black
Codes" spread state by state across the South. Mississippi lead the way. Its Black Code of 1865 stated that:
All freedmen, free negroes and mulattoes in this State, over the age of eighteen years ... with no lawful employment or business, or found unlawfully assembling themselves together ... and all white persons so assembling themselves with freedmen, free negroes, or mulattoes ... shall be fined .... 8
In addition to laws about vagrancy, blacks were prohibited from voting, from testifying in court against whites, and from marrying outside their race. Sporadic groups like the Jayhawkers and the Regulars eventually gave way to highly organized groups like the Ku Klux Klan. It was as if "that war had been fought and won to kill a cancer, and that cancer was now as virulent as ever."9
The South was clearly not the place for Charles
Chesnutt to stay, not the place in which to raise his children. In 1883, he left Fayetteville in search of a new life, of new opportunities. He left his pregnant wife and 9
two small children with his father and set out for New York.
This was not his first venture from home, for he had left
Susan one summer before to tour Washington ,D.C. and New York.
But this v.;as to be an extended separation in order that
Charles secure employment and eventually locate housing for
his growing family.
With his stenographic skills, he immediately found
work as a reporter for Dow & Jones, a bulletin which would
some years later become The Wall Street Journal. In addi
tion, Chesnutt supplied a column of "Wall Street News and
Gossip" for the New York Mail & Express.
Life in New York offered Chesnutt the intellectual
and cultural stimulation he had hoped ~or, yet there were
problems. Although he was earning more than he had before,
life in the city was expensive. And, he found no place
suitable as home for his wife and children. Still, life in
the South was rto longer a tolerable alternative to him. He
thought again of the city of his birth, Cleveland, Ohio.
After six months of successful stenographic and journalis
tic work in New York, he gave notice to his employers and
left for Cleveland, sending for Susan and the children when
he arrived. For the remainder of his life, until 1932,
Chesnutt chose to live in Cleveland. New York - A Period of Apprenticeship
Though his stay in New York was brief, several of Chesnutt's earlier short stories reflect the influence of this period as a journalist and legal stenographer. These stories, incidents, and anecdotes are generally in a light, satirical vein. Some of these, unlike his other "color line" stories which may have been written during the same years, are set in an urban, professional business setting.
Of these, some are directed toward racial issues; others are non-ethnically aligned. These early stories were written at a time when Chesnutt was attempting to establish himself as a writer on the national magazine scene. One of the first of these is "A Busy Day in a Lawyer's Office," which was initially published in Tid-Bits, January 15, 1887.
A social satire on contemporary urban life, it is sur- prisingly like modern lifestyles, especially the scene in which a client requests a dissolution of marriage: 'Ah! Good morning, madam,-, said the lawyer, with a smile of recognition, placing a chair for the client. 'How are you getting along with your last husband, Mrs.---, I forget your present name?' 'Mrs. Rogg. Oh, we've quarreled already, and I want a divorce.'
'Let me see,' said the attorney, reflectively, 'This is the---' 'The fifth,' replied the young woman. You pro mised to make a reduction of ten percent each time. •10
10 11
The short anecdote continues with the lawyer and other character such as "Judge Flip," "Mr. DeBullion," and
"Dr. Vaseline" who rubs his "oily hands together."11 It is not surprising,in view of the fast-witted dialogue and choice of character description,that Chesnutt professed a particular fondness for the works of Charles Dickens.
Another of these short anecdotes set in the busi- ness world is "An Eloquent Appeal." In this story, a businessman is sitting at his desk one morning when a "tall, tolerably well-dressed and somewhat distinguished looking colored man" comes into the office and addresses the man
"in excellent English." The black man, who eventually talks the businessman into buying a bottle of "Magic Corn
Cure," expresses the sentiment that was the fundamental difference of opinion between Charles Waddell Chesnutt and
Booker T. Washington:
The catalogue of our wrongs is a long and bloody one. But I notice now a growing sentiment among the white people of this country--a feeling that, in merely giving the Negro back the liberty they had forcibly taken from him, they have not done their whole duty toward him, but that they · owe him reparation for the wrongs he has suffered.l2 - Chesnutt consciously fought to undermine the
"Sambo" stereotype of the Black which was so prevalent in his time, and one of his favored techniques was diction. As can be seen in the above example, the black man has command of the language, and the black man is successful in his endeavor. Though later Chesnutt will add other 12
dimensions to his black characters in order to disassemble the stereotype, this formal discursive language is present even in his earliest short works.
The best of these social satires was not published until the April 24, 1889 issue of Puck; it is "The Origin of the Hatchet Story." The narrator of this story is an archeologist who has grown up hating "the very name of
Washington," because as a. child, the example of George
Washington's truthful nature had been associated with the narrator's less-than-honest behavior "frequently in a close 13 and painful connection." The narrator tells the tale of having found in Egypt, purely by chance, a papyrus on which a legend was found. This ancient legend of Ramses III and his little son Ramses IV, or "Little Rammy," is remarkably similar to the early American story told by Mason L. Weems about George Washington and the cherry tree. While "trying the temp.er of his new blade," the scimitar his father had given him, Rammy first slices off the ear of a "Nubian eunuch," then toddles off to his mother's apartments, where he "deftly sliced off the headdress of one of the ladies in waiting," removing a portion of scalp as well:
•.. proceeding to the palace kitchen, he skillfully amputated the little finger of one of the cooks, whose hand happened to be in a position convenient for the experiment.
Passing thence out into the courtyard, he came up, unperceived, behind a servant who was kneeling before a wooden bench, polishing the royal crown with a soft brick. His head was bent forward, exposing the back of his neck in such a manner that 13
Rarnmy could not resist the temptation, and playfully raising his puny right arm, he severed the head from the servant's body with one stroke--such was the keenness of his blade. What was his embarrassment, however, to discover, when the head rolled over at his feet, that he had slain his father's favorite Hebrew slave, Abednego.l4
When confronted by his father, Rammy, of course, explains that he cannot tell a lie, just as the l~gendary
George Washington did. From this point on, the archeolo- gist narrator is free from the hateful association of his childhood. And Chesnutt has made an amusing point about the thoughtless veneration of popular heroes.
