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University Microfilms International 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 USA St. John’s Road, Tyler's Green High Wycombe, Bucks, England HP10 8HR 7819589 FERGUSON* SALLYANN HARRIS CHARLES WADDELL CHEsNUTTI ASPIRATION AND PERCEPTION. THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY* PH,D,* 1978

© 1978

SALLYANN HARRIS FERGUSON

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED CHARLES WADDELL CHESNUTT: ASPIRATION AND PERCEPTION

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate

School of the Ohio State University

By

SallyAnn Harris Ferguson, B.A., M.A.

* A A A

The Ohio State University

1978

Reading Committee: Approved By

Professor Patrick Mullen

Professor Carl Marshall

Professor Thomas Cooley Adviser Department of English VITA

August 27, 1942 ...... Born - Franklin, Virginia

1973 ...... B.A., Norfolk State College Norfolk, Virginia

1974...... M.A., The Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio

1975-76 ...... Teaching Associate, Department 1977-78 of English, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

FIELDS OF STUDY

Major Field: American Literature to 1900

Black Literature. Professor Patrick Mullen

Twentieth Century British and American Literature. Professor John Muste

Nineteenth-Century British Literature. Professor James Kincaid TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

VITA ...... ii

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

Chapter

I. ASPIRATION AND PERCEPTION ...... 9

II. R A C E ...... 74

III. A R T ...... 110

IV. CONCLUSION ...... 138

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 143 INTRODUCTION

"The Dilemma in Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradition," a recent article by John N. Reilly, proposes that the basic conflict in this novel is between aspiration and perception. An observer perceives the racism and cor­ ruption of the society of the novel but deliberately contradicts himself by aspiring to the ideal that Blacks and whites can live together in harmony. This kind of conflict is germane to nearly the whole spectrum of

Chesnutt's fiction, the three published novels in particu­ lar. Colonel French, the protagonist of The Colonel's

Dream (1905), sees but refuses to accept the deep-rooted racism of his beloved South. Therefore, he foolishly launches a futile campaign to revitalize the South through the use of the capitalistic values and techniques he found successful in the North. In a like manner, Rena of

The House Behind the Cedars (1900) is given all kinds of indications that the i^hite man she loves would not accept her, if he knew she were Black. Yet, she becomes engaged to George Tryon and eventually has to accept the tragedy of his rejection as penalty for her false hope. Richard

Bone explains that "Rena's social aspirations are played against the constraining effects of caste, in a manner to

-1- 1 arouse the reader's indignation." The observer in The

Marrow of Tradition, Colonel French, and Rena respectively aspire to brotherhood and love, only to have their aspirations thwarted again and again before the overwhelm­ ing reality of racism, which, oddly enough, they cannot help but see.

The conflict between aspiration and perception in the fiction is most often mirrored in Chesnutt's themes, a collection of ideas mainly centered on economics, race and art. He was the product of the New England philan­ thropic spirit on the newly-freed Black of the late nineteenth-century. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1858, but raised in the South, Chesnutt was a man of industry, determined to make something of himself. A journal entry of April 23, 1878, shows his great enthusiasm for achieve­ ment :

I will go to the Metropolis or to some other large city, and like Franklin, Greeley, and many others, there will stick. I will live somehow, but live I will, and work. I can get employ­ ment in some literary avocation, or something leading in that direction. I shall depend principally upon my knowledge of stenography, which I hope will enable me to secure a position on the staff of some good newspaper, and then--work, work, work! I will trust in God and work. This work I shall undertake not for myself alone, but for my children, for the people with whom I am connected, for humanity.2 Helen M. Chesnutt's rather eulogistic biography of her father, Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color

Line (the only one as yet published), leaves the impression that economic success was the equivalent to manhood to

Chesnutt. In this way, he was like many southern Blacks during the post-reconstruction era determined to disprove the racial myths that sustained American slavery. They had to make good. J. Noel Heermance in Charles W. Chesnutt:

America's First Great Black Novelist explains that this zeal for economic success was a symptom of the times, and adds that "Chesnutt was very much exposed to this way of thinking . . . and it is clear that he was very much influenced by it."^ Therefore, one can see why Chesnutt worked so diligently to teach himself and perfect the stenographic skills that proved his economic mainstay during his lifetime. In the journal entry cited above, his main concern is not cultivating his art, but providing himself with food and shelter.

