Charles Waddell Chesnutt Long Fiction Analysis
Charles Waddell Chesnutt wrote three novels that were published during his lifetime and several that were not published until much later. He was a much more skillful short-story writer than a novelist, and although he developed most of his novels from short stories, one of the novels is exceptional as a literary work. Those reading his novels should remember, however, that some of the matters for which Chesnutt is criticized today—thin, idealized characters and the use of plot manipulations such as foreshadowing and coincidence—were standard in the fiction of the late 1800’s and were accepted by the readers of the day.
Chesnutt dreamed of being a novelist, and he believed that racial issues such as the problems of passing, miscegenation, and racial assimilation had to be addressed in serious fiction. He found, however, that if he tried to write novels that would be commercially successful, publishers would not accept them, and if he tried to write works that examined racial issues honestly and with sympathy for blacks, the public would not accept these topical but controversial novels.
Chesnutt is notable for being the first African American fiction writer to gain a reputation for examining honestly and in detail the racial problems of black people in the United States after the Civil War. Many Americans in the last part of the nineteenth century preferred to ignore the problems of African Americans and especially did not want to read works of fiction that displayed sympathetic attitudes toward blacks, such as those written by Chesnutt.
His most successful years as a novelist, if they can be called successful, were from 1900 to 1905. During that time, his three published novels appeared: The House Behind the Cedars, The Marrow of Tradition, and The Colonel’s Dream. Chesnutt believed that the only way to change the attitudes of Caucasians toward African Americans was to do so slowly and through fiction that expressed ideas indirectly. He believed too that preaching was not art, yet with each novel he became more of a crusader. After giving up writing in 1901, he decided that he could help his people best by achieving in a field other than writing. Chesnutt may have been a victim, just as his characters sometimes are. The themes that he could present most effectively and that he felt compelled to present were ones that the public would not accept; thus he did not continue to write novels and so did not develop further as a literary artist.
Any study of Chesnutt’s three published novels should begin with an understanding of the author’s views concerning racial issues of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. One of the racial situations with which he was most concerned was that of the mulatto. The mulatto shared many of the problems of the full black person but was also confronted with two additional issues—those of passing for white and miscegenation. (Chesnutt himself was a mulatto who appeared white and who considered trying to pass for white.) Those passing might achieve social, economic, and professional opportunities, but they also had to make emotional sacrifices by giving up their families and friends. Furthermore, they faced certain limitations; for example, they had to avoid becoming too well known or distinguished because their pasts might be revealed.
Chesnutt believed that Americans had an unnatural fear of miscegenation. Because of this fear, persons of mixed black and white blood were outcasts in society and were almost forced to try to pass for white to obtain the American Dream. Ironically, those forced into passing and marrying whites began again the miscegenation cycle that was...
(This entire section contains 2929 words.)
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so feared by whites. Anglo-Saxon racial purity was something that should not be preserved, Chesnutt believed. He asserted that intermingling and integration would improve humanity biologically, but, more important, such mixing would result in African Americans’ gaining the rights they should have as human beings. Only through the elimination of laws against intermarriage and social interaction between the races would African Americans gain true social, economic, and political equality.
Chesnutt’s three published novels are all problem novels that treat his characteristic theme of the effects of color consciousness in American life. The first one, a novel of miscegenation and passing, is written from the point of view of “the socially alienated, ambitious young mulatto,” as William Andrews has put it. The second novel takes the viewpoint of “a conscientious Southern social critic,” and in it, Chesnutt analyzes the political aspects and the caste structure of the small town in the South after the Civil War. The last one, in the vogue of the muckraking novel, is an economic problem novel told from the viewpoint of “the progressive northern reformer.”
The House Behind the Cedars
Between 1890 and 1899, Chesnutt greatly expanded and revised his short story “Rena Walden” until it became The House Behind the Cedars. He focused first on how color consciousness can destroy an interracial marriage and then on the predominant issue of whether a mulatto should cross the “color line.” In March, 1899, he stated in a letter to Walter Hines Page that the Rena Walden story was the strong expression of a writer whose themes dealt primarily with the American color line. When he wrote to his daughters in the fall of 1900, he indicated that he hoped for “a howling success” from The House Behind the Cedars, “a strong race problem novel.” The story of Rena Walden and her brother was the first in which the problems of Americans concealing their African heritage were studied with a detached and compassionate presentation of individuals on various sides of the issue.
