"Half a Curse"

• Originally appeared in Scribner's Magazine, I (February 1887), 151-160. Reprinted later that same year in Knitters in the Sun.
• Set in St. Augustine, Florida.
• "The characters included the conventional beautiful heroine, an army captain, a Negro servant, and a carpetbagger from Tennessee" (McMichael, p. 102).
• Race issues: The stereotype  of the wise and loyal to the death former slave. Also, it is made clear Venus is also Seminole, and "her features, [were] Indian rather than Negro" (Thanet, p. 272).
• Even though Venus uses the word "witch" to describe her mother, McMichael decides it is "voodoo" (p. 102).  Interestingly, Venus does have a clear awareness of the repercussions of curses and that they backfire.

Basic Plot: 

Mrs. Legare has a devoted servant (former slave) named Venus. Johnny (Union soldier) meets Legare and befriends Venus at the start of the story and spends lots of time with her in the gardens and the kitchen before returning North.

When he returns after the war, he finds that the property has been taken by Baldwin, who we later learn, from Mrs. LeGare:

He was an overseer on my uncle's plantation , and was sent away for cheating. He went into the Yankee army afterward as a sutler, but he had to leave because he would get provisions for the people here from the commissary and then sell the provisions. (Thanet, p. 286)

Baldwin refuses to let Venus pay the property tax, as she is not the owner (LeGare is away when the war taxes are due), and he buys the property out of spite. Venus puts a curse on him (only half of one, though, as her mother never taught her any full curses).

Despite the fact he isn't living on the property, Baldwin refuses all offers to buy the property back (from LeGare, Johnny, Venus), and eventually gets Yellow Fever. Despite his orders for LeGare to leave the property, she determines she will go nurse his family back to health. 

Venus goes in her place. She, of course, contracts the disease and dies, proclaiming it is her punishment for the "half a curse." Baldwin shows up on her funeral day to evict LeGare, but his heart is softened when she tells him it was Venus who nursed his family back from the brink of death. He gives the house back (no payment). 

​McMichael does a great job of summarizing some of the issues here:

The story followed the romanticized tradition of post-bellum southern fiction with its mansion,its southern belle, and its Negro mammy, a loyal and noble illiterate providing wisdom and salvation for her betters. The resolution brought by the union of the Yankee officer (Johnathan) and the southern [widowed] maiden, reuniting the North and South, was an equally overworked convention. (p. 102)