Nevertheless, Chesnutt loved literature and needed to be a writer, a profession that never paid him as well as the stenography business he later set up in Cleveland,

Ohio. Helen's biography tells how he reread the Pickwick

Papers and Uncle Tom's Cabin for relaxation. Many early journal entries excerpted in the biography show his genuine love for literature and learning. "I've been reading Byron and Cowper today. Cowper's 'Task' is splendid."^ His daughter also tells that Chesnutt studied Latin and history,

and memorized songs and poems he never forgot. That he

was a voracious reader is common knowledge to those

familiar with him. When Chesnutt decided to become a

writer, he did so as one destined:

I think I must write a book. . . . It has been a cherished dream and I feel an influence that I cannot resist calling me to the task. . . . A fair knowledge of the classics, speaking acquaintance with the modern languages, an intimate friendship with literature, etc., and a habit of studying character, have I think, left me not entirely unprepared to write even a book.5

Often, though, Chesnutt's desire for success (particu­

larly economic gains accompanied by social and political

status) creates some interesting problems. For instance, he quit the stenography business around 1900 to devote himself entirely to writing, but returned to it in 1905 partly because his books did not sell well. He discovered that he could better support his family as a businessman than as an artist. (They were used to expensive clothes, a housekeeper, a new house in a good section of Cleveland, summer vacations in the mountains, trips to Europe, college educations for the children--the two oldest girls attended

Smith concurrently and the son, Harvard, and so on.) In addition, before returning to the stenography business,

Chesnutt tried to improve the sales of his books by pro­ claiming that his characters were stereotypes, like those of the plantation school. In an article published for "The Publisher’s Page" of The Cleveland World, October 30,

1901, Chesnutt wrote about Marrow: "Among the characters

are a typical old 'mammy,' a faithful servant who is

willing to die for his master, and an ideal old aristocrat

who practically sacrifices his life to save that of his

servant.One cannot assume that Chesnutt is being

ironic here, since these characters are not developed

beyond their stereotypes, like an Uncle Julius of the

conjure tales. While portraying the ignorant, superstitious

ex-slave, he reveals the horror of the slave system under

which he suffered. Instead, these characters remain flat

throughout the novel and indeed, live up (or down) to what

Chesnutt says they are. Chesnutt's aspirations for art

appear to lessen once the comforts of his family are

threatened.

His aspirations for art also conflict with Chesnutt's desire for social prestige, an offshoot of economic success.

His nomination for membership in the Rowfant Club (a prestigious book and literary club of Cleveland) was turned down in 1902 because "the time was not ripe at the turn of the century for a gentleman of his race to be proposed."

This rejection has since been recognized as the source for

Chesnutt's short story, "Baxter's Procrustes," a caustic satire of a book and literary club which literally judged books by their covers. Chesnutt's name came up for member­ ship again in 1910, at which time he was accepted by the group. And he, in turn, accepted their bid. One wonders, however, why the satirist who wrote "Baxter's Procrustes" would join such a tribe. Clearly, Chesnutt's aspiration for membership in this "well-established bastion of

Cleveland aristocracy"® outweighed his aversion to the group's dilettantism, to which "Baxter's Procrustes" attests.

Finally, Chesnutt was compelled to speak oOt against the anti-Black atrocities in post-bellum America. Most of these were perpetrated by the South, with the complicity of the North. As time passed, he spoke more often on the subject-- from the subtle irony of The Conjure Woman (1899) to the glaring realism of The Marrow of Tradition. Racial matters became the major theme of his speeches and articles.

