Regional Fiction and the Plantation Tradition

1. Regional Fiction and the Plantation Tradition 1870-1900

2. Local Color or Regionalism: Definitions Focuses on the characters, dialect, customs, topography, and other features particular to a specific region. Weaknesses may include nostalgia or sentimentality. Customary forms: sketch, short story, and occasionally the novel http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/lcolor.html

3. Purposes Contributed to the reunification of the country after the Civil War. Contributed to the building of national identity toward the end of the nineteenth century. Reassured urban dwellers that amid social change, there was a geographic repository of traditional “American” values. Satisfied the desire of readers to experience quaint or exotic settings and characters: a kind of travel literature that introduced readers to their own nation. Richard Brodhead, Cultures of Letters: regionalism’s “public function was not just to mourn lost cultures but to purvey a certain story of contemporary cultures and of the relations among them.”

4. Characteristics • Characters: Concerned character of the district or region rather than with the individual: • Characters may become character types, sometimes quaint or stereotypical. • The characters marked by their adherence to the old ways, by dialect, and by particular personality traits central to the region. Theme: Old ways and traditions versus urban values.

5. Characteristics, continued 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 of the tale and the urban audience to whom the tale is directed.

6. Characteristics, continued • Setting: The emphasis is frequently on nature and the limitations it imposes. • Settings are frequently remote and inaccessible. The plot of the story may involve the incursions of civilization on the place (trains, boats, tourism, etc.) • The setting is integral to the story and may sometimes become a character in itself. Note that settings may become symbolic or mythological as the characters journey across or within them: tall mountains, ancient trees, or ruins of previous civilizations.

7. Local Color or Regionalism? • Judith Fetterley and Marjorie Pryse have argued convincingly that the distinguishing characteristic that separates "local color" writers from "regional" writers is instead the exploitation of and condescension toward their subjects that the local color writers demonstrate. • Not all critics make this distinction.

8. Who writes regionalism? Who writes realism? Eric Sundquist (critic) Sarah Orne Jewett "Economic or political power can itself be seen to be definitive of a realist aesthetic, in that those in power (say, white urban males) have been more often judged 'realists,' while those removed from the seats of power (say, Midwesterners, blacks, immigrants, or women) have been categorized as regionalists.” 

9. Plantation Tradition: Definitions 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 people held certain values in common, among them chivalry toward women, courage, integrity, and honorable conduct among gentlemen, and pride in and loyalty toward one's region.

10. Characteristics Works in this tradition employed the false metaphor of a plantation "family" with white and African American members, all of whom felt deep bonds of loyalty to one another, with the white master as the head of this patriarchal system. In keeping with its hierarchical ideals, stories of this tradition frequently portrayed African Americans as happier and better off under slavery than they would be (or, later, were) if they were free.  Within this system exists the racist stereotype of the "happy slave."

11. Setting 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.

12. 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) Honorifics for slaves: “Uncle” and “Aunt” used by whites for older African Americans as a mark of respect, but of course titles (Mr., Mrs.) were denied them. Generic names for whites: “Mr. John” or “Mr. Charlie” and “Miss Anne”

13. Practitioners • Amy Kaplan (critic): Thomas Nelson Page's In Ole Virginia (1887) was "a collection of dialect stories narrated by a faithful ex-slave who reminisces nostalgically about 'dem good ole times'" (244). • Page, “Marse Chan” • Joel Chandler Harris, “Free Joe and the Rest of the World” • Satirizing the plantation tradition: Charles W. Chesnutt, the first African American writer to be published in The Atlantic Monthly: “The Goophered Grapevine” (1887).

14. Purposes Kenneth Warren, from 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).

15. 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.

16. HOW MR. RABBIT WAS TOO SHARP FOR MR. FOX "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?" "Law, honey, ain't I tell you 'bout dat?" replied the old darkey, chuckling slyly. "I 'clartergrashus I ought ertole you dat, but ole man Nod wuzridin' on my eyelids twel a leetlemo'n I'd a dis'member'd my own name, en den on to dat here come yo' mammy hollerin' atter you. "W'at I tell you w'en I fus' begin? I tole you Brer Rabbit wuz a monstus soon beas'; leas'waysdat'sw'at I laid out ferter tell you. Well, den, honey, don't you go en make no udder kalkalashuns, kaze in dem days Brer Rabbit en his famblywuz at de head er de gang w'enenny racket wuz en han', en dardey stayed. 'Fo' you begins ferter wipe yo' eyes 'bout Brer Rabbit, you wait en see wha'boutsBrer Rabbit gwineter fetch up at. But dat'sneederyernerdar. "W'enBrer 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: "'Well, I speck I got you did 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 disnaberhoodontwel you come terb'leeveyo'se'f de boss er de whole gang. En deryouerallerssome'rswhar you got no bixness,' sesBrer Fox, sezee. 'Who ax you ferter come en strike up a 'quaintencewid dish yer Tar-Baby? En who stuck you up darwhar you iz? Nobody in de 'roun' worril. You des tuck en jam yo'se'f on dat Tar-Baby widoutwaintin' ferenny invite,' sezBrer 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 gwinteterbobbycue you dis day, sho,' sezBrer Fox, sezee. "Den Brer Rabbit talk mighty 'umble,

17. "'I don't keerw'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. "'I ain't got no string,' sezBrer Fox, sezee, 'en now I speck I'll hatter drown you,' sezee. "'Drown me des ez deep es you please, Brer Fox," sezBrer Rabbit, sezee, 'but do don't fling me in dat brier-patch, ' sezee. "'Deyain't no water nigh,' sezBrer Fox, sezee, 'en now I speck I'll hatter skin you,' sezee. "'Skin me, Brer Fox,' sezBrer 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. "Co'seBrer 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. darwuz a considerbul flutter wharBrer Rabbit struck de bushes, en Brer Fox sorter hang 'roun' ferter see w'atwuzgwinter 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 harwid a chip. Den Brer Fox know dat he bin swop off mighty bad. Brer Rabbit wuzbleedzedferter fling back some er his sass, en he holler out: "'Bred en bawn in a brier-patch, Brer Fox--bred en bawn in a brier-patch!' en widdat he skip out des ez lively as a cricket in de embers."