"A Roman Antique" is an early short piece of
Charles Chesnutt's which is al~o lightly satirical. In addition, the influence of his travels-to New York .and
Washington, D.C. is visible. In Washington Square, a man seats himself on a park bench, and soon begins to converse with an old black man who has hobbled over and stopped to rest. The old man begins to weave a tale about his life as the favorite body servant of Julius Caesar, describing in dialect the time when:
' ..• de las' wah eid Gual broke out. I kin 'member de battle ob Alesia des ez well ez ef it wuz yisti day. De arrers wuz flyin' thoo de aiah thick ez flies 'roun' er merlasses jug, de jav'lins wuz w'izzin', en I wuz lookin' on fum de rare, w'en I seed a archer aim a arrer at Mars Julius .... •lS The narrator has been so captivated by the old man's tale that, when the old black asks for a quarter to replace the one Julius Caesar had given him, he absent- mindedly hands the oldster a twenty-dollar gold piece. 14
Only \vhen he has "started from my reverie" does he realize that the previously hobbling black man has wasted no time disappearing behind "a clump of shrubbery in the direction of Sixth Avenue."l6
The urban setting of "A Roman Antique" is the principal difference which sets it apart from another group of stories which was later to become Chesnutt's first published book, The Conjure Woman. Like the situation in
"A Roman Antique," the narrator of these stories is a well spoken, affluent businessman. Furthermore, the black character is a wily old man who speaks adroitly in non standard English dialect. The first of these short stories,
"The Goophered Grapevine," was p·ublished in The Atlantic
Monthly of August, 1887, and was the first of Chesnutt's to gain national critical recognition. A little more than a decade later this story would be published as the first of seven short stories collected in The Conjure Woman, and Chesnutt would feel his period of literary apprentice ship was ended. Mature Short Fiction The Conjure Woman and The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line
While Charles Chesnutt's manuscript of short stories for The Conjure Woman was in the hands of the printer, a race riot was in progress in Wilmington, North
Carolina, during the November elections of 1898. Chesnutt had written his "conjure" stories with an attitude of hope and pride in the state where he had spent his childhood.
He had believed North Carolina to be an exceptionally fair and liberal state, one of promise for harmonious race rela- tions. The state of mind in which The Conjure Woman stories were written would never completely return to
Chesnutt. The injured tone of his thinking is exemplified in a letter he wrote to Walter Hines Page of The Atlantic
Monthly on November 10, 1898: I am deeply concerned and very much depressed at the condition of affairs in North Carolina during the recent campaign. I have been for a long time praising the state for its superior fairness and liberality in the treatment of race questions, but I find myself obliged to revise some of my judgements. There is absolutely no excuse for the state of things there, for the State has a very large white majority. It is an outbreak of pure prejudice, which makes me feel personally humiliated, and ashamed for the country and the state. The United States Government is apparently powerless, and the recent occurrences in Illinois in connection with the miner's strike seem to emphasize its weakness.l7
15 16
It is for this reason that Chesnutt's short fie-
tion in this early mature period is significant. While his
later novels are bitterly preachy, his first two books of
short stories are at least hopeful in their didactic mission.
To introduce The Conjure Woman tales, the. best description is Chesnutt's own:
My first book, The Conjure Woman, was published by the Houghton Mifflin Company in 1899. It was not, strictly speaking, a novel, though it has been so called, but a collection of short stories in Negro dialect, put in the mouth of an old Negro gardener, and related by him in each instance to the same audience, which consisted of the northern lady and gentleman who employed him. They are unique and simple stories., dealing with alleged incidents of chattel slavery, as the old man had known it and as I had heard of it; and centering around the professional activities of old Aunt Peggy, the plantation conjure woman, and others of that ilk.l8
t The scene and occasion of each of the stories are established in a frame which incorporates three characters.
John, a practical businessman who has recently become a grape grower on an old estate in the Cape Fear region of
North Carolina, is the narrator and point of view
character within each frame. Annie, his ailing wife for whom the move from Ohio to a warmer Southern climate has been made, is a character sympathetic and responsive to the tales of superstition and "conjuration" told by Uncle
Julius. Uncle Julius, at the request of John and Annie, becomes the narrator of the tale proper in dialect. Old
Uncle Julius is initially presented in "The Goophered 17
Grapevine" by the narrator, John:
•.. I had observed that he was a tall man, and, though slightly bowed by the weight of years, apparently quite vigorous. He was not entirely black, and this fact, together with the quality of his hair, which was about six inches long and very bushy, except on the top of his head, where he was quite bald, suggested a slight strain of other negro blood. There was a shrewdness in his eyes, too, which was not altogether African, and which, as we afterwards learned from experience, wasindicative of a corresponding shrewdness in his character.l9
About the tales themselves, Chesnutt acknowledged a
parallel with Harris' Uncle Remus stories. However, a care-
ful study verifies that the character Uncle Julius and the
moral lessons toward which his tales are aimed are of a more
complex nature than those of Harris' Uncle Remus. Chesnutt
draws the distinction:
•••. but the tales are entirely different. They are sometimes referred to as folk tales, but while they employ much of the universal machinery of wonder stories, especially the metamorphosis, with one ex ception, that of the first story, "The Goophered Grapevine," of which the norm was a folk tale, the stories are the fruit of my own imagination, in which respect they differ from the Uncle Remus stories which are avowedly folk tales.20
Chesnutt uses and invents folk material based on a
system of belief in magic of African origin, and on the
legends and superstitutions which were brought to the North
Carolina sandhill region by the earliest Scottish settlers.
The word "goopher," which is also spelled "goofer," is
derived from an African term gufa, a synonym for "conjure," which means to put a spell on by means of an incantation, by
placing specially treated objects in the vicinity of the 18
person for whom the spell is intended, or by giving the
intended victim specially treated food or drink. Thus, the
conjure woman creates her spells by "working her roots,"
that is, by creating mixtures of roots. herbs, soil
samples, and other less appetizing flora and fauna.
In this setting of the ante-bellum South, it is
through Aunt Peggy and her conjurations that the slaves
gain any amount of control over their destinies. Interest-
ingly, even the slaves such as Tenie in "Po' Sandy," who
have converted to evangelical Christianity, will revert to
conjuration in times of stress. In this instance, Sandy is
the favorite slave of the groW? children of his master.
They trade his services so frequently that he rarely is
• I home with his new woman, Tenie. In the desperation of love,
Tenie tells Sandy:
'I ain' goophered nobody, ner done no conjuh wuk, fer fifteen year er mo'; en w'en I got religion I made· up my mine I would n' wuk no mo' goopher. But dey is some things I doan b'lieve it's no sin fer ter do; en ef you doan wanter be sent roun' fum pillar ter pos', en ef you doan wanter go down ter Robeson, I kin fix things so you won't haf ter.' (CW, pp. 45-46)
Tenie's retreat to magic is a logical and crucial turn in
the plot of the tale. The supernatural forces in her
universe offer more control over the oppressive elements to
which she is subjected; there is no real contest between
religion and magic.
The adherence to the tradition of conjuring has an
additional advantage for the slaves who partake of it. 19
With magic, the black slave had an intimacy with the forces of nature, a key to the "ultimate mysteries of existence _,(2l
With the availability of these supernatural powers, the slave would be able to solve immediate personal problems, and would also be able to commune with forces beyond human understanding in this world.
