The Conjure Woman by Charles Waddell Chesnutt

First published: 1899

Type of work: Short fiction

Type of plot: Regional

Time of plot: Post-Civil War

Locale: North Carolina

Principal characters

• The Narrator, a potential buyer of the plantation
• Annie, his wife
• Uncle Julius, his black coachman
• Aunt Peggy, the conjure woman

The Story:

When the Narrator’s wife begins to suffer ill effects from the severe Great Lakes climate, he looks for a suitable place to take her. He was engaged in grape culture in Ohio, and when he learns of a small North Carolina town that seems to offer what he needs in climate and suitable land, he decides to buy an old, dilapidated plantation and settle there. An untended vineyard is already on the property; with a little care and expense, the vines will flourish once more. On the day that he takes his wife, Annie, to look at the plantation, they happen upon an ancient African American who calls himself Uncle Julius. He advises them not to buy the plantation because it is goophered. Realizing they do not know that anything goophered is bewitched (conjured), the old man asks permission to tell them the story of the vineyard.

Many years before the war, when Uncle Julius was still a slave, the plantation owner made many thousands of dollars from the grapes. Because the master could never keep the slaves from eating the rich grapes and stealing the wine made from them, he conceived the idea of having Aunt Peggy, a conjure woman living nearby, put a goopher on the vines. She made one that said that any black person eating the grapes would die within a year. Most of the slaves stayed away from the grapes, but a few tried them in spite of the conjure, and they all died. When a new slave came to the plantation, no one remembered to tell him about the conjure, and he ate some of the grapes. So that he would not die, Aunt Peggy made him a counter-goopher. Then a strange thing happened. Every year, as the grapes ripened, this slave became so young and sprightly that he could do the work of several men, but in the fall, when the vines died, he withered and faded. This strange action went on for several years, until the master hit upon the idea of selling the slave every spring when he was strong and buying him back cheaply in the fall. By this transaction, he made money each year.

One year, the master hired an expert to prune his vines, but the expert cut them out too deeply and the vines were ruined. Soon afterward, the slave who bloomed and withered with the vines also died. Some said he died of old age, but Uncle Julius knew that it was the goopher that finally overcame him. Uncle Julius advises strongly against buying the land because the conjure is still on.

The Narrator buys the plantation, however, and it prospers. Later, he learns that Uncle Julius is living in a cabin on the place and sells the grapes. He always suspects that the story was told to prevent ruination of the old man’s business. He gives Uncle Julius employment as a coachman, and so the former slave is well cared for.

When Annie wants a new kitchen, her husband decides to tear down an old schoolhouse on the place and use the lumber from it for the new building. Uncle Julius advises him against the plan. Strangely enough, that schoolhouse is goophered, too. Uncle Julius’s story is that a slave called Sandy was borrowed by others so often that his woman was afraid they would be separated forever. She was a conjure woman, so she turned him into a tree. Each night, she would turn him back into a man, and they would slip into her cabin until morning, when she would again change him into a tree. One day, the woman was sent away from the plantation before she could change Sandy back into a man. While she was away, the master had the tree that was Sandy cut down to build a new kitchen. The slaves had a hard time felling the tree, which twisted and turned and tried to break loose from the chains. At last, they got it to the sawmill. Later the house was built, but it was never much used. The slaves refused to work there because at night they could hear moaning and groaning, as if someone were in great pain. Only Sandy’s woman, when she returned, would stay in the building, and she, poor girl, went out of her mind.

Uncle Julius advises against using goophered lumber for the new kitchen. It seems that Uncle Julius needs the old schoolhouse for his church meetings. The goopher will not bother the worshipers; in fact, the preaching helps Sandy’s roaming spirit. Because no one will use goophered wood, there is nothing for the wife and her husband to do but buy new lumber for her kitchen.

When the Narrator is about to buy a mule to use in cultivating some land, Uncle Julius warns him against mules because most of them are conjured. Uncle Julius does, however, know of a horse for sale. After his employer buys the horse, which dies within three months, Uncle Julius appears in a new suit he was admiring for some time.

One day, when Annie feels depressed and listless, Uncle Julius tells her and her husband about Becky, a slave who was traded for a horse. Taken away from her child, she grieved terribly. Aunt Peggy, the conjure woman, turned the baby into a hummingbird so that he could fly down to his mother and be near her and soothe her. Later the conjure woman arranged to have Becky and her baby reunited. Uncle Julius knew that she would never have had all that trouble if she owned the hindfoot of a rabbit to protect her from harm. The story seems to cheer Annie, and her husband is not surprised later to find Uncle Julius’s rabbit’s foot among her things.

