Regional Fiction and the Plantation Tradition

1. Regional Fiction and the Plantation Tradition 1870-1900

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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

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

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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)

10. 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”

11. 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).

12. 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).

13. 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.

14. 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 '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.

15. 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'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. 4. 'Fo' you begins ferter wipe yo' eyes 'bout Brer Rabbit, you wait en see wha'boutsBrer Rabbit gwineter fetch up at. But dat'sneederyernerdar.

16. HOW MR. RABBIT WAS TOO SHARP FOR MR. FOX 5. "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: 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 naberhoodontwel you come terb'leeveyo'se'f de boss er de whole gang.

17. 7. En der you erallerssome'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.

18. "Den Brer Rabbit talk mighty 'umble, 8. "'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. 9. "'I ain't got no string,' sezBrer Fox, sezee, 'en now I speck I'll hatter drown you,' sezee. 10. "'Drown me des ez deep es you please, Brer Fox," sezBrer Rabbit, sezee, 'but do don't fling me in dat brier-patch, ' sezee.

19. 11. "'Deyain't no water nigh,' sezBrer Fox, sezee, 'en now I speck I'll hatter skin you,' sezee. 12. "'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.

20. 13. "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: 14. "'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."