Whiteness in the Novels of Charles W. Chesnutt |
Whiteness in the Novels of Charles W. Chesnutt
University Press of Mississippi
2004
248 pages
bibliography, index
Cloth ISBN: 1578066670 (9781578066674)
Paper ISBN: 9781604732481
Matthew Wilson, Professor of English and Humanities
Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg
An examination of race and audience in an American innovator’s writings
Charles W. Chesnutt (1858-1932), critically acclaimed for his novels, short stories, and essays, was one of the most ambitious and influential African American writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Today recognized as a major innovator of American fiction, Chesnutt is an important contributor to de-romanticizing trends in post-Civil War Southern literature, and a singular voice among turn-of-the-century realists who wrote about race in American life.
Whiteness in the Novels of Charles W. Chesnutt is the first study to focus exclusively on Chesnutt’s novels. Examining the three published in Chesnutt’s lifetime—The House Behind the Cedars, The Marrow of Tradition, and The Colonel’s Dream—as well as his posthumously published novels, this study explores the dilemma of a black writer who wrote primarily for a white audience.
Throughout, Matthew Wilson analyzes the ways in which Chesnutt crafted narratives for his white readership and focuses on how he attempted to infiltrate and manipulate the feelings and convictions of that audience.
Wilson pays close attention to the genres in which Chesnutt was working and also to the social and historical context of the novels. In articulating the development of Chesnutt’s career, Wilson shows how Chesnutt’s views on race evolved. By the end of his career, he felt that racial differences were not genetically inherent, but social constructions based on our background and upbringing. Finally, the book closely examines Chesnutt’s unpublished manuscripts that did not deal with race. Even in these works, in which African Americans are only minor characters, Wilson finds Chesnutt engaged with the conundrum of race and reveals him as one of America’s most significant writers on the subject.
Tags: Charles Chesnutt, Charles W. Chesnutt, Charles Waddell Chesnutt, Matthew Wilson, University Press of Mississippi