Some items in The Boston Evening Transcript (9/1/1900,

8/25/1900, 5/11/1901) provide good examples of this tendency. Chesnutt worked with the early NAACP and was awarded the Spingarn Medal for "his pioneer services as a literary artist depicting the life and struggles of Americans of Negro descent.Still, even Chesnutt's racial advocacy is influenced by economic considerations. If one re­ examines his statement on stereotypes in Marrow (cited above from The Cleveland World), one also sees that Chesnutt compromises his views on both race and art in order to sell books. Real racial and artistic integrity demand well- drawn Black humans--not the stereotypes Chesnutt claims 7 to have created. Additionally, his admission is hypo­ critical because he castigates American writers like

Maurice Thompson, Thomas Nelson Page, Henry S. Edwards, and

Judge Tourgee for the very sin he commits--their inability to portray Blacks as real human beings. In Chesnutt, economics is of uppermost importance, a given to be accepted by the critic.

Whether in Chesnutt's fiction or in his private life, the aspiration/perception conflict is ever present. The tension it creates makes for some absorbing fiction. In

Chesnutt's private life, it makes for an imbalance of concern among his major interests to the point that one wonders exactly what he thinks about them.

i FOOTNOTES--INTRODUCTION

1 The Negro Novel in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969) , pp. 36-37.

2 Helen M. Chesnutt, Charles W. Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line (Chapel Hill, N. C .: The University of North Carolina Press, 1952), p. 17.

3 (Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, 1974), p. 37.

4 Helen P. Chesnutt, p. 11.

5 Ibid., p . 21.

6 Heermance, p. 148.

7 John B. Nicholson, Jr., "A Biographical Essay" in Baxter's Procrustes (Cleveland, 1966), p. 51.

8 Robert Hemenway, "Baxter's Procrustes: Irony and Protest," College Language Association Journal, 18 (December 1974), 172-185.

9 Helen P. Chesnutt, p. 304.

-8- CHAPTER I

ASPIRATION AND PERCEPTION

An understanding of Chesnutt's fiction depends upon an

understanding of his motivation for writing. Though not

unlike many authors who write to create profound works of

art, Chesnutt intentionally sets out early in his career

to "write for a purpose, a.high, holy purpose, and this will inspire me to greater effort. The object of my writing would not be so much the elevation of the colored people as the elevation of the whites--for I consider the unjust spirit of caste which is so insidious as to pervade a whole nation, and so powerful as to subject a whole race and all connected with it to scorn and social ostracism--I consider this a barrier to the moral progress of the American people; and I would be one of the first to head a determined, organized crusade against it."-*-

Chesnutt's foremost reason for writing is to counteract the damage done to American whites when their acquiescence created the paradox of slavery in a democratic nation.

The primary thing to remember about his fiction is that at its roots are basic racial and moral interests. Always, he concerns himself with the elimination of seemingly

-9- 10 endless racial strife resulting from the initial moral breakdown within white America. He is America's self- appointed moral teacher.

Chesnutt recognizes early his need for a means to achieve his task and decides eventually that there would

"not [be] a fierce indiscriminate onset, not an appeal to force, for this is something that force can but slightly effect, but a moral revolution which must be brought about in a different manner. The subtle almost unidentifiable feeling of repulsion toward the Negro, which is common to most Americans --cannot be stormed and taken by assault; the garrison will not capitulate, so their position must be mined, and we will find ourselves in their midst before they think it."^ Making the transition from abstract moral goal to concrete method for achieving it comes about almost effortlessly for Chesnutt, for his task and the obstacles to its accomplishment parallel the Black quest for equality in America opposed by white refutation of egalitarianism where Blacks are concerned. America's denial to Blacks gives impetus to the emergence of the Chesnuttian technique of Black hope crushed by white selfish restraint. America's lack of equality for Blacks provides an ideal climate for the author's usually forceful presentations of good, resourceful Blacks degraded by perverse, immoral whites.

There is no sense of chronology to his technique; it is as 11

if he had it in mind when first beginning to write and had only to polish the skills and create the situations neces­ sary to give it flesh.

