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The Conjure Woman

The collection of stories in Charles W. ChesnuttÆs The Conjure Woman embody a view of the post-bellum South that depicts concepts of slave and master, free and owned, economics and humanity, and the exploitation of capitalism versus the natural land. The truth of the matter is that the position of the freed slave in the post-bellum South was still one of bondage. Uneducated, poor, and without political or economic power, many freed slaves were forced into work that represented entrapment nearly to the degree of slavery in the antebellum South. We see that in both the post-bellum as with the antebellum South, institutionalized racism directly influenced the economic, political, and geographical landscape. Most often this influence represented an exploitation of both African Americans and the land.

The tales of Uncle Julius are filled with stories of how black families and black love relationships were destroyed by slavery. They are also filled with tales of conjure women and conjure men. Conjuring is used in a number of ways in the stories by Chesnutt. On the surface, conjuring often represents a tool used by slaves to ward off the total domination and abuse of slavery. More deeply, conjuring is often used as a way of showing the connection between African Americans and the land, a relationship that is natural in contrast to the exploitation of the land and African Americans by white owners. In The Goophered Grapevine and PoÆ Sandy we see these uses of conjuring specifically. In The Goophered Grapevine, Uncle Julius tells John and Annie, Northern capitalists, that Henry, a field hand, thrives in the summer like the grape vines but withers in the fall much like the grapevines. In PoÆ Sandy, Sandy is turned into a tree by his wife Tenie. She does this as resistance to his owner, who intends to let another plantation owner use Sandy. Each night he is turned into a man for a brief spell, before being turned back into a ...

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The Conjure Woman. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 10:31, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1710464.html