Chesnutt's tales delineate distinctly the black's need for powers beyond the Christian prescription of suffering and humble acceptance. Unlike other authors of his time who sentimentalized the life of the black slave as a world of banjo-strumming, singing, happy child-like darkies, Chesnutt writes with graphic {not smiling) realism. He describes the separation of enslaved parents from their children, the parting of lovers who are sold away from one another, and lashings administered by an overseer who "wa'nt no bettah 'n a nigger" {CW, p. 175).
And, though the master is portrayed as compassionate as often as he is demonic, his repressive power is ever present. Consequently, the slave is inescapably aware of the fact that his health, comfortJ his interpersonal rela- tionships, his very life, are subject to the capricious exercise of his master's power.
One example of a realistic description of power is
Julius' telling of "Hot-Foot Hannibal." Hannibal is given an opportunity to perform as a house-servant, a coveted position. Julius recounts the master's promise to 20
Hannibal:
En if you era good nigger en min's you' bizness, I'll gib you Chloe for a wife nex' spring. You other nigger, you ~eff, you kin go back ter de quaters. We ain' gwine ter need you. (CW, p. 205)
Chloe and Jeff have been enamoured of each other for some time, but this is of no consequence to the master. Chloe is merely a prize for Hannibal's best be- havior.
Similarly, the master in "Sis' Becky's Pickaninny" exercises the same authority. He trades Becky, his best young female slave, for a race horse. With pangs of guilt about her infant son, he offers to add the baby to the deal at no cost. The horse trader replies:
I don' raise niggers; I raises hosses, en I doan wanter be both'rin' wid no nigger babies. Nemmine de baby. I'll keep dat 'oman so busy she'll fergit de baby; fer niggers is made to wuk, en dey ain' got no time fer sich foolis'ness ez babies. (CW, p. 142)
The above examples of Uncle Julius' narration are not only illustrations of Chesnutt's realistic view, they are also cases in point of his special complex use of diction. Over the years, Chesnutt's dialect has received varying criticism. In 1939, Benjamin Brawley referred to it simply as "not always above question."22 More recently,
Chesnutt's dialect has been examined in C. W. Foster's dissertation entitled "The Representation of Negro Dialect in Charles W. Chesnutt's The Conjure Woman." His claim is that Chesnutt ''devised combinations which let the word 21
remain recognizable and thereby elicit a phonemic response
from the reader ... such a combination of pronTh~ciations would characterize the speech of an individual in a lower
socioeconomic class in the Fayetteville, North Carolina 23 area." In other words, Foster accepts the authenticity of the dialect, to the extent that he attaches it speci-
fically to the Cape Fear region.
The most acceptable ·evaluation of Chesnutt's dia- lect is perhaps his own summation in a letter to Walter H.
Page:
Speaking of dialect, it is almost a despairing task to write it. What to do with the troublesome r, and the obvious inconsistency of leaving it out where it would.be in good English and putting it in where correct speech would leave it out, how to express such words as "here" and "hear" and "year" and "other" and "another," "either" and "neither, .. and so on, is a 11 'stractin'" task.24
The dialect is 'stractin' reading, but the charac- ters, especially Uncle Julius, grow out of this distinctive use of language.
The character of Uncle Julius is more complex than that of other folk tale narrators of the period, such as
Harris' Uncle Remus. Julius always has a vested interest in the effect that his moral tale will have on his audience.
In the first of the stories, Julius tells the tale of a spell which exists on the grapevines of the estate which
John and his wife intend to purchase. Aunt Peggy's spell has worked for years, Julius assures them; anyone who eats those grapes will die within one year. Despite Julius' 22
warnings, John does buy the property.- He reveals in his narrative portion of the frame that Julius had been living off the proceeds of the grapes for some years, so that the tale would have done well by Julius if it had discouraged
John's investment. It would seem a contest of wits, and that John is the winner of the first round. However, John is aware of Julius' expertise in the vineyard, and hires Julius to be his coachman. Thus, Julius has gained from the telling of the tale. As Chesnutt described the situation:
In every instance Julius had an axe to grind, for himself or his church, or some merr~er of his family, or a white friend. The introductions to the stories, which were written in the best English I could command, developed the characters of Julius' employers and his own, and the wind-up of each story reveals the old man's ulterior 25 purpose, which, as a general thing, is accomplished.
One of the most revealing analyses of Uncle Julius is a comment made jointly by Richard A. Long and Eugenia w. Collier: Uncle Julius is not the garrulous old darky weaving romantic tales of the good old days of slavery. Rather, he is a wily old man, wise in the necessities of survival, who by appearing ingenuous and childlike actually manipulates his white folks into doing things advantageous to himself~6
And Julius does manipulate both John and Annie. In
"Po' Sandy" he manages to preserve an old school house for the use of his church, despite the fact that John had intended to use the lumber of the old structure for a new kitchen. Julius tells the tale of "Hot-Foot Hannibal" in 23
in order to patch up a quarrel between John's niece and her
fiance, and the tale of "Mars Jeems's Nightmare" to save
his own nephew's job. Julius' affection and concern for
Annie lead him to tell of "Sis' Becky's Pickaninny." In
this way, he convinces her of the healing powers of his
rabbit's foot, and helps her to recover from her illness.
Julius may indeed by a clever opportunist, but he is also
a compassionate human being.
Chesnutt adds further dimension to Uncle Julius by the juxtaposition of his dialect with the smooth, polished
diction of John. This technique enables Chesnutt to con-
struct a tale within a tale, apd each character's response
to the tale proper can be measured by this method of
·~ contrasting diction. In addition, it lends itself to the
expression of Chesnutt's humor. An illustration is "Sis'
Becky's Pickaninny,n where Julius describes the specifica-
tions of a properly conjured rabbit's foot:
'Dat's w'at I tells dese niggers roun' heah,' said Julius. 'De fo'-foot ain' got no power. I~ has ter be de hin' foot, suh, ---de lef' hin'-foot er a grabe-ya'd rabbit, killt by a cross-eyed nigger on a da'k night in de full er de moon.'
'They must be very rare and valuable,' I said.
'De is kinder ska'ce, suh .... (CW, p. 135)
This use of contrasting diction is only one such
technique of Chesnutt's, for The Conjure Woman stories are
rich with multi-textured contrasts. Both within the frames
and the tales proper there exist contrasts between male and 24
female attitudes and value systems. It is Annie, the
sensitive and generous woman, who grasps each of Julius'
inferred moral messages, while John, the rational,
scientifically sophisticated narrator, is too analytical
to be taken in. In the realm of conjuration, the dominant
force is masculine. Aunt Peggy admits about Old Jube, the
conjure man, that "dat cunjuh man is mo' d'n twice't ez ole ez I is, en he kin make a monst'us powe'ful goopher 11 (CW,
p. 173). Her powers are no match, but she can attempt to
circumvent his spell with a special charm hidden in the woods, which will remain in effect as long as Old Jube doesn't find it.