The technique assumes the innate morality and reason of whites. Chesnutt believes that once they see their iniquities, they will change their behavior towards Blacks.

A similar belief lies at the root of Martin Luther King's passive resistance strategy. His non-retaliation for white verbal and physical abuse compares with Chesnutt's "not an appeal to force," in that both adequately expose the violent and forceful racist to himself. Chesnutt and King tell the white he cannot be good if he wrongs the Blacks. He only can be the violent aggressor or the immoral conqueror.

Chesnutt makes art the tool for carrying this message, avoiding the blood and ugliness of King's streets.

Therefore, in Chesnutt's fiction, the conflict between aspiration and perception is basically found in technique.

Chesnutt uses it generally to create tension that mounts up to a denouement spelling out a particular idea the author wishes to expound. The short stories that established him as a serious artist early in his career show a manipu­ lation of situation in which aspiration conflicts with perception in order to induce characters and/or readers to perceive themes and attitudes that dominate Chesnutt and his fiction. The novels written later in Chesnutt's career, though less successful, also use the aspiration/perception 12

conflict technique. Chesnutt often reduces them to accumu­

lations of short story-like situations. He never mastered

the need for more depth of character and more sustentation

of plot, tone and theme required by the longer form.

Since Chesnutt's fiction is purpose-oriented, dramatic

situations with statements to make, getting at the core of

his ideas on specific topics requires finding the reason

for a particular writing. Always the story itself reveals

this, and more often than not, its purpose is associated

with attitudes toward economics, race and art exposed

through his technique. If the subject is economics, for

example, characters often are forced to confront to what

extent they value the dollar. A short piece like

"Appreciations," published in Puck, April 20, 1887, and written when the author was first experimenting with his

craft, illustrates this point. The message it presents

also is an opposing view of a dominant theme in Black

literature, the contention that economic success is a means to dignity for the Black man.

Uncle Pilgrim, the protagonist of the tale, goes

North seeking financial security, finds it but, para­ doxically, returns unhappily to the South. His discon­ tent, however, is not due to his frustration at not being able to provide for himself in the North, as is the case with the wretched freedman stereotype he resembles. To the contrary, "Yer kin git plenty wu'k, and big pay an' yer has all de privilege yer wants; but de rale fac1 is dat cullu'd people ain't 'preciated at the Norf. Dat's what's de mattahl"^ Here Pilgrim's aspiration for a better economic life is in conflict with the reality that its cost is in loss of human interaction. Uncle

Pilgrim's plight enables Chesnutt to suggest that, when

Blacks are confronted with problems of alienation while working in northern cities, securing financial gains should not take precedence over peace of mind. The South is a far better setting for Pilgrim because there he feels wanted, even if being wanted is expressed by the rather indignantly rendered "playful kick" given him by white

Tom McMillian. Ironically, to Uncle Pilgrim, "dat's what

I call 'preciation," indication of his preference for a white South that kicks to a white North that alienates.

The kick momentarily injures the body, but the alienation progressively destroys the soul. Uncle Pilgrim thinks like modern Blacks who appreciate more the blatant racist attacks of white southerners like George Wallace, whose candidness is the key to the Black's ability to prepare adequate defenses, than they do the guard-dropping tactics of white northern liberals whose martyr-1 ike toleration but non-acceptance of them keeps them socially impotent. Like

Ellison's invisible man, Pilgrim knows wherein lies the greater enemy. 14

In some of the fiction, the message the author intends

is initially remote, as in another early sketch, "A Mid­ night Adventure," a psychological study first published in

Register, December 6, 1887. Yet, it identifies itself as the conflict leads the reader to perceive a Chesnuttian moral, in this case the fact that subconscious guilt instills itself in the psyche after one uses people to advance himself and that white superiority is rooted in economic dominance. The story generally proposes that whites feel guilty when they advance at the expense of minorities and gauges their estrangement from this feeling.

