Racial Relations in Two Short Stories - Literature review Example

Introduction The two short stories discussed in this essay are Charles Waddell Chestnut’s “Po’ Sandy” from the short story collection The Conjure Woman and “The Wife of His Youth” from his collection titled The Wife of His Youth, and Other Stories of the Color Line. “Po’ Sandy” has two layers of narrative in which Uncle Julius, a freed slave, narrates the story of a hardworking slave named Sandy to a white Northener John and his wife Anne. When John tries to bring down a building on his grounds to build a kitchen for his wife Anne, Uncle Julius intervenes and tries to stop them from doing it by telling them how Sandy was turned into a tree by Tenie, his wife with conjuring powers, and how the tree was cut into pieces and used to build that structure. The narrator tells that Sandy still haunts the place. While John scoffs at it, Anne believes the story and instead donates the place to Uncle Julius to be used for worship. ‘”The Wife of His Youth” is about Ryder, a light-skinned mixed-race man, who runs a society for light-skinned bi-racial people in a northern city. He is free and is part of a social class with great opportunities for upward mobility. He prepares to marry a mulatto woman who is much lighter-skinned than him, when a very dark old woman, who comes in search of her husband whom she has not seen for 25 years, turns out to be his wife from his younger days as slave in the plantations of the South before the Civil War. The story ends abruptly with him acknowledging her as the wife of his youth. The stories are about racial tensions between and within racial groups in different periods: before and after the Civil War. They describe the plight of their main characters due to their race, color and social status or class. The role and value of slave marriages, and the emotional pain experienced due to separation are other prominent themes in both narratives. Body “Po’ Sandy”s outer narrative is set on John’s vineyard and the other main characters are his wife Anne and Uncle Julius, the narrator. John and Anne consider taking wood from an unused broken building on their grounds for a kitchen they are building. It is at this juncture that the inner narrative starts to take shape as Uncle Julius starts telling them about the story of a black slave, whom he calls “poor Sandy”, a hardworking slave of Mars Marrabo McSwayne, and how he is still haunting the old building the couple is contemplating to bring down. Racial tension is seen in the ‘slave as property’ theme that emerges strong in the inner narrative. To illustrate, Sandy is treated as a property that he is loaned out between the two children of his owner. His master sells off Sandy’s wife to a speculator for another woman, just like buying and selling property but in a slave economy. Moreover, this illustrates a forced separation of husband and wife, and how slave marriages are not valued but systematically broken apart, while the white owners’ children are ‘married’. Sandy is given a new woman, a slave named Tenie, who has conjuring skills. In order to always be near and together and to escape forced separation, Tenie turns Sandy into a pine tree. Tree can be considered to symbolize the dehumanization of Sandy, and a slave treated as a property. Even as a tree, Sandy is at the mercy of the environment as he is hurt by a woodpecker, for example. So, they both think of getting turned into foxes to run freely, but before they could do it, the tree is cut down. When the tree is chopped into pieces for a building, gruesome symbol of blood emerges as Julius says “fer he wuz all chop up so he d a ben bleedst ter die” (“Po’ Sandy” 54). This could symbolize how a slave was drained of everything. Although Sandy escapes slavery, he is still a property rooted in his owner’s land. In addition to slavery, the plight of the characters because of their race and social status is a central theme in Julius’ narrative. Conjuring is used as a means to escape from slavery but unfortunately Sandy remains on the land and is cut down eventually to become a part of a building and later haunt the place. The tree was so hard to cut and drill through according to the slaves who do that work. When Tenie finds out that Sandy has been chopped and tries to cry for forgiveness by falling on the tree, she is taken away. She could not stand the emotional pain. No matter how much the slaves try to become free with the help of conjuring, for example, the slave remains under the control of the owner. The cut down tree is made into wooden planks to construct a building, in which later mourning noises are heard that the slave owner Mars Marrabos wife is too scared to go in after dark. Julius describes the place as haunted by Sandy’s ghost. The characters enjoy momentary freedom, Sandy from slave work and Tenie from being separated from her husband, but eventually they both ail and get separated despite struggling throughout to remain together and free. In contrast to the racial tensions between racial groups in “Po’ Sandy”, in “The Wife of His Youth”, it is within racial groups. Unlike “Po’ Sandy”, in which Sandy and Tenie are black slaves in the plantations of the South, Mr. Ryder and his ‘Blue Vein Society’ members are light-skinned and of a mixed-race ancestry. They belong to middle-class and live in the North. Mr. Ryder faces a moral conflict, whether or not to acknowledge a very dark woman as his wife from a slave marriage in the pre-Civil War days. The tension develops from his color bias and conflict between acknowledging his past and ignoring it. The woman symbolizes Ryder’s heritage of slavery and sense of the past. The strong color line bias, class bias and the system of segregation within the black community itself is best represented in the ‘Blue Veins’ society and the story satirizes it. The society is for the blacks of mixed-race but “white enough to show blue veins” (“The Wife of His Youth” 1). Mr. Ryder is a leading member of this group and claims that he has no race prejudice but is working towards acceptance by the white community. The story becomes a satire of the racial tensions within the community as the main character has to choose between his aspirations to pass as a white and acknowledging his past, when a black woman, Liza Jane, visits him while he was planning to host a ball and make announcement of his intended marriage to a lighter-skinned widow named Mrs. Dixon. It is not only a moral dilemma related to marital fidelity, as Liza Jane has suffered the emotional pain of separation and has been looking for her husband even after 25 long years of separation, but also a racial tension within the community as the stark contrast between ‘blue veins’ and the ‘very black’ woman emerges. The story ends abruptly with Mr. Ryder making the moral decision to introduce Liza Jane as the wife of his youth. The story also touches on slave marriage and life on the plantations before Civil War. Liza Jane says that she got married to Sam Taylor, who turns out to be Mr. Ryder, but helped him escape and he became free. She hoped him to come back and free her but he did not, as she was sold to another plantation. Civil War changed things and she became free too but she remained separated from her lover. The story raises questions about the meaning of marriage to the slaves and their helplessness in holding things together under slavery. However, in Ryder’s view, slave marriages are not legal and are void after the Civil War, which is similar to how masters treated slave marriages in “Po’ Sandy”. Conclusion Both stories depict tensions in the racial relations at different points of time in the Black American history. “Po’ Sandy” is dominant in the slave theme and the role of marriage in a slave’s life by describing the dehumanization of Sandy in the form of a tree and building, Tenie’s conjuring abilities that fail to free and unite them both, the human emotions of pain in forced separation and the way they both tried to seek strength in marriage. While “Po’ Sandy” is about the race tensions between the white and the black Americans in the South, “The Wife of His Youth” satirizes the strong color line bias, class bias and the system of segregation within the black community itself. The acknowledgement of the slave marriage between Mr. Ryder and Liza Jane is an attempt at reconnecting African-American family. Marriage and union was a source of strength for both the slaves and freed ones as seen in both the stories where the black slaves struggled to be together with their partners while reconstructing family was important for freed slaves. Works Cited Chestnut, W. Charles. “Po’ Sandy.” The Conjure Woman. Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1899. 36-63. Web. 3 March 2015. -------------------. “The Wife of His Youth.” The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line. Cambridge: The Riverside Press. 1899. 1-24. Web. 3 March 2015. Read More