Male-female dualities are only some of the polar
ized forces operating in Chesnutt's fiction. Life in the
North is held in contrast to life in the South. The brisk
Northern pace is balanced against the more leisurely southern attitude toward time. Cultural value systems are often at odds, for what seems fair and natural to the white plantation owner may not be in keeping with the black's moral sense at all. Even "castes," as Chesnutt chose to describe race or color, are held in contrast. Primus' wife
Sally in "The Conjurer's Revenge" is a 'monst'us good looking yaller gal" (CW, p. 116). "Sis' Becky's Pick aninny" is "de cutes', blackes', shiny-eyedes' little nigger you eber laid eyes on" (CW, p. 138). The issue of caste is one aspect of the theme of 25
The Conjure Woman stories. Under each tale lies a powerful message, a reminder of the destructive nature of involuntary
servitude on all of humanity. Beneath all the humor of
Aunt Peggy's goophers gone awry, and of Uncle Julius' far-
fetched yarns which generally lead to his advantage, there
lies a pervasive horror. "Mars Jeems's Nightmare" perhaps best exemplifies this. In the tale proper, a cruel, vindictive master is goophered into a black slave. In this
form, he is beaten for "laziness en impidence" (CW, p. 83) •
The new slave, who is really the plantation owner, is out- raged and arrogant, unable to believe that he could be treated so cruelly. Our contemporary poet, Nikki Giovanni, describes how in this tale Uncle Julius "shows what would happen if the white man had to live in the black man's 27 shoes." In the voice of the narrator, John, Chesnutt condenses his thematic premise on two occasions. In "Mars
Jeems's ~ightmare" John appraises Uncle Julius:
He had been accustomed, until long after middle life, to look upon himself as the property of another. When this relation was no longer possi ble, owing to the war, and to his master's death and the dispersion of the family, he had been unable to break off entirely the mental habits of a lifetime, but had attached himself to the old plantation, of which he seemed to consider himself an appurtenance. (CW, p. 65)
Another of John's estimations of Julius is seen in "Dave's
Neckliss," a conjure story which was deleted from the collection in The Conjure Woman: 26
It was only now and then that we were able to study, through the medium of his recollection, the simple but intensely human inner life of slavery ... his had not been the lot of the petted house-servant, but that of a toiling field-hand. While he mentioned with a warm appreciation the acts of kindness which those in authority had shown to him and his people, he would speak of a cruel deed, not with the indig nation of one accustomed to quick feeling and spontaneous expression, but with a furtive disappro val which suggested to us a doubt in his own ~ind as to whether he had a right to think or to feel, and presented to us the curious psychological spec tacle of a mind enslaved long after the shackles is had been struck off from the limbs of its possessor.
Uncle Julius is the vehicle for the conveyance of
Chesnutt's theme, and as such is the most thoroughly deve-
loped character in all his short works. In his careful,
tight construction of the story frame, and with his con
trasting duality of ignorant, emotive Julius with educated,
. ' sophisticated John, Chesnutt inhibits the growth of his greatest potential character. He leaves Julius a "curious
psychological spectacle."
Nevertheless, it was toward this end, to destroy
the vestiges of the slave mentality, that Chesnutt aspired
in The Conjure Woman. It was not enough that the black was
freed. Chesnutt hoped that his self-image would also be
freed, thus freeing his intellect. Though his intent was
obviously aimed at liberating black and white minds from
the mental attitude of slavery, his message applies today to all forms of mental conditioning which limit the growth
of an individual or a people. It must be remembered today that the first of these 27
conjure stories, "The Goophered Grapevine," broke the
"color line" in American fiction and is a significant tran-
sition from the stereotypic depiction of the black in
literature to a more realistic presentation. Furthermore,
the collection of stories as a whole "transformed the folk
tale into a genre capable of realistically merging the
bestiality of slavery with the multiform of humanity who
survived it." 29
From this viewpoint, The Conjure Woman is different
from much of Chesnutt's other writing, for the characters
in the conjure tales are black slaves who exist in a well-
defined black social structure. While The Conjure Woman was in the printing, the Atlantic published a short story
of Chesnutt's called "The Wife of His Youth," which dealt with another of his favorite social issues, the assimila-
tion problems of the "mulatto." Chesnutt discussed his
change in subject matter:
As a matter of fact, substantially all of my writings, with the exception of The Conjure Woman, have dealt with the problems of people of mixed blood, which, while in the main the same as those of the true Negro, are in some instances a.nd in some respects much more complex and difficult of treatment, in fiction as in life.30
This story received immediate favorable critical
response, and was published within the same year along with other stories on a similar theme in Charles Chesnutt's next
book, The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color
Line. These stories explore the issue of racial prejudice 28
within a new social setting in the fictional town of
Groveland, which is modeled after Cleveland Ohio. The
shift in context enables Chesnutt to emphasize a different
view of the tension between blacks and whites as:
Swamps and groves give way to fine houses, \vitch craft to midnight suppers, superstitious, unedu cated field-hands and house-servants to light~skinned women in brocades and gentlemen who have acquired their fortunes in professions and trades; efforts to outwit the master give way to efforts to rise in society .... 31
Several of the stories in The Wife of His Youth
center around the Groveland "Blue Veins." This unique
society is comprised of Afro-Americans of mixed heritage.
To belong to this special social order, one must be of light
enough complexion so that the veins at·the wrist appear
.. blue beneath the surface of the skin. Far from "conjura-
tion," superstitions and slavery, Chesnutt's literary
efforts turn from the folk-myth toward a writing style
which is ironic and satiric. And, his style shows the
marked influence of the fash1on of sentimentality which was
so popular at the turn of this century.
As Chesnutt studies the world between black and
white in The Wife of His Youth, he often writes with a
bitter brand of irony. One such story is "The Sheriff's
Children." Sheriff Campbell is holding a mulatto murder
suspect in his jail, a suspect whom the townsmen would like
to lynch. In the course of an attempted escape, the suspect
confronts the sheriff with his true identity. The young 29
mulatto is the sheriff's son, one whom the sheriff sold intD
slavery along with his mother. The story is riddled with a
parade of improbabilities and painfully stilted dialogue,
yet manages an effective, if detached, ending:
He hastily unlocked the door and, entering the cell, bent over the prostrate form. There was no sound of breathing; he turned the body over. ·.. The prisoner had torn the bandage from his wound and bled to death during the night. He had evidently been dead several hours.32
The story is narrated in this tone of detachment,
in keeping with the character of the sheriff, who reveals
no dimension of human emotion. The son, however, is
"manly, vengeful, and proud ... and moves violently toward
tragedy. " 33 In addition to the ironic twist of the father
having to protect his son from lynching, the same son
the father once sold for money, there is in the plot a
thread of dramatic irony. The sheriff's legitimate
daughter 1 with whom he lives, is forced at one point in the story to shoot her half-brother. Neither child ever learns
of his relationship with the other, nor do the townspeople.
