Tennessee's Partner

Rooted in the perspective of a local narrator who closely observes the action, the story resembles a piece of gossip interspersed with anecdotes, explanations, and commentaries. This narrative style gives the story an intimate feel that is in line with Harte’s interest in writing that purportedly provides an inside view into the Gold Rush mining camps. As a prominent example of writing from the American local color movement, “Tennessee’s Partner” illustrates the intricacies of life in such a camp. The first section of the story introduces exposition about the cultural values of Sandy Bar through the lens of frontier lawlessness. In Sandy Bar, inhabitants do not use their real names but acquire nicknames linked to whatever distinguishes them, whether “some distinctiveness of dress” or “peculiarity of habit” (Paragraph 1). Harte thus immediately separates Sandy Bar’s inhabitants from legal infrastructure like proper names and introduces a society where identity is in the process of being invented.

Still, Harte does not present Sandy Bar as entirely lawless. The story’s inciting incident occurs when Tennessee flagrantly robs a stranger on the way to the saloon. In the aftermath of the crime, Harte explores one of the key themes of the story, The Pros and Cons of Self-Created Justice, by showing the way townsfolk take on the roles of judge, jury, and executioner as the situation demands. In this section, Harte treats Tennessee like a conventional Western hero, glorifying his “fearless […] self-possessed and independent” nature (Paragraph 5), his mischievous “good-humored” retorts, and his lack of emotionality as he coolly faces his trial and death sentence.

However, if the story comments on some themes seen in other frontier literature, it forgoes much of the violence and machismo associated with the lawless West to focus on The Transcendent Nature of Friendship. That the chase to capture Tennessee occupies so little narrative space illustrates this trend. In fact, the potential violence of Tennessee’s capture never materializes; a brief display of weaponry segues into the trial, with its exploration of the partner’s earnest attempt to save Tennessee’s life. By focusing on the relationship between Tennessee and his loyal partner, Harte subverts the nascent Western genre.

The anecdote about Tennessee’s partner’s marriage demonstrates the interplay between the conventions of frontier literature and the two men’s friendship. The narrator pieces together the partner’s backstory based on shreds of gossip that have passed through the town. The narrator makes a point of articulating that he is telling these stories exactly as he heard them “in the gulches and barrooms” of Sandy Bar (Paragraph 2)—presumably not where one would go for the unvarnished truth. In keeping with the makeshift nature of life and law in Sandy Bar, Harte’s narrator is more interested in showing how Tennessee’s partner’s reputation was constructed than in telling verifiable facts. To the residents of Sandy Bar, then, the most remarkable feature of the episode involving Tennessee’s elopement with his partner’s wife is that rather than duel the returning Tennessee in a display of machismo, Tennessee’s partner welcomes him home, “greet[ing] him with affection” (Paragraph 3). The legal matrimony between the partner and his wife loses its power and significance; the unofficial partnership between these two men takes clear precedence. Rather than apparent lawlessness leading to violence, it creates space for forgiveness and loyalty, leading to the deepening of an intimate relationship.

Nevertheless, the narrator recounts the episode with ironic detachment, remarking, for example, that “[The townsfolks’] indignation [at the lack of a duel] might have found vent in sarcasm but for a certain look in Tennessee’s Partner’s eye that indicated a lack of humorous appreciation” (Paragraph 3). The comedically understated description of the partner’s mood reflects the story’s broader exploration of The Utility of Humor in navigating difficult realities. That Tennessee’s partner is often the object of this humor—the narrator openly derides the partner’s homespun appearance and earnest effect as “ridiculous”—speaks partly to his status as an outsider among the townsfolk; nobody knows him well, as evidenced by the fact that they only acknowledge him through his relationship to Tennessee. However, the comedy surrounding the partner also reflects a deeper tension. Tennessee’s partner speaks plainly, directly, and with uncomfortably earnest sentiment. He represents raw sentimentality, while Tennessee and the other townsfolk adhere to an emotionally-distancing, self-protective style of humor that strongly eschews emotional vulnerability.

Despite this tension, from the trial on, Tennessee’s partner hijacks the story, becoming the central character as the narrator shifts from Tennessee’s conventional Western narrative tropes to the partner’s sentimental denouement. By the end of the story, the narrator’s perspective has changed dramatically. He has migrated from viewing Tennessee’s partner as a ridiculous outsider to solemnly attending Tennessee’s funeral. His account of the partner’s final days verges on romantic melodrama. This indicates that the narrator himself has moved from a place of using humor to distance the challenges of life in the mining camps to embracing the depth of the partner’s love and loyalty. The partner emerges as a subversive Western hero: a man defined by his relationships who wears his emotions on his sleeve. The story therefore both explicitly discusses and narratively dramatizes the way humor and sentimentality shape life in the mining towns. These two forces mediate communications, infuse the justice process, and profoundly affect townsfolks’ reputations, which, in remote camps isolated from legal infrastructure, strongly shape their identities.

Harte rounds out this depiction of life in a mining town with local dialect and expressive details about the rugged landscape. There is some scholarly debate about the nuances of Harte’s positionality as a local color writer. While he lived in a mining camp briefly, his direct engagement with the subjects of his story may have been more limited than his reputation suggests. This tension between the author and his adopted environment is evident in the contradictions present in the narrator, a supposed insider whose precise, educated, and literary voice contrasts strongly with the rural, working-class voices of his subjects. Harte’s approach to local color writing is less about rendering an environment as a local would, and more about constructing a bridge for an outsider looking in.