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
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
Who writes regionalism?
Who writes realism?
Eric Sundquist (critic)
"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.”
Sarah Orne Jewett
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.
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."
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.
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”
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).
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).
Joel Chandler Harris, Uncle Remus, His Songs and Sayings (1881)

The frame stories--an elderly AfricanAmerican narrator telling tales to a
young white boy--recall the
plantation tradition.

Tales themselves, which are based on
black folktales, are frequently
subversive of the tradition.


“Master and Old John” stories in
which “Old John” uses his
supposed stupidity to outwit his
master using the master’s own
prejudices.
Animal fables in which an animal
with less power (such as a rabbit)
outwits an animal with more
power.
HOW MR. RABBIT WAS TOO
SHARP FOR MR. FOX

"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 'clar ter grashus I ought er tole you dat, but ole man
Nod wuz ridin' on my eyelids twel a leetle mo'n I'd a dis'member'd my own name, en den on to dat here come yo' mammy hollerin'
atter you.

"W'at I tell you w'en I fus' begin? I tole you Brer Rabbit wuz a monstus soon beas'; leas'ways dat's w'at I laid out fer ter tell you. Well,
den, honey, don't you go en make no udder kalkalashuns, kaze in dem days Brer Rabbit en his fambly wuz at de head er de gang
w'en enny racket wuz en han', en dar dey stayed. 'Fo' you begins fer ter wipe yo' eyes 'bout Brer Rabbit, you wait en see wha'bouts
Brer Rabbit gwineter fetch up at. But dat's needer yer ner dar.

"W'en Brer Fox fine Brer Rabbit mixt up wid de Tar-baby, he feel mighty good, en he roll on de groun' en laff. Bimeby he up'n say,
sezee:

"'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 dis naberhood
ontwel you come ter b'leeve yo'se'f de boss er de whole gang. En der youer allers some'rs whar you got no bixness,' ses Brer Fox,
sezee. 'Who ax you fer ter come en strike up a 'quaintence wid dish yer Tar-Baby? En who stuck you up dar whar you iz? Nobody in
de 'roun' worril. You des tuck en jam yo'se'f on dat Tar-Baby widout waintin' fer enny invite,' sez Brer Fox, sezee, 'en dar you is, en
dar you'll stay twel I fixes up a bresh-pile and fires her up, kaze I'm gwinteter bobbycue you dis day, sho,' sez Brer Fox, sezee.

"Den Brer Rabbit talk mighty 'umble,

"'I don't keer w'at you do wid me, Brer Fox,' sezee, 'so you don't fling me in dat brier-patch. Roas' me, Brer Fox,' sezee, 'but don't fling me in dat
brier-patch,' sezee.

"'I ain't got no string,' sez Brer Fox, sezee, 'en now I speck I'll hatter drown you,' sezee.

"'Drown me des ez deep es you please, Brer Fox," sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'but do don't fling me in dat brier-patch, ' sezee.

"'Dey ain't no water nigh,' sez Brer Fox, sezee, 'en now I speck I'll hatter skin you,' sezee.

"'Skin me, Brer Fox,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'snatch out my eyeballs, t'ar out my years by de roots, en cut off my legs,' sezee, 'but do please, Brer
Fox, don't fling me in dat brier-patch,' sezee.

"Co'se Brer Fox wanter hurt Brer Rabbit bad ez he kin, so he cotch 'im by de behime legs en slung 'im right in de middle er de brierpatch. dar wuz a
considerbul flutter whar Brer Rabbit struck de bushes, en Brer Fox sorter hang 'roun' fer ter see w'at wuz gwinter happen. Bimeby he hear
somebody call im, en way up de hill he see Brer Rabbit settin' crosslegged on a chinkapin log koamin' de pitch outen his har wid a chip. Den Brer
Fox know dat he bin swop off mighty bad. Brer Rabbit wuz bleedzed fer ter fling back some er his sass, en he holler out:

"'Bred en bawn in a brier-patch, Brer Fox--bred en bawn in a brier-patch!' en wid dat he skip out des ez lively as a cricket in de embers."