Only the sheriff is aware of the mulatto's identity, and of
this son's innocence of the crime.
Chesnutt's irony is even more effective in his
lighter satiric mode. One of the "Blue Vein" stories which
- considers the same plight of the racially mixed individual
is "A Matter of Principle." An affluent "Blue Vein" seeks
to marry his daughter to an equally light-skinned congress-
man. Through a convenient plot device of two black 30
congressmen with the same name, the father in question mis takes the identity of the suitor for that of a man who is
"palpably, aggressively black .... " (WY, p. 117). To his daughter's frustration and humiliation, he arranges a quarantine order for their horne so that his daughter will not be courted by a man "apparently without a single drop of redeeming white blood" (WY, p. 117). He learns of the mistaken identity after a rival family with a marriageable daughter has won the congressman for themselves, and it is too late to "treat him white" (WY, p. 110).
The machinations of the Blue Veins are merely
Chesnutt's microcosmic representation of the whole of society, a society which practices caste discrimination with as much forethought and rationali·ty as the character of Mr. Clayton, the father in the aforementioned story.
Within Charles Chesnutt, the author, there is obvious anger and bitterness, which is so clearly seen in "The
Sheriff's Children"; there is also a good-humored acceptance of the irrationality of humanity as a whole, of the nonsensical behavioral motivations which acknowledge no color line.
Probably the finest use of ironic treatment in
The Wife of His Youth is "The Passing of Grandison." In this superb reversal of the stereotype of the loyal, con tented slave, Chesnutt employs his best humor and plotting.
The opening paragraph illustrates admirably this technical 31
skill:
When it is said that it was done to please a woman, there ought perhaps to be enough said to explain anything; for what a man will not do to please a woman is yet to be discovered. Never theless, it might be well to state a few prelim inary facts to make it clear why young Dick Owens tried to run one of his father's negro men off to Canada. (WY, p. 16 8)
The nature of the action to follow satisfies the reader's awakened curios~ty. In the course of the action, characters are developed such as Charity, who exclaims to her suitor Dick Owens, "I don't care what you do, so you do something. Really, come to think of it, why should I care whether you do anything or not?" (WY, p. 172). As real life often has it, this firm foundation in love and mutual understanding does eventually lead to the marriage of Dick and Charity.
Dick's father, a wealthy plantation owner, has built his own fortune and is grooming his indifferent son to inherit his wealth. Chesnutt describes a morning meal during which Colonel Owens, Dick's father, "unconsciously manifested, in his intercourse with his son, some of the poor man's deference toward the wealthy and well-born"
(WY , p • 1 7 5 ) .
The slave in question, Grandison, is taken across the border into Canada by Dick. Instead of fleeing for freedom, he loyally identifies with his master and worries about "dem dadblasted abolitioners roun' heah" (WY, p. 191). 32
The frightened slave is abandoned in Canada. After
Grandison's glorious v~luntary return to the plantation,
the master rewards him by gathering all his kin into the
big house so that they can serve the master's family, free
from concern for each other. At the conclusion of the
story, Grandison and his loved ones flee into Canada
together:
On the stern of a small steamboat which was receding rapidly from the wharf, with her nose pointing to ward Canada ... the look they cast backward was not one of longing for the flesh-pots of Egypt. (WY, pp. 201-02) It was at this point that the reader is aware of
Grqndison's part in the scheme. to escape. He has used
Dick's childish prank to his own best advantage, feigning
•{ to be loyal and stupid in order to arrange the escape of
his whole family.
Just as Chesnutt's satiric sense is his best tool
in the construction of his short stories, his lapses into
the popular sentimentality of the turn of the century serve
to break down the quality of his writing. In The Wife of
His Youth, Chesnutt is more often guilty of pernicious
sentimentality than in any of his works to that date. In
such stories as "The Bouquet," the trend which authors such
as Julia Moore, the "Sweet Singer of Michigan," indulged in
so fearlessly is also exercised by Chesnutt. "The Bouquet"
is the story of the death of a young woman, a teacher, and
of a little black girl who wishes to attend the funeral and 33
leave a small floral tribute. Because the child is black,
she is refused admission both to the funeral service and to
the cemetery. At the graveyard:
•.. Sophy stayed outside, and looked through the fence. Her poor bouquet had begun to droop by this time, and the yellow ribbon had lost some of its freshness. Sophy could see the rector standing by the grave, the mourners gathered round; she could faintly distinguish the solemn words with which ashes were committed to ashes, and dust to dust. She heard the hollow thud of earth falling on the coffin; and she leaned against the iron fence, sobbing softly ... She stood there irresolute, loathe to leave with her heart's desire unsatisfied, when, as her eyes sought again the teacher's last resting-place, she saw lying beside the new-made grave what looked like a small bundle of white wool. Sophy's eyes lighted up with a sudden glow. (WY I p. 289)
Needless to say, the late teacher's little dog
Prince wags his tail intelligently and carries the wilted
bouquet in his mouth to the grave. The child finally
leaves, feeling saddened and envious of the dog's ability
to sit inside the fence on the grave.
Related to this tendency toward sentimentality is
Chesnutt's occasional employment of some rather stilted
dialogue and generally pompous language use. The
"Sheriff's Children" contains numerous examples of this
tendency at work. The sheriff's daughter, having been warned that she might have to use a pistol if the lynch mob becomes unruly, "shuddered at this sanguinary
allusion, but made no further objection to her father's
departure" (WY, p. 71). Meanwhile, the sheriff is at the
jail contend~ng with the mob: 34
•what's the use of kicking, Sheriff?' argued one of the leaders of the mob. 'The nigger is sure to hang anyhow; he richly deserves it; and we've got to do something to teach niggers their places, or white people won't be able to live in the county.' (WY, pp. 75-76)
The confrontation with the backwoods mob and the attempted escape of the prisoner having ended, the sheriff's daughter runs into the jail with a paragraph of exposition in her mouth:
'I watched until they all went away,' she said. 'I heard the shot from the woods and I saw you shoot. Then when you did not come out I feared something had happened, that perhaps you had been wounded. I got out the other pistol and ran over here. When I found the door open, I knew something was wrong, and when I heard voices I crept upstairs, and reached the top just in time to hear him say he would kill you. Oh, it was a narrow escape!' (WY, p. 89)
It is interesting that this early mature period of
Chesnutt's life contains these experiments with sentiment- ality along with his pioneer tests of the color line.
