The mammy caricature commonly
portrays a larger, older, black maternal figure. Research has unraveled a large stereotype for the mammy caricature
and her presence in society in the form of pickaninny dolls and the recently retired Aunt Jemima's Maple Syrup bottles.
Caricatures are invented to
downplay the importance of an ethnic group. In an article about the stereotyping of different races, caricatures are
discussed as a link the the political significance of realism. It states:
Caricatures and stereotypes
of ethnic subjects, as Alice Walker has explained, 'were really intended as prisons. Prisons without the traditional
bars, but prisons of image.' Realism, as the representational antithesis to mere caricature, according to this argument,
performs the work of liberation, disentangling the human individual from the distorting grip of ethnic typology. (Wonham,
4)
Chesnutt uses the mammy
character to portray the opposite of what the human individual actually conceived of. By comparing Mammy Jane to other
African American characters in the novel, it is apparent that she portrays a fictional typology of the actual African American
individual at the turn of the century.
This stereotype of African
American female servants was present in popular films and commercials of the time. It is also typical of African American
characters to take on the role of mammy in novels focusing on the Jim Crow era. Charles Chesnutt's novel Marrow of
Tradition portrays Mammy Jane's character with all the typical characteristics of the mythical mammy
caricature.
