"The Passing of Grandison" is a short story written by Charles W. Chesnutt and published in the collection The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color-Line (1899).Cutter 2010, p. 39. The story takes place in the United States in the early 1850s,Chesnutt 2008, p. 149. at the time of anti-slavery sentiment and the abolitionist movement in the Northern United States, and after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.
In Chesnutt's story, the aspect of racial passing is addressed on both a narrative and textual level in order to illustrate a "destabilization of constructs of race, identity, and finally of textuality itself".Cutter 2010, p. 40.
Plot summary
"The Passing of Grandison" starts with a conversation between Dick Owens and Charity Lomax. Charity tells Dick that if he did something she considered heroic, she could be convinced to fall in love with him and marry him. For this reason, Dick decides to help one of the slaves of his father's plantation to escape to the North. He chooses this particular way to impress Charity because she admires the courage of a man from Ohio, who tried to help another man's slave gain freedom but was unsuccessful and, as a consequence, was jailed. The man died of a disease shortly after being imprisoned.
To achieve freeing one of his father's slaves, Dick decides to go on a trip north and take his slave Tom along; he is convinced Tom will use any opportunity to escape and Dick will achieve his goal very easily. However, Colonel Owens, Dick's father, is opposed to his son's being accompanied by Tom as he is convinced that the slave will escape and constitute a property loss. Instead he suggests that Dick take Tom's brother, Grandison. He suggests that his son ask Grandison about his status as a slave to ensure that he is trustworthy and will not try to escape.
Dick takes Grandison with him to New York City and Boston, and then to Niagara Falls, New York, where he even crosses to the Canadian side. (Great Britain had by then abolished slavery in Canada and other colonies in the Western Hemisphere.) Despite having numerous opportunities to escape, Grandison does not run away and refuses abolitionists' attempts to persuade him to flee into freedom. Dick decides to have Grandison kidnapped to get him out of view in order to appear to have helped the slave gain freedom when he reports back to Charity.
Four weeks after Dick Owens' return to his father's plantation in Kentucky and one week after his marriage to Charity Lomax, Grandison returned to the property. He was welcomed and celebrated as a loyal slave, as he confirmed Colonel Owens' positive understanding of slavery. The colonel gave Grandison a place as a house servant.
After about three weeks, Grandison and his family (his new wife, his parents and his three siblings) go missing. Colonel Owens' view on slavery is shaken when he discovers the slaves have escaped. He searches for the fugitives and last sees them on a small steamboat crossing Lake Erie toward Canada, where they will be free.
Characters Grandison is the central character,Kirkpatrick 2009, p. 108. a slave owned by Colonel Owens; he accompanies Dick Owens on a journey to the North. Dick Owens is the son of the Colonel; he takes Grandison on his travels with the intention of aiding him in escape in the North, to gain the love of Charity Lomax. Colonel Owens is a rich planter in Kentucky and the father of Dick Owens. He owns Grandison and Tom, among numerous other slaves. Charity Lomax is Dick Owens' lover, who encourages him to free a slave in order to gain her love. Tom is Grandison's enslaved brother on the same plantationChesnutt 2008, p. 177-178. Betty is an enslaved maid held by Col. Owens, who marries Grandison after his return from the North.
Analyses and interpretations
Theme of passing on the narrative level On the narrative level (between the characters of the short story), the theme of passing destabilizes binary oppositions of "appearance" and "reality", "good" and "bad slave", as well "master" and "mastered".
Grandison's performance of being a loyal slave As the title announces, the theme of passing is a major issue in the short story, "The Passing of Grandison". The kind of passing addressed, however, is not racial passing (since the slave Grandison does not pass for white) or any other form of passing in the traditional sense.Montgomery 2010, p. 10. Rather, Grandison passes for a contented and devoted slave, who is therefore selected to accompany his master's son, Dick Owens, on a trip north. Grandison seems to have "adopted the racist discourse of the slave system",Cutter 2010, p. 41. which Colonel Owens, in the story, describes as a "blissful relationship of kindly protection on the one hand, of wise subordination and loyal dependence on the other".Chesnutt 2008, p. 159. Grandison's "performance," or masking, convinces the colonel, that "Grandison typified the best qualities possessed by his bondsmen: humility, loyalty, and servility".Taxel 1975, p. 108.
In "The Mask as Theme and Structure: Charles W. Chesnutt's 'The Sheriff's Children' and 'The Passing of Grandison, P. Jay Delmar lists four events in the story that highlight Grandison's successful masking: his dialogue with Colonel Owens, who interviews Grandison to see whether he was "abolitionist-proof"Chesnutt 2008, p. 162. and suitable to accompany Dick on his journey. Grandison replied affirmatively to the colonel's question as to whether he believed himself to lead a better life than "free negroes", and confirmed the colonel's positive view of slavery.Delmar 1979, p. 371-372.