Perhaps he hoped to introduce new thought, anti-stereotypic characterization and the assimilation issue, in a popular format. His sugar coating of the issues must have worked in its time, for his first book made the best seller list in Cleveland within a month of its release, and his publisher quickly offered to purchase another set of stories, these from The Wife of His Youth. Sentimentality was'not the only popular mode in
Chesnutt's time, for local color was also in fashion. In the same way that Sarah Orne Jewett used New Hampshirites, 35
Mary Noilees Murfree used Appalachian figures, and all the local color followers of William Dean Howells used specific situations from their own experience to draw general corollaries on the human condition, Chesnutt used the Cape
Fear region of North Carolina and its inhabitants to make his social comment. And, though social commentary was his avowed primary interest, many of the tales reach beyond this initial aim and become universal "human foible" stories. But the region, and the land itself, are crucial to development of Chesnutt's plots, especially in The
Conjure Woman and other of the Uncle Julius tales.
The land is of such significance to Chesnutt that it becomes one of his major images. Repeatedly in the conjure stories the soil is used for magic potions, and for growing special herbs. Not just any soil will do, for the particular river bank or sandhill is responsible for the charm. The people described by John, the narrator, take on the characteristics of the soil as they are likened to the dust or the sand or clay.
In "Lonesome Ben," the main character, a slave named Ben, has only the clay of the river bank and water for sustenance during the weeks that he hides from his cruel master. When his friend Primus sees the clay-fed slave, Primus doesn't recognize Ben, and calls him "de mos' 34 mis'able lookin' merlatter I eber seed." Ben has taken the soil into himself to the extent that it is a permanent 36
physical attribute. Chesnut.t writes of the exhaustion of the soil and the exhaustion of the slaves, using the image of the land to draw a sustained parallel between the waste of potential growth in agriculture and humanity.
The conjure stories are also rich with animal imagery, _and like the traditional folk-myth include a meta morphosis. "Sis' Becky's Pickaninny" becomes a bird so that he can fly to his mother, just as "Po' Sandy" becomes a tree in order to stay with his woman, Tenie. Unlike Joel
Chandler Harris' animal figures, who represent attempts of blacks to outwit whites, Chesnutt's characters experience a metamorphosis into animal or plant form in order to insure their emotional, intellectual, or physical survival.
Chesnutt's shift from the Carolina sandhills to the more urban setting of "Groveland" turned his literary methods from local color with indigenous images to the very innovative realism of the color line. The situations in
The Wife of His Youth could have happened in any American city with a population of racially-mixed individuals. The locale is inconsequential; of more importance is the rea listic depiction of human responses to the issue of assimi lation. In spite of Chesnutt's occasional melodramatics,
The Wife of His Youth exemplifies the growing trend in the late eighteen-nineties away from the genteel tradition and romanticism and toward a new realistic consciousness. Critical Responses
The critical response to Chesnutt's short stories
during his lifetime was varied, but generally favorable.
More than any other critical comment, Charles Chesnutt was
pleased with the honor paid him by William Dean Howells in
his critique on The Conjure Woman:
The stories of The Conjure Woman have a wild, indigenous poetry, the creation of sincere and original imagination, which is imparted with a tender humorousness and a very artistic reticence. As far as his race is concerned, or his sixteenth part of a race, it does not greatly matter whether Mr. Chesnutt invented their motives, or found them, as he feigns, among his distant cousins of the Southern cabins. In either case the wonder of their beauty is the same, and whatever is primitive and sylvan or campestral in the reader's heart is touched by the spells thrown on the simple black lives in these enchanting tales. Character, the most precious thing in fiction, is faithfully portrayed.35
As much as Howells appreciated the accomplishment
of The Conjure Woman, he did make note of the style
becoming at times "a little too ornate for beauty."
Furthermore, Howells criticized Chesnutt's diction for being too journalistic, his attitude of detachment as
seeming to be pompous, and his plots as being contrived.
Still, Howells was quick to forgive these weaknesses,
saying:
But it is right to add that these are the excep tional times, and that for far the greater part Mr.Chesnutt seems to know quite as well what he
37 38
wants to do in a given case as Maupassant, or Tourguenief, or Mr. James, or Miss Jewett, or Miss Wilkins, in other cases, and has done it with such an art of kindred quiet and force .... They are new and fresh and strong as life is and fable never is ••.• 36
At the same time that Howells was quick to acclaim
The Conjure Woman, Southern critics such as Nancy Banks had their own perception of the value of Chesnutt's work. In her critical analysis of The Wife of His Youth, she noted that the title story revealed "those secret depths of the dusky soul which no white writer might hope to approach through his own intuition." However, with regard to
Chesnutt's stories involving illegitimate children of mixed ethnicity, and stories which dep~ct casual liaisons outside of marriage, Banks said:
A graver fault than (the volume's) lack of literary quality is its careless approach to the all but un approachable ground of sentimental relations between the black race and the white race. Touching this and still more dangerous and darker race problems, Mr. Chesnutt shows a lamentable lack of tact of a kindred sort, and incomprehensible want of good taste and dignified reserve which characterizes his first beautiful story and the greater part of all his work.37
More is learned from this response about the critic's discomfort with the idea of miscegenation than about the literary merit of the author's works. Still, her reaction to Charles Chesnutt's subject matter was a clear indication of the value of his work as a pioneer in the untraveled territory of the line between the white world and the newly free black. 39
As for criticism of his satire, J. Saunders
Reddinq in 1939 spoke of Chesnutt's attitude in "A
Matter of Principle," calling it a story "based on the
tragic absurdity of colorphobia, the story is a comedy of 38 manners in the Moliere sense." The confused identities,
the compounded comedic misunderstandings do make the story
a comedy of manners. But it is much more than that. By
creating characters such as the Claytons, who are proud of
their light caste, and exposing their fear of other people
of a darker caste, Chesnutt makes humorous the irrational-
ity of prejudice based merely on skin tone. It is more
than a satiric stab at prejudice; it is an example of
Chesnutt's "delicate skill" which "only ... a love of truth 39 can give."
Chesnutt's technical skill as a satirist is indis-
putable. Many of the stories in The Wife of His Youth deal
a powerful, yet sensitive, blow to racial prejudice.
However, none of these stories has a character with more
than one dimension. It remains for Uncle Julius to be the
three-dimensional character of Ch~snutt's creation. Nikki
Giovanni discusses Uncle Julius' value in Chesnutt's cam- paign against discrimination: Uncle Julius is one of Black Literature's most exciting characters precisely because he is so definite about his aims. He intends to see his people come out on top ... And Chesnutt drops a few gems on us dispelling the romantic theory about slavery's charms.40 40
The early mature period of his life is one of literary growth and development. Chesnutt adds to his authorial skills and solidifies his goals and ideals. It is soon after this period of short fiction writing that he devoted some years to his three novels: The House Behind the Cedars, The Marrow of Tradition, and The Colonel's Dream. Without the satire and witty irony of The Wife of
His Youth, and without the character of an Uncle Julius to soften the tone of didacticism, his novels remain valuable primarily for their contribution to our social history.
