The Goophered Grapevine

Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 2008

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Literary Regionalism

Chesnutt’s work is an example of regionalism, a realist literary movement that arose during the 19th century in the United States and intensified as Americans turned consciously to a more national culture after the Civil War. Like other regionalists such as Mark Twain, Chesnutt attempts to realistically present specific settings, language, characters, and beliefs to entertain a national audience that was curious about the culture of the South.

The setting of “The Goophered Grapevine” is a ruined Southern plantation and vineyard. The narrator’s description of the destroyed big house, untamed grapevines, and exhausted soil give a snapshot of a sleepy South that has yet to recover from the war. Audiences accustomed to reading the Gothic fiction of writers like Edgar Allan Poe might have recognized the setting as a moody, atmospheric one that promises some touch of the supernatural and an entertaining history of how the place came to be in ruins.

When that story does come, it is from the lips of Julius McAdoo. Readers of dialect stories like Joel Chandler Harris’s Uncle Remus tales, for example, would have recognized the dialect as language that is specific to the South and Julius McAdoo as a regional archetype: the crafty slave, a trickster against whom the narrator should be on guard. While contemporary readers may find both the language and archetype offensive and racist, Chesnutt’s characterization of Julius McAdoo significantly undercuts the stereotypical elements of the archetype by representing Julius as industrious and interested in protecting land from which he derives an income.

Finally, Chesnutt writes a story that fits into the regionalist literary tradition by grounding it in a unique belief system of the region: conjuring. His detailed representation of Aunt Peggy’s placing of the goopher on the vineyard and the enslaved people's faith in its power would have been informative and entertaining to readers who had little experience with this aspect of their culture.

By presenting the ruined plantation, using dialect, drawing Uncle Julius as a Southern archetype, and including details of conjuring, Chesnutt satisfies the desire of a national audience to learn more about the South as a region.

The Aftermath of Slavery, The Civil War, and Reconstruction in the American South

While Chesnutt draws on familiar settings and stereotypes in “The Goophered Grapevine” to entertain, many of his choices in the story show that he, like others, was grappling with the relationship between the South’s enslaving past and the failed promise of Reconstruction: the efforts of the US to reintegrate the South into the United States, and formerly enslaved people into American society. The plot of the story, specifically the narrator’s rehabilitation of the vineyard and the outcome for Julius, are commentary on what Chesnutt likely saw as the way forward.

The ruined plantation the narrator describes at the start of the story is emblematic of what enslavement, the war, and a failed Reconstruction did to the South. The narrator’s initial description of the plantation is that it “had been at one time a thriving plantation, but shiftless cultivation had well-nigh exhausted the soil” (par. 3, line 1). The big house, the heart of any plantation, is characterized as “a victim to the fortunes of war, and nothing remained of it except the brick pillars upon which the sills had rested” (par. 4, line3).The South is presented as a fallen, ruined place that has not managed to enter the modern world.

The solution to this wasted potential is the intervention of people like the narrator, who bring capital and energy that are apparently in abundance in the North but in short supply in the South. While the former owner and carpetbaggers like the Yankee are presented as leeches who destroy the potential of the land and people, the narrator is presented as a person who helps the land fulfill its potential by running a vineyard that capitalizes on a regional grape, the scuppernong, and on a willing labor force of formerly enslaved people who benefit equally from his industry. That this work is a mutually-beneficial partnership is underscored by the narrator’s description of his laborers as “colored assistants”(par. 53, line 3) and Julius McAdoo’s wages, which are “more than an equivalent for anything he lost by the sale of the vineyard” (par. 54, line 3). The narrator, in other words, pays Julius reparations that go beyond a fair wage for the work he does.

Chesnutt ultimately presents a vision of the South in which rehabilitation is achieved through the intervention of the North, well-compensated work for African Americans, and some form of reparations for formerly enslaved people. While in reality this end was never achieved in the American South, in the story, the aims of Reconstruction are realized.

African American Folk Culture and Conjuring

“The Goophered Grapevine” is rooted in the world enslaved people made in the American South before the Civil War. As discussed elsewhere in the guide, the way Chesnutt tells his story shows the influence of African and African American oral culture on his work. The influence of African American folk culture is apparent in other elements of the work as well, most specifically in the representation of conjuring.

Conjuring is a practice that is part of the folk spirituality that enslaved people derived from their African cultures of origin and practices they encountered during stops on the Middle Passage, the journey across the Atlantic that transformed them into enslaved people. Torn from an African geography that provided the materials they needed to communicate with the natural world and perform the rites of their faiths, enslaved people adapted their spiritual practices to the natural world of the Americas and carved out a cultural space that gave them some concealment from the eyes of an oppressive regime.

Chesnutt includes representations of these practices in the story. Both Dugal McAdoo and Henry make offerings of food to the conjure woman, a key part of interacting with folk practitioners. In addition, the rite Aunt Peggy performs on the vineyard is based on gathering bits of natural materials from around the vineyard, alcohol, and objects taken from animals. Aunt Peggy uses these ingredients to conjure an outcome in the mundane world. The supernatural effects described by Julius are designed to prove her powers of conjuring. While some readers may well have dismissed conjuring as a form of superstition, in “The Goophered Grapevine,” conjuring is presented as a potent spiritual practice that may well kill if not respected.

Whether the whites in the story believe in the goopher is unclear, but they are fully willing to take advantage of enslaved people's belief in conjuring. Dugal McAdoo sees his payment to Aunt Peggy as an investment that pays off in a more abundant harvest. He takes advantage of the goopher when he repeatedly sells and redeems Henry, thus showing his willingness to exploit Black spiritual practices for his own gain.

This exploitation of Black beliefs and bodies is presented not as an indictment of Southern whites, however, but one that rebounds on whites. Dugal McAdoo’s decision to use the supposedly scientific methods of the Yankee leads to his downfall. The description of what happens to the vines after the Yankee’s treatment—the unnatural rate of growth, for example—illustrates what happens when nature is exploited materialistically rather than honored with more spiritual values. The implication is that the values of conjuring—respect for the natural world, the idea of fair exchange and offerings—are ones the South has to learn in order to move into the modern world.