The novel can be divided into two parts: Rena in white society, in which her brother is the major focus, and Rena in black society, in which she becomes the focus. The novel is set in Patesville, North Carolina, a few years after the Civil War. John Warwick, who has changed his name from Walden, has left Patesville and gone to South Carolina, where he has become a lawyer and plantation owner, acquiring wealth and position. He and his sister Rena are the children of a quadroon mother, Molly, and a white man who has died. John has returned to Patesville to help his beautiful sister escape the restrictions of color by teaching her how to pass for white. She is a success at the boarding school in South Carolina to which he takes her. Proof of her success in passing is seen when George Tryon, a good friend of John and a white, wants to marry Rena. Rena is not sure she should marry him, however, without telling him of her mixed blood. John and Rena indirectly discuss the pros and cons of passing and intermarriage. A series of coincidences leads to an unexpected meeting between George and Rena; he learns of her heritage, and the engagement is broken. Rena returns home to her mother and the house behind the cedars.
A chapter interlude that gives the Walden family history separates the first part of the novel from the second. John tries to persuade his sister to return to South Carolina with him or to take money and go to the North or the West, where she can pass for white and marry someone even better than George, but she refuses to leave Patesville. She has decided to accept her destiny and be of service to her people, whom she has rediscovered. After this point, the reader is told little more about John.
Rena meets Jeff Wain, an influential and prosperous mulatto from a rural county for which he is seeking a schoolteacher. Rena accepts the position, not realizing Jeff has a personal as well as a professional interest in her. Jeff is not as admirable a character as he first appears. As he pays Rena more and more attention, she becomes upset and repulsed. Once again, coincidence plays a part in the plot. George Tryon happens to learn of Rena’s presence near a place he is visiting. When he sees her, he realizes that he loves her and that his love is stronger than his racial prejudice. The same day that George decides to declare his love to Rena, Jeff also decides to do so. Rena fears both of the men and leaves hastily for her mother’s house behind the cedars. After Rena is overcome by exposure and fatigue, Frank Fowler, a childhood friend and a conscientious black workman, finds her and carries her to her home, where she dies. Rena realizes before she dies that Frank loved her the best.
In his fiction before The House Behind the Cedars, Chesnutt did not directly condemn passing and miscegenation, but neither did he directly call for them. Primarily, he wanted the public to be aware of the issues and to feel sympathy for those of mixed blood. In this novel, he makes passing and miscegenation acts deliberately chosen by mature African Americans. Such choices were justified because they were the only means by which blacks could gain and enjoy the social, economic, and political rights due them as citizens of the United States.
Rather than lecturing, Chesnutt seeks to lead his readers to share his perspective. He delays revealing that John and Rena are mulattoes. To create sympathy for them first, he presents them simply as persons of humble origins who are attempting to achieve prosperity and happiness. Chesnutt passes John and Rena for white with the reader before he lets the reader know that they are mulattoes who have chosen or will deliberately choose to pass for white.
John Walden is the first black character in American fiction to decide to pass for white and, at the same time, to feel that his decision is legally and morally justified. Believing that the color of his skin tells him that he is white, he has no psychological problems concerning his choice to pass. He is not a stereotype. Intelligent and industrious, he patiently trains himself so that he can achieve the American Dream. At the beginning of the novel, the reader learns that he has become a prosperous lawyer and plantation owner after leaving Patesville; in the second part of the novel, after he has not been successful in helping Rena pass for white, he returns to South Carolina to regain his position.
The characters are not fully developed; they remain stick figures, although Chesnutt is partially successful in creating human interest for them. While Chesnutt attempts to create pity for her, Rena is simply a victim who accepts her fate, like other antiassimilationist mulattoes of the time. Another character, Dr. Green, is no more than a vehicle to present the traditional southern viewpoint. Two figures, Molly Walden and George Tryon, retain some individuality. Molly, as an unprotected free black woman in the slave South, is a product of her environment. With the circumstances that she faces, she can do little other than be the kept mistress of the white plantation owner, who has died but left her the house behind the cedars. Chesnutt does not want the reader to feel contempt for her or to be repulsed by her actions; her position is rendered dispassionately. George Tryon, on the other hand, undergoes great emotional upheaval and has a change of view that is probably meant to be instructive. He is tied to the traditional code of the southern gentleman but is not deluded about his prerogatives as a southern aristocrat. Rather, he is meant to be the best of the new South. His realization that he loves Rena and that her racial heritage is not important comes too late; she dies before he is able to do anything about it. He does not blame her for passing, and Chesnutt expects the reader not to blame her.