The white protagonist's Pharisee-like smugness is placed in conflict with the guilt of his inner self. This aspira­ tion/perception conflict unmasks the face he shows the world to uncover the insecurity he harbors inside about the rightness of his race's action. Perception is made ironic, since the narrator never perceives the author's moral. That Chesnutt reserves for his reader.

While attending a wild west show, Jones, the narrator, unconsciously reveals his prejudices against Indians to his fiancee. "How thankful we ought to be that the accident of birth has made us children of a civilized and progressive race! Just imagine the fate of one connected by birth or marriage with these uncultured children of the forest and compelled to pass his whole life among them!"

(p. 85) Boastful pride of race is frowned on in Chesnutt; 15

consequently, Bella, the fiancee, does not share Jones'

sentiments and senses an inarticulate guilt inherent in

his equation of living among Indians with punishment.

"If one had been born an Indian, one wouldn't probably

find anything uncommon or diagreeable about it, and that as

for marrying one of them, there was no necessity or reason

for either of us to make such a sacrifice. . . ." (p. 85)

In order to better identify the guilt that Bella

senses, Chesnutt plays out the whole scenario of "The

Midnight Adventure" under the auspices of romantic con­

ventions, mainly the one which requires a viewer to find

sympathetic identification with an object. Jones'

inarticulate guilt indicates his empathy with the Indians, without which he could not pity them or feel guilty. He must have sympathetically, imaginatively projected himself

into the condition of the other, recognized their common

humanity but emerged secure in his belief in the Indian's

comparable inferiority. Still their plight arouses a pathos in him resulting in the subconscious desire to

sacrifice himself by marrying the Indian in order to, like

the Jewish survivor, punish himself for being "better off."

This "need to sacrifice" is tempered with arrogance,

though, because of its subtle assumption that the un­ civilized Indian can be improved by infusion with Jones' civilized white blood. (It once was justification for mass rape of Black women.) Through this gesture, he 16

fulfills man's responsibility to uplift his lower brother.

More importantly, the need to make the gesture more pre­

cisely identifies the aspiration of the tale, the need in

all men to do good as they see it.

But Chesnutt probes even.deeper into Jones' dual

feelings--his need to do good and feel superior--and

utilizes the dream to reveal his true feelings. (Although

there's no concrete evidence to support it, Chesnutt's use

of dreams as an artistic device implies knowledge of a

Freudian precept that contends dreams "can only be the content of the pre-conscious thoughts and of the repressed wishful impulse which are revealed by the facade of the dreams.")^ A liquor-induced dream allows the reader to discover facts Jones cannot face sober and in the light of day: that he feels guilty about the land that helped establish America as an economic and political power, and which the Indians and he believe was stolen from them by the whites. This is the perception Jones must hide. He cannot admit that, without white commitment to Indian exploitation, the race could not have achieved any power, any dominance or any superiority in America. The author, also, counters the argument made by whites like Jones that progress, symbolized by the streetcar one of the Indians mentions, is justification for the exploitation of Indians and, by extension, Blacks. Exploitation is immoral, but has the more insidious knack for creating guilt in the exploiter. 17

What Chesnutt has really uncovered in Jones is the moral imagination lying dormant beneath the surface of

his mind. For Jones, here is where it must remain lest he

be destroyed by the horror his moral imagination unfolds

about white immoral behavior with minorities. White

characters in Chesnutt usually cover up the immorality of their maltreatment of minorities, as in "A Midnight

Adventure," where psychological probing finds guilt that hides morality. But it is almost a fixation with Chesnutt to bring the moral self to light in such cases. Black characters often forget the importance of the moral imagination and must relearn it through revealing experi­ ence. The situations the author depicts reaffirm the dignity of the man who can accept the tenets of the moral imagination despite the influence of gain and the immorality of him who cannot.

"The March of Progress," published in the January, 1901, issue of Century, demonstrates how this Chesnuttian concern is dealt with in a predominantly Black setting. It also introduces another important theme in Chesnutt's writings, the significance of education in Black advancement. Educa­ tion has traditionally reduced Black dependency and in this story is the thing sought after for its return, a good job.

