The Passing of Grandison

Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1899

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Story Analysis

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Themes

Different Types of Passing

While “passing” often refers to a person of color being accepted as white (the author of the story, Charles W. Chesnutt, was commonly thought to have light enough skin to “pass”), the passing in the story’s title is open to a different interpretation. Grandison passes for a content and loyal slave and continually seems to pass on freedom when allowed to flee. Grandison’s acts of “passing” ultimately allow him to free both himself and his entire family.

Finally, as with the character of Grandison himself, the whole story seems to “pass” as something it is not. Scholar Martha Cutter notes that, throughout the story, Grandison “passes” for a loyal slave, confirming Dick and Colonel Owens’s ideas of what a content slave should say and do (Cutter, Martha J. “An Intricate Act of Passing: Strategies of Racial and Textual Subversion in Charles Chesnutťs “The Passing of Grandison’” CEA Critic, vol. 70, no. 2, 2008, pp. 46). Dick’s initial pick to accompany him North is his attendant Tom, who is Grandison’s cousin. When Dick asks Tom to go North, Tom immediately realizes the opportunity for freedom, which he had thought about often but never put into concrete plans. Tom realizes that he cannot let Dick know about his intentions and that he must “dissemble his feelings” (61). As it turns out, Tom has not been able to “pass”: Colonel Owens once saw him looking at a newspaper and says, “he pretended to be looking at a woodcut, [but] I’m almost sure he was reading” (62). Because of his suspicion that Tom can read, Colonel Owens thinks Tom would be susceptible to the influence of abolitionists and that it is “by no means safe to take him” (63).

Grandison’s performance of loyal servitude and dedication allow him to pass as someone who “recognized his true place in the economy of civilization” (66), according to Dick’s and Colonel Owens’ worldviews. While accompanying Dick on his journey north, Grandison continuously passes on freedom to the point where Dick feels “seriously annoyed” (66). These acts of passing obscure his intention to free his family. Because the story is mostly told from Dick’s perspective, and Dick is steadfast in his misconceptions about Grandison and other Black people, the story as a whole “passes” for something it is not. Like Dick, the reader might initially be convinced that Grandison is content in servitude. Not until the end does the reader see that, like Dick, they have been tricked into complacency by Grandison’s various acts of “passing.”

Ideas of Race and Identity

This story explores race and identity both through the race-based assumptions of Colonel Owens and Dick and in the juxtaposition between Grandison’s performance and his ultimate plan. Both of the Owens men subscribe to the widely held 19th-century belief that a person’s race indicated other attributes: specifically, that white people were inherently intelligent, strong, and capable, and that Black people were a sub-standard race. Nineteenth-century scientists like Harvard University’s Louis Agassiz popularized belief in polygenism—the idea that different races of people are different species with different attributes. Today, the scholarly consensus is that these assumptions are incorrect. In the 19th century, however, this “scientific” theory supported racial inequality. Both Dick Owens and the colonel are influenced by such beliefs. For instance, at one point Dick realizes he cannot blame Grandison for not escaping given that he “sensibly recognized his true place in the economy of civilization” (66).

The reader never gets direct insight into Grandison’s thoughts on race and identity. The reader must draw conclusions mainly by juxtaposing Dick’s opinion of Grandison, such as revealed in the above quote, with Grandison’s ultimate success in escape. Based on these two points of evidence, there is a gap between Dick’s interpretation of Grandison’s identity and Grandison’s true identity. This juxtaposition of Grandison’s true self to the self he performs for his masters brings to mind what W. E. B. Du Bois would later call “double-consciousness”: “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity […] The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife” (Du Bois, W. E. B. “Of Our Spiritual Strivings.” The Souls of Black Folk. Oxford World’s Classics, 2007 [1903], pp. 8). Double-consciousness is thus an experience of marginalized people in which they experience themselves as they know themselves to be and simultaneously as they appear to others in a society that oppresses them. Grandison understands how white Southerners see him: ignorant, childlike, grateful, and loyal. Rather than taking on these beliefs, Grandison uses his double-consciousness to exploit the colonel’s racism to win his freedom.

The Relationship Between Freedom and Autonomy

Even when Grandison lacks freedom, he retains a degree of autonomy—in other words, the ability to make decisions in his life. This introduces a degree of irony to the text that enriches Chesnutt’s satire: characters within the white slave-owning class such as Dick and Colonel Owens have freedom, but Grandison ultimately manipulates and controls them; conversely, Grandison does not have freedom, but he is the character most in control of their fate.

Because readers see the narrative from Dick’s perspective, they do not realize that Grandison is exercising autonomy from the moment he enters the story. Grandison navigates his conversation with the colonel preceding his journey North, telling him what he wants to hear and letting him believe what he wants to believe. For instance, when the colonel pointedly observes, “I reckon, Grandison, that you have too much sense to permit yourself to be led astray by any such foolish and wicked [abolitionists]” (63), he leads Grandison so directly to his expected answer that Grandison has only to agree, saying, “‘Deed, suh, I would n’ low none er dem cussed, low-down abolitioners ter come nigh me, suh” (63).

Later, Dick misinterprets Grandison’s passing on freedom as loyalty and lack of autonomy. In actuality, Grandison is waiting for the best moment to orchestrate an escape not just for himself but for his family. Realizing that Grandison once again failed to escape while in Canada, Dick ironically remarks to the sleeping Grandison, “I do not deserve to be an American citizen; I ought not to have the advantages I possess over you; and I certainly am not worthy of Charity Lomax, if I am not smart enough to get rid of you” (67). While Dick says this in a fit of self-pity, it proves to be ironic, since Grandison has consistently been influencing Dick’s actions. It benefits Grandison’s escape plan to trick Dick into taking him throughout the North, so he can grow familiar with his escape route and win allies.

In the end, watching Grandison sail away with his family to Canada, Colonel Owens can do nothing but “shake his fist impotently” (70), showing his ultimate powerlessness. At the end of the story, Grandison has used his autonomy to escape on his terms, gaining freedom for himself and his family.