When the Narrator prepares to clear a piece of land, Uncle Julius warns him that the land is goophered and tells him a harrowing tale about a slave turned into a gray wolf and tricked into killing his own wife, who was thereupon changed into a cat. Although the gray wolf is said to haunt the patch of land, it does not seem to bother a bee tree from which Uncle Julius gathers wild honey.

One day, Annie’s sister Mabel and her fiancé quarrel bitterly. Uncle Julius has another story for them about Chloe, a slave who ruined her life because she was jealous. Chloe listened to a no-account rival and believed his story that her lover was meeting another woman. When she learned that she lost her lover because she allowed her jealousy to trick her, she sorrowed and died. Even the conjure woman could not help her. Mabel listens to the story and then runs to her fiancé, who just happens to be close to the spot where Julius stops their carriage. Later on, the young man develops a special fondness for Uncle Julius. After the wedding, he tries to persuade the old man to enter his service, but Uncle Julius remains faithful to his employers. He thinks they need his advice and help.

Bibliography

Andrews, William L. “Dialect Stories.” In The Literary Career of Charles W. Chesnutt. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980. Focuses on the literary tradition of The Conjure Woman. Chesnutt wrote The Conjure Woman in the popular local-color tradition of the 1880’s. The dialect, cultural habits, and terrain of the Cape Fear area of North Carolina are faithfully represented in the collection’s stories.

Ashe, Bertram D. “’A Little Personal Attention’: Storytelling and the Black Audience in Charles W. Chesnutt’s The Conjure Woman.” In From Within the Frame: Storytelling in African-American Fiction. New York: Routledge, 2002. Analyzes the written form of African American oral storytelling, comparing the frame tale, in which an inside-the-text storyteller narrates the tale to an inside-the-text listener, with an outside-the-text writer and reader. Begins with a discussion of Chesnutt’s frame tales in The Conjure Woman.

Babb, Valerie. “Subversion and Repatriation in The Conjure Woman.” Southern Quarterly 25 (Winter, 1987): 66-75. Compares Joel Chandler Harris’s Uncle Remus stories to The Conjure Woman. Harris uses black dialect to reinforce his views of white supremacy; Chesnutt uses black dialect as a “subversive strategy to undo the ideology of white supremacy.”

Frenberg, Lorne. “Charles W. Chesnutt and Uncle Julius: Black Storytellers at the Crossroads.” Studies in American Fiction 15 (1987): 161-173. Focuses on The Conjure Woman’s representation of the reconstructed South. Chesnutt establishes a barrier between his white narrator, John, and his black storyteller, Julius, that operates as both “mask” and “veil.” John and Uncle Julius are at the “crossroads” of surviving during a transitional period in history.

Heermance, J. Noel. Charles W. Chesnutt: America’s First Great Black Novelist. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1974. A fine overview of Chesnutt’s life and a discussion of how his fiction emerged from his literary interests and social concerns. One chapter focuses on The Conjure Woman stories.

McElrath, Joseph R., Jr., ed. Critical Essays on Charles W. Chesnutt. New York: G. K. Hall, 1999. A broad compilation of materials, containing reviews of Chesnutt’s work that appeared at the time of its initial publication, as well as essays, articles, and chapters, written between 1905 and 1997, that analyze his work. Includes “The Art of The Conjure Woman” by Richard E. Baldwin.

McWilliams, Dean. Charles W. Chesnutt and the Fictions of Race. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2002. McWilliams examines Chesnutt’s novels and short stories, describing how his fiction changed Americans’ assumptions about race. Two of the chapters discuss the black vernacular and race in Chesnutt’s short fiction.

Pickens, Ernestine Williams. Charles W. Chesnutt and the Progressive Movement. New York: Pace University Press, 1994. A biography focusing on Chesnutt’s commitment to social equality for his fellow African Americans. Contains an excellent discussion of his use of fiction as a vehicle for African Americans to gain national recognition.

Render, Sylvia Lyons. “Business for Pleasure.” In Charles W. Chesnutt. Boston: Twayne, 1980. Discusses character and theme in The Conjure Woman, arguing that Uncle Julius is a stereotype who carries unconventional messages about slavery. The stories are connected by a conjure woman and man who reflect the cultural practices of a region.

Wonham, Henry B. Charles W. Chesnutt: A Study of the Short Fiction. New York: Twayne, 1998. Wonham’s chapter on Chesnutt’s dialect tales devotes more than thirty pages to The Conjure Woman, and the index cites other references to the collection and its individual stories.