Their unfavorable critical response slowed Chesnutt's writing to a near halt. However, in his maturity he con tinued to create a few short stories which contain less propaganda and even more refined satire than his early works. Late Mature Work
Of the stories contained in the two published collections of Chesnutt's early maturity, The Conjure
Woman and The l-vife of His Youth, only "The Passing of
Grandison" sustains the delightful irony which will char acterize the author's later short works. Some of tnese later works are as absorbed with the tension· between the races in the ante-bellum South, and are as serious as his earlier stories such as "The Sheriff's Children" and "The
Bouquet." The best of these late short stories, however, are removed from any high, holy purpose. Not only are they distant from folk-myth and from upward mobility-seeking
"Blue Veins," they are simply unconcerned with caste alto gether.
Charles Chesnutt's last published story, "Concern ing Father," is unique not only in its non-ethnic alignment, but in Chesnutt's choice of a female first person narrative voice. This is not to say that the issue of racial back ground is not raised in the story, for it is. The character Father is inclined to lapse into cataleptic states. After regaining consciousness from one of these two-week trances, he confesses to his family that his fits of unconsciousness are a trait he must have inherited from an East Indian ancestor. He is apologetic about having a
41 42
dark-skinned great-great-grandrnother.of low birth. His
wife and children are less concerned with the distant
relative's social caste than with Father's telepathic
ability, for he has predicted the Armistice at the end of
World War I, just as he falls into a frozen-like state of
rigid unconsciousness. During his "time out," the war does
indeed end as he had predicted. In a paraphrase of old
Uncle Julius' words, Father proclaims " ... this is a queer world, and a great many peculiar things happen in it." 41
Like Uncle Julius, Father sees a possibility for the super natural, even in his scientifically-minded, upper middle class position in life.
Best of all these satiric, non-ethnic stories is
"Baxter's Procrustes," which is "written in a Jamesian
fashion of brilliant cultured poeple, about as far from goophered grapevines as one can get." 42 The title itself
is an example of a type of word play which Chesnutt could not resist, for Baxter's poem "Procrustes" does stretch to their limits the proprieties of the "Bodleian Club," a
fictitious bibliographic society similar to the Rowfant
Club to which Chesnutt actually belonged.
The character Baxter is described by the narrator as the "most scholarly member of the club. A graduate of
Harvard, he had traveled extensively, had read .widely, and while not so enthusiastic a collector as some of us, possessed as fine a private library.as any man of his age 43
in the city."
In the course of the story, Baxter proceeds to read
brief excerpts from his poem "Procrustes" to members of the
club; he never reads more than ten lines at one time.
Those who have been privileged to attend these readings
suggest that a special edition of the poem be published,
a collector's edition which would remain not only uncut,
but also sealed. The collectors are delighted with the
final product, a beautiful volume which is honored with a
reception and a critical review. Motivated by their faith
in the value of the book in its uncut and sealed state,
none of the reviewers has actually read the poem in its
entirety.. It is only when a visitor at the reception, in
• A a fit of ignorant curiosity, cuts the pages that the
members learn that "there wasn't a single line in it,
don't you know!" In Chesnutt's familiar understated tone,
the narrator suggests "Of course, after such an insult,
the club did not care for the poem." After some considera-
tion, the first person narrator observes: "The true collec-
tor loves wide margins, and the Procrustes, being all 43 margin, merely touches the vanishing r:oint of the perspective. "
That Baxter, a character out of Chesnutt's irnagina-
tion, would pull such an unscholarly spoof on his fellows
is a clear indication of the change in Chesnutt's
authorial stance. His satire is directed toward stuffy,
self-righteous individuals who base their lives on un- LL4
realistic, subjective values. It is as though Chesnutt
has changed his world view, and is content to notice the
absurdity of human social values without attempting to
change them .
.' Evaluation - His Contribution
Chestnutt's contribution to American literature is
multi-faceted. His works can be examined intrinsically and
stand on their merit of plot and character. They can also
be viewed in their context, which permits the greater ap preciation of their effect on American letters. Charle·s
Chesnutt's short fiction is essentially an account of
social history. His stories not only include the details
of day-to-day life in the North Carolina sandhills and in
turn of the century Ohio, they capture the emotional cli
mate of blacks and whites alike in the period of our
history which surrounds the Civil War. He preserves the ·' tall tale and folk myth for the succeeding generations, and
adds to these his own imaginative literay conjurations.
As the pioneer writer who dealt with issues on the color line, he serves a significant purpose in the history
of American literary development. Though there had been
other black writers before him, none had so boldly exposed
the problems of assimilation which were created by the
conditioned slave mentality and the mixture of ethnicity.
None had experimented with the realism which was to be the
growing, lasting trend in literature. In this sense, his
short works are a springboard for the writers of the Harlem
Renaissance of the 1920's. Because Chesnutt made the
45 46
transition from stereotypic depiction of the black, the
next generation of authors was free to explore the humanity
of that black. And, because Chesnutt treated the condition
of the black collectively as a people, succeeding writers
could draw on the depths of the black individual, separate
from all ·other human beings. Authors such as Langston
Hughes, Countee Cullen, Jean Toomer and Sterling Brown
entered their post-World War I period of literary history
in a context, and Chesnutt was an integral part of that
foundation of black writing.
Without this context, Chesnutt's stories are of
limited value under the New Criticism's analysis. For all
his use of myth and legend, of animal imagery and super natural occurrences, there is little penetration into the
subconscious realm of symbolism. And, only the character
of Uncle Julius approaches enough depth of motivation to be
considered more than functional. Chesnutt's choice of a
didactic approach to his subject matter led him away from
the subtleties of great literature. His work manifests all of the technical skill necessary for greatness, and little of the painful, individual soul-seeking of the highest
literary achievements.
Most characteristic of Chesnutt's finest short
pieces is his brilliant technical artistry in satire.
