280 Chesnutt, Charles W.
there is a “color line” that separates the meaning of
freedom to Uncle Julius, a former slave, and to his
soon-to-be new employer, the northern gentleman
who has come to look at the McAdoo grapevine
and plantation. The modern, colloquial meaning of
freedom 100 years after “The Goophered Grapevine”
means that Americans have the right to determine
their own path, to make their own choices, to move
at will without a by-your-leave.
For Uncle Julius, freedom is a complex term. He
knows that he has the ability to come and go as
he pleases, but he has not chosen to leave the land
where he was born. He knows that he does not
have the economic resources to do so, and as long as
the vineyard grapes are unclaimed and abandoned
without an owner, he is free to pick all he wants and
even sell them to his neighbors: “Uncle Julius had
occupied a cabin on the place for many years and
derived a respectable revenue from the product of
the neglected vines.” But Julius knows he does not
have the freedom to create a commercial business
out of the grapes. Once a buyer for the land appears,
Uncle Julius does not even have the freedom to eat
the grapes with enjoyment and abandon: “He went
on eating the grapes, but did not seem to enjoy
himself quite so well.” The former slave can choose
his own path, but to maintain the status quo he must
manipulate circumstances while at the same time
covering himself in the role of the “good darky” in
order to survive.
For the northerner looking at the property, his
freedoms are many, and he focuses to some extent
on the commercial ones that are possible in the
purchase of the vineyard. He can use his resources to
improve the land: “Labor was cheap and land could
be bought for a mere song.” He will live a comfort-
able and congenial life: He merely takes what he sees
around him and uses it to his own ends. He is not
worried about survival but, rather, about acquiring
cash and the comforts it provides. The blacks who
will work for him are not real people but instead are
two-dimensional “children” who still need the white
man’s direction and guidance.
The main action of this story takes place in a
flashback, related by Uncle Julius, which is heavy
with dialect and overt statements of the stupidity
of his own race as well as that of his late master,
Marse McAdoo. McAdoo begrudged the grapes his
slaves ate and resorted to a curse from the “cunjuh
’oman [conjure woman].” This woman reputedly
could “wuk de mos’ powerfulles’ kin’ er goopher,”
and McAdoo paid her $10 to curse any slave that
ate the grapes. Inevitably, a valuable slave partook
of the grapes and became ill, but McAdoo had the
“cunjuh ’oman” create an exception to the curse and
save the slave. This eventually led to a fraud being
worked by McAdoo using the slave, whose strength
waxed and waned because of the altered curse. The
white narrator expresses some skepticism at the end
of the story. Uncle Julius’s efforts to fool him have
failed, and he buys the vineyard. Rather offhandedly,
he remarks that “it has been for a long time in a
thriving condition.”
Chesnutt’s brilliance here is that the context
of freedom is completely sub rosa. Neither Uncle
Julius nor the northerner ever speaks of the concept
of freedom or of advantages or disadvantages. They
never mention the color line between them. It is
only because the northerner is the narrator that we
get small flashes of indulgence and smugness on
his part to imply the color line exists. And it is only
his condescending observations of Uncle Julius that
provide even the smallest acknowledgement that the
former slave walks that line every day of his life.
Uncle Julius has carved out a comfortable life
after slavery and does not want anyone to disturb it,
but he is also well aware that the northerner looking
at the vineyard as an investment can and will do that
very thing. Still, he tries through his story to change
the obvious outcome. The fact that Uncle Julius
accepts defeat on this point is evidence how far his
freedom to have the life he wants is compromised.
It also shows that Uncle Julius has learned that a
stereotypical facade is his best option to effect his
options. He will lose points, but perhaps not the
game.
Elizabeth Maliarace in “The Goophered Grapevine”
“The Goophered Grapevine,” by Charles W. Ches-
nutt, is all about race, or, perhaps more accurately,
about races. Chesnutt portrays the foibles of the
19th-century white population in relation to the
African-American population. He is adept at taking