4. What historical incidents could have suggested Melville’s Benito Cereno?
5. What in Poe’s life might have occasioned his attitude toward the Negro?
6. In which of the works mentioned is the Negro character a foreground character?
CHAPTER II
THE PLANTATION TRADITION: PRO-SLAVERY FICTION
The Plantation Tradition. The growth and accuracy of the plantation tradition have been excellently studied in The Southern Plantation (1925) by Francis Pendleton Gaines. Gaines attributes the tradition’s hold on America to a love of feudalism,(in spite of our profession of democracy), the charm of the Negro characters as “native” literary material, and a romantic wish for an Arcadian past. He proves that “the tradition omits much plantation truth and exaggerates freely certain attractive features of the old life.” But the tradition goes on unabashed; over a century old, it still guarantees best selling fame.
The setting is familiar:
The old plantation; a great mansion; exquisitely gowned ladies and courtly gentlemen moving with easy grace upon the broad veranda behind stalwart columns; surrounding the yard an almost illimitable stretch of white cotton; darkies singingly at work in the fields, Negro quarters, off on one side, around which little pickaninnies tumbled in gay frolic.
It is used in advertisements for coffee, pancake flour, phonograph records, and whiskey. It is a favorite American dream. The characters are as constant as the cotton bolls: the courtly planter, the one hundred per-cent southern belle, the duelling cavalier, the mammy or cook, “broadbosomed ... with vari-colored turban, spotless apron, and beaming face,” the plantation uncle, black counterpart “of the master so loyally served and imitated,” and the banjo-plunking minstrel of the quarters.
Since the plantation tradition tells of a glory that must have no blemish, slavery is explained away as a benevolent guardianship, necessary for a childish people’s transition from heathendom to Christianity. By stressing festivities such as harvesting, corn-shucking, hunting, fishing, balls, weddings and holiday seasons, slavery was presented as “an unbroken Mardi Gras.” Since southerners, merely because they are born in the South, are a kindlier, gentler breed than other mortals, the possible abuses of slavery existed only in the minds of fanatical Yankees.