Contextualizing African American Characters in Glasgow's The Battle-Ground

The Battle-Ground, published in 1902, was Ellen Glasgow's fourth novel, but only the second of her seven novels chronicling the social history of Virginia. It is a novel that divides naturally into two parts, the first detailing the lives of two antebellum families of the planter aristocracy: the Lightfoots, owners of Chericoke plantation, and the Amblers, owners of the nearby Uplands plantation. The second half of the work follows Dan Montjoy, grandson of the Lightfoots and heir to Chericoke, through his experiences as an infantryman in the Civil War, but is punctuated by brief narrative returns to Chericoke and Uplands focusing mostly on the character development of Betty Ambler, younger daughter of Peyton and Julia Ambler. At core, The Battle-Ground is a bildungsroman: in the novel Betty Ambler and Dan Montjoy are both initiated into adulthood during a crucial period in United States history, beginning with the late antebellum period, continuing through the Civil War, and ending immediately after the South's surrender. At the same time, Glasgow portrays the South itself, specifically Virginia, the battle-ground alluded to in the novel's title, experiencing pronounced growing pains as it confronts pre- and post-Civil War contingencies, especially those implications of a radically changing economy based on the South's being forced to relinquish slave labor, the very core of its antebellum existence. The characterization of African Americans in the novel is, therefore, a crucial integral to the novel's theme, one that has not been fully explored in previous criticism of The Battle-Ground.¹

In plantation fiction, much of the propaganda about the pervasive attitudes among slaves is accomplished through particularization of characters, from whom the audience is expected to generalize. Through such representations, readers might discover that slaves are comfortable in their bondage, that house slaves disdain field hands, that all slaves shun free blacks, and, of course, that slaves admire and are devoted to their benevolent masters and mistresses, often mimicking their mannerisms and dress. The Battle-Ground is not devoid of such renderings. For example, Congo, Major Lightfoot's driver, is Simon Legree-like in his zeal to hog-tie a runaway slave and "deliver his brother into bondage" (88). And prior to the onset of the Federal invasion of the South, Congo suggests to his master that if the Yankees descend on Virginia "we'll des loose de dawgs on em" (87). Further, Cupid, a Lightfoot butler, relates to Betty Ambler his sense of social hierarchy within the slave community with what the narrator describes as "a social pride befitting the Major." In answer to Betty Ambler's query about the health and welfare of the field workers, Cupid answers, "I [don't] mix wid no fiel' han's. Dar ain no use mixin' en I [don't] mix. Day stay in dere place en I stay in my place—en dere place hit's in de quarters, en my place hit's de dinin' 'oom" (201). Recent historical and sociological studies, along with countless slave narratives published before and after the war, discount such general attitudes among slaves. William Julius Wilson describes the main lines of inquiry concerning slave development, based on the premise that slaves had enough autonomy to develop mechanisms or strategies of survival, enabling them "to preserve their humanity, to resist complete personal degradation, to prevent total identification with masters, and to stave off infantilism" (33). To her credit, Glasgow depicts blacks in a variety of situations in The Battle-Ground, allowing several to exhibit the qualities necessary for developing these strategies of self-actualization.

The Lightfoots' cook, Aunt Rhody, depicts the characteristics necessary to insure her own well-developed self-consciousness. Elizabeth Fox-Genovese points out that cooks "occupied positions of considerable prestige" on plantations; they "were respected by black as well as by the white folks" (160). They "might be highly—even professionally—trained, or they might have learned at the side of an older cook, possibly their own mothers" (159). Fox-Genovese adds that the plantation's cook presided over the kitchen, a place that antebellum mistresses rarely...