Second, Grandison resisted Northern abolitionists' attempts to convince him to leave Owens.Delmar 1979, p. 371. Grandison's repeated "pass[ing] on freedom"Montgomery 2010, p. 13. confirms and reinforces Dick's conviction that Grandison was a loyal slave. When Dick returned after a short trip to find that Grandison had not touched the money he had left him, Owens thought this meant that Grandison "... sensibly recognized his true place in the economy of civilization, and kept it with such touching fidelity".Chesnutt 2008, p. 167. Grandison performed his role of being the loyal slave and appeared to have internalized his status as a slave.
Third, in response to Dick's decision on a trip across the Niagara River to Canada, Grandison appears to be afraid to lose sight of his master and worries that he "won' hab no marster, an' won't nebber be able to git back home no mo.Chesnutt 2008, p. 169. Grandison remains by his master's side or waits for him on Dick's instruction. Dick decides to have Grandison kidnapped in order to appear to have helped him achieve freedom, and returns alone to his plantation in Kentucky. Grandison again proves his loyalty by returning to his master's plantation.
Grandison's manner of speech is another way he encourages the trust of his masters.Osinubi 2010, p. 57. His use of dialect "marks his social and economic status" and "is mistaken for ignorance" by the white men.
Grandison's masking as Sambo According to Joel Taxel, Grandison's performance in certain aspects conforms to historian Stanley Elkins' definition of the characteristics of the stereotypical plantation slave, the Sambo model, in Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life:
... docile but irresponsible, loyal but lazy, humble but chronically given to lying and stealing; his behavior full of infantile silliness and his talk inflated with childish exaggeration. His relationship with his master was one of utter dependence and childlike attachment: it was indeed this childlike quality that was the very key to his being.qtd. in Taxel 1975, p. 105.
The Sambo character was not a result of "internally controlled accommodation", but was a vital and reasonable adjustment to the hardships suffered, as well as an adjustment to the "dependency of a closed system". Taxel suggested that the Sambo character was an "externally imposed adjustment" by enslaved persons.Taxel 1975, p. 105. In Taxel's opinion, the short story's focus on Grandison's performance of loyalty and childlike behavior reflected two elements characteristic of the Sambo type.
Grandison performs according to the Sambo-mask and thus the "false mask of Blackness", a mask responding to his master's expectations, with the goal of surviving and eventually escaping slavery. By his performance, Grandison first gains the trust of the Colonel and his son, and, secondly, confirms his master's opinion of his slave's having adopted the qualities most valued: "humility, loyalty, and servility".
Grandison's escape Grandison conforms to expectations up until escaping with his family. According to Martha J. Cutter, this can be seen as the "passing away", or dying, of his performing "the persona of the passive, stupid, Sambo-like slave".Cutter 2010, p. 43. Grandison does not escape on the Owens' son's journey and returns to the plantation to be reunited with his family.Delmar 1979, p. 374. Wearing the mask of the Sambo character and thereby passing for "a contended, ignorant, childlike, happy slave who appears to believe the distorted visions of the world put forward by his white master" allows him to gain his master's trust and, through repeatedly proving his loyalty, he achieves his own and his family's freedom. Grandison's successful passing is the result both of his own efforts and of the shared belief by the Colonel and Dick Owens that "slavery is a sophisticated form of chivalry";Delmar 1979, p. 372. these elements help Grandison deceive them.
Kim Kirkpatrick suggests another reason for Grandison to adopt the Sambo-like character: Colonel Owens promises that he can marry Betty, the enslaved maid, after he returns if he has pleased the son. The promise of marriage to the woman he loves is used to reward Grandison, while the Colonel subtly uses Betty as a kind of hostage.Kirkpatrick 2009, p. 107-108.
Grandison as a trickster Grandison's deception of the colonel and Dick Owens by masking and performing the stereotypical Sambo can be compared to the trickster figure in African-American literature,Montgomery 2010, p. 8. African stories, and stories of the African diaspora.Osinubi 2010, p. 49.
The end of the short story shows that Grandison has been masking in order to gain freedom not only for himself but also for his family. He is "a trickster-like, multi-faceted individual emerges from behind the mask of the Sambo doll".Cutter 2010, p. 44. Viktor Osinubi further explains that
the parallels between the adventures of a trickster figure and Grandison's tortuous scheme for freedom highlight the connection between Grandison's constructed presence in front of his powerful adversaries (his slave masters) and the African metaphysics of presence, in which veiling one's presence is an essential strategy for continued existence or the pursuit of freedom.
Grandison uses the colonel's belief that he has a secure knowledge of the behavior and culture of slaves by reconfirming it through "[t]otal subordination, veiled presence, and masked speech".Osinubi 2010, p. 60. He creates opportunities for subterfuge, and proves his loyalty by returning to the plantation. These reinforce the colonel's positive view of slavery and sense of Grandison's gratitude. Through "the reversal of polarities, particularly of the master-servant relationship, of truth and falseness, of knowledge and ignorance, and of autonomy and control," Grandison achieves freedom.
When the colonel realizes he has been tricked and that Grandison's behavior had been a performance, his view of slavery is shaken and his concepts of racial identity destabilized. To escape slavery, Grandison needed to act both as "a cunning resister of slavery" and as a Sambo at the same time.
Autonomy and freedom