In The House Behind the Cedars, Chesnutt tries to present a mulatto that is not a prop or stereotype, one who deserves interest and sympathy apart from his position on the miscegenation issue. Furthermore, he treats the theme of color consciousness in post-Civil War American life honestly, in contrast to the sentimentalizing of other authors of the time. This novel, the one for which Chesnutt will be best remembered, should be read for its historical place in American literature.
The Marrow of Tradition
Immediately after finishing The House Behind the Cedars, Chesnutt began working on his next novel. Events in Wilmington, North Carolina, gave him a race problem for the novel. In November, 1898, during city elections, a bloody race riot had taken place in which more than twenty-five black persons were killed, after which white supremacists took over the town government. Chesnutt followed events in the city after this incident. He learned graphic details when a local Wilmington physician visited him in Cleveland and described what he had seen when the violence was at its peak. Chesnutt also sought information from other friends in the area, and, in 1901, he went on a fact-finding trip to Wilmington and Fayetteville.
The Marrow of Tradition is the story of two families: The Carterets stand for the aristocracy of the “new South,” with its pride and prejudice, and the Millers, who are of mixed blood, represent the qualities of the new black. The lives of the families are intertwined because the wives are half sisters. Janet Miller, however, has been cheated of her inheritance by Olivia Carteret, and Olivia constantly struggles with the problem of accepting Janet as her rightful sister.
The novel’s study of white supremacist politics in a small southern town after the Civil War is more relevant to the problems encountered by the husbands than to those facing the wives. Dr. Adam Miller is a brilliant young surgeon denied opportunity in his hometown of Wellington (Wilmington, North Carolina). Major Philip Carteret, editor of the town’s newspaper, seeks to seat a white supremacist regime in the local government. If he is successful, Adam Miller’s position will be even more intolerable than it has been.
At the end of the novel, Major Carteret stirs up a riot during which Dr. Miller’s son is killed. Immediately after the death of the Millers’ child, the son of the Carterets becomes ill, and Adam Miller is the only person who can perform the surgery necessary to save the child’s life. At first Miller refuses, but after Olivia Carteret humbles herself before her half sister and pleads with her to help save the Carterets’ son, Janet Miller convinces her husband to change his mind and operate. The child is saved.
The Marrow of Tradition was too controversial a novel for the public when it was published. Americans were not ready for the subject of white supremacist politics and the political injustice existing in the South. Chesnutt himself was concerned that the novel approached fanaticism. He believed that it might not be wise for him to speak so plainly concerning such matters if he hoped to succeed as a fiction writer.
The Colonel’s Dream
Like Chesnutt’s previous two novels, The Colonel’s Dream seems to have come from a long story that became a novel; however, no manuscript evidence for such a history exists. This novel deals with the economic status quo in the South, where caste and class prejudice prevented the rise of nonwhites. Muckraking novels were popular at this time, but none had been published about the new South. Chesnutt tends to become didactic in this novel, and he relies on overused novelistic machinery such as melodramatic subplots that involve interracial love and a lost inheritance. The novel is almost an economic parable.
The main character in the novel is Colonel Henry French, who, though born and reared in the South, has become a successful businessman in the North. His wife has died, and he has returned to Clarendon, North Carolina, where he hopes his son’s health will improve. During the first part of the book, Colonel French, who is respected and admired by the townspeople, successfully reenters southern life. Although he is a white moderate, he comes to believe that he can unite the races into one society. He is especially concerned with improving the economic situation of African Americans. As he and the people of Clarendon become further and further apart in their understanding of the situation, he finds all of his efforts nullified by racial bigotry, and he must leave in failure. The novel was not successful commercially and is not very satisfying as a work of literature. After the failure of The Colonel’s Dream, Chesnutt decided to stop writing novels and devoted himself to helping his people in other ways.
None of Chesnutt’s three published novels was widely popular with the reading public of the early twentieth century, although The House Behind the Cedars enjoyed a modest commercial success. Furthermore, none of the novels can be considered successful artistic endeavors. Chesnutt sought to reveal his views slowly and indirectly so as to lead his readers to the feelings he wanted them to have. Too often, however, his “message” dominates, and he is didactic despite his intentions. His characters are not fully developed, even though Chesnutt attempts to present characters, especially mulattoes and African Americans, who are not stereotypes. It may be his strong concern with conveying his views and instructing his readers that prevents his characters from achieving depth. All of these novels are important, however, because Chesnutt was one of the first American novelists to create black characters who were not stereotypes and to deal honestly with racial issues that most Americans of the time preferred to ignore.