And, ironically, it is in his recognition of incongruities
that his didactic aim is most forcefully presented. 47
"Baxter's Procrustes" is written in the lightest satiric
vein. It contains no references to racial issues, no
tension between disparate social orders, and no sense of
persecution. Instead, it points out the absurdity of our
most firmly held values. Its conclusion, which leaves the
poem "Procrustes" the most valuable in the history of the
"Bodleian Club," proves that even empty pages, beautifully
bound, can be of great worth to those who believe they are
of great vJOrth. Doubtless, Chesnutt hoped that the dis-
cerning reader would call into question the validity of
such an irrational, subjective system of values. The same
prejudice which motivates the bibliophiles to cherish blank
white sheets of paper bound in "dark green morocco, with a
clap-and-bells border in red inlays, and doublures of 44 maroon morocco with a blind-tooled design," is the un
reasonable prejudice which fosters hatred and mistrust
among the groups of people. By exposing the incongruity
of human bases for discrimination, Chesnutt opens the
world to the possibility of the abandonment of irrational
prejudice. In 1931, one year before his death, Chesnutt
expressed his concern over recent changes in critical
acceptance of the hlack writer in the United States. His
remarks are demonstrative of his integrity of craftsman
ship: 48
Negro writers no longer have any difficulty finding publishers. Their race is no longer a detriment but a good selling point, and publishers are seeking their books, sometimes, I am inclined to think, with less regard for quality than in the case of white writers. To date, colored writers have felt restricted for subjects to their own particular group, but there is every reason to hope that in the future, with proper encourage ment, they will make an increasingly valuable contribution to literature, and perhaps to produce chronicles of life comparable to those of Dostoevski, Dumas, Dickens, or Balzac.45
His own humility is notable; he never included his own name in any estimation of greatness in literature. It is fortunate that he lived long enough to receive some recognition for his efforts. In 1928, such acknowledgement came in the form of the Spingarn Medal which was awarded Charles Chesnutt in honor of "his pioneer work as a literary artist depicting the life and struggles of Americans of Negro descent, and for his long and useful career as scholar, worker, and freeman of one of America's 4 6 greatest cities." For these reasons, he will be remem- bered as a transitional pioneer author in American litera- ture. NOTES
1. Helen M. Chesnutt, Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1952), p. 21.
2. Benjamin Bra~ley, The Negro Genius (New York: Biblo and Tannen, 1937), p. 149.
3. Charles Waddell Chesnutt, "Post-Bellum--Pre Harlem," in Breaking Into Print, ed. Elmer Adler (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1937), p~ 54; hereafter cited as Adler.
4. Frances Richardson Keller, An American Crusade {1917; rpt. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1978), p. 27.
5. Helen M. Chesnutt, p. 17.
6. J. Noel Heermance, Charles W. Chesnutt (Hamden, Connecticut: Shoe String Press, 1974), p. 61.
7. Helen M. Chesnut, p. 28.
8. Heermance, pp. 6-7.
9. Heermance, pp. 6-7.
10. Charles W. Chesnutt, The Short Fiction of Charles Waddell Chesnut, ed. Sylvia Lyons Render (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1974), p. 73; hereafter cited as Render.
11. Render, p. 73.
12. Render, pp. 66-67.
13. Render, p. 83.
14. Render, p. 84.
15. Render, p. 74.
16. Render, p. 74.
17. Helen M. Chesnutt, p. 104.
49 50
18. Adler, p. 49.
19. Charles Waddell Chesnutt, The Conjure Woman (1899; rpt. Ridgewood,·New Jersey: Gregg Press, 1968), pp. 9-10; subsequently cited in the text as cw. 20. Adler, p. 20.
21. Richard Barksdale and Kenneth Kinnamon, "The Major Writers--Charles Waddell Chesnutt (1858-1932) ," in Black Writers of America: A Comprehensive Anthology (New York: Macmillan, 1972), p. 326; hereafter cited as Barksdale.
22. Brawley, p. 148.
23. Sylvia Lyons Render, ed., Introd., The Short Fiction of Charles Waddell Chesnutt (Washington, D.C.: Howard- University Press, 1974), p. 18.
24. Helen M. Chesnutt, p. 95.
25. Adler, p. 49.
26. Richard A. Long and Eugenia W. Collier~ eds., "Charles W. Chesnutt," in Afro-American ~o~Jri ting: An ·' Anthology of Prose and Poetry, I (New York: New York University Press, 1972), p. 200; hereafter cited as Long.
27. Michael Popkin, ed., "Chesnutt, Charles W.," in Modern Black Writers (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1978), p. 138; hereafter cited as Popkin.
28. Render, p. 133.
29. James A. Emanuel and Theodore L. Gross, eds., "Charles Waddell Chesnutt--1858-1932," in Dark Symphony (New York: Free Press, 1968), p. 26; hereafter cited as Emanuel.
30. Adler, p. 54. 31. Ruth Miller, ed., "Charles Chesnutt 1858-1932 The Wife of His Youth," in Blackamerican Literature [sic] (Beverly Hills, California: Glenroe Press, 1971), p. 160; hereafter cited as Miller.
32. Charles Wadell Chesnutt, The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line (1899: rpt. Ridgewood, New Jersey: Gregg Press, 1968), p. 93; subsequently cited in the text as WY. 51
33. Emanuel, p. 26.
34. Render, p. 112.
35. Adler, p. 54.
36. Helen M. Chesnutt, p. 147.
37. Keller, p. 166.
3 8. Popkin, pp. 136-37.
39. Helen M. Chesnutt, p. 149.
39 0 Popkin, p. 138.
40. Render, p. 96.
41. Render, p. 9 6.
42. Long, p. 200.
43 0 Render, pp. 414-22.
44. Render, pp. 414-22.
4 50 Adler, p. 56.
4 6. Helen M. Chesnutt, p. 304. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barksdale, Richard and Kenneth Kinnamon, eds. Black W'ri~_~rs of America: A Comprehensive Anthology. New York: Macmillan, 1972.
Brawley, ·Benjamin. The Negro Genius. New York: Biblo and Tannen, 1937.
Brown, Sterling. The Negro-in American Fiction. Port Washington, New York: Kennikat Press, 1968.
Chesnutt, Charles Waddell. The Conjure Woman. 1899; rpt. New Jersey: Gregg Press, Inc., 1968.
The Wife of His Youth: And Other Stories of the Color Line. 1899; rpt. New-Jersey: Gregg Press, Inc-=-; 1967.
"Post-Bellum--Pre-Harlem." Rpt.. in Breaking Into Print. Ed. Elmer Adler. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1937, pp. 47-56.
Chestnutt, IIelen M. Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of The Color Line. North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1952.
Emanuel, Jnmes A. and Theodore L. Gross, eds. Dark Symphony: Negro Literature in America. New York: Free Press, 1968.
Heermance, ~T. Noel. Charles w. Chesnutt: America's First Great Black Novelist. Hamden, Connecticut: Shoe St1:-ing Press, Inc. , 19 7 4.
Keller, Frances Richardson. An American Crusade: The Life bf Charles Waddell Chesnutt, 1917; rpt. Utah: ·Bri~1harn Young University Press, 1978.
Long, Richard A., and Eugenia W. Collier, eds. Afro American Vvri ting: An Anthology of Prose and Poetr\-;. Vol. I. New York: New York University Press: 1972.
Miller, Rut~1. Blackarnerican Literature [sic]: 1760 - Present. Beverly Hills, California: Glenco Press, 1971.--
52 5.3
Popkin, Michael, ed. "Chesnutt, Charles." Modern Black Writers. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 19 78.
Render, Sylvia Lyons, ed. Int.roduction, The Short Fiction of Charles W. Chesnutt. Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1974.