Tension is created in the story by another aspiration/ perception conflict, the competition for a teaching job between Henrietta Noble, dedicated, devoted and sick Yankee 18

liberal who came south fifteen years ago to teach Black

children, and one of her former students, college-educated

and now in need of work. The Black applicant is a symbol

of Black progress and the hope of his race for a better

life--aspiration. Noble symbolizes the debt the Black owes

for the paving of the way to hope --perception. When Blacks

recall specific acts of kindness rendered them over the

years by Noble and recognize that, despite her whiteness

and their responsibility to foster racial progress, they

have a moral obligation to her for all she has given, the

conflict resolves itself. The story suffers badly from

over-sentimentality, but Chesnutt makes clear that using

the moral imagination is more important than racial progress.

On the other hand, when whites are challenged to recognize

the moral imagination, in "The Goophered Grapevine" for

example; they ignore it, disrespecting the autonomy of

man and nature in the face of money that can be made off

of them.

Education also figures in the outcome of "Dave's

Neckliss," an Uncle Julius story not included in The

Conjure Woman collection. It was first published in The

Atlantic Monthly in October, 1899. Dave's aspiration for

learning and the rewards it brings are the subtly-disguised center of a story which permits Chesnutt to develop another favorite theme, the indignity committed against the Black man by the white through a slavery that crushes man's need to learn and know. The most salient feature of the story is the severity of Dave's punishment for the trivial crime of "stealing" a ham he did not steal. The injustice he endures endows him with the mythic character of fallible man scorned disproportionately to the crime he commits, like Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. Additionally, such severity begs the question of why Dave suffers so when the only "wrong" the story says he commits is "l'arn[ing] how to read de Bible. . . . Hit wuz 'g’in de law . . .

[and] one day Mars Walker--he wuz de obuseah--foun' out

Dave could read. Mars Walker wa'n' nuffin' but po' bockrah, en folks said he couldn' read ner write hisse'f, en co'se he didn't lack ter see a nigger w'at knowed mo' d'n he did" (p. 134], Of importance here is the fact that Dave is not punished by the owner of the plantation, who sees religion as a means of controlling the slaves and no threat to his superior status, but by the overseer who, after having Dave whipped for "stealing," is compelled to prove his superiority over Dave by forcing him to wear a necklace of a ham, totally degrading him. The poor white feels more intensely the competition of Dave's learning.

There is little surprise at the story's end when a completely-deranged Dave, consumed by the humiliation of wearing the ham, hangs himself upside down before the smokehouse fire, dehumanized, crucified. Even less surprising is the fact that "He didn' eben hab his Bible 20 fer ter comfort hisse'f wid, fer Mars Walker had tuk it erway fum 1im en burn it up, en say if he ketch any m o ’ niggers wid Bibles on de plantation, he'd du 'em wuss'n he done Dave" (p. 137). Other cultures practiced slavery, but in"Dave's Neckliss," Chesnutt exposes the uniqueness in America's slavery which conspired to make its slaves, animals. Other cultures knew that they had enslaved men;

America's democracy prevented it from admitting this to itself. Dave is released from the ham too late--after he is no longer a profitable worker but more importantly, after the ham need no longer be around his neck to wreak its purpose of total degradation.

Like the other Uncle Julius stories that will be discussed later in this paper, "Dave's Neckliss" is set in southern America before the Civil War. In stories with post-bellum settings, Chesnutt's economic perspectives become more pragmatic. He is less interested in revealing the injustices Blacks suffer at the hand of whites than he is in educating Blacks on rules to follow for their own survival. During this time in America's history, the Black

South, like the white, was in the midst of reconstructing itself in order to shed slave rags for clothing more fitting of human beings. In this setting, Chesnutt equates economic survival with the survival of the race.

"The Doll" is set in the era after the Civil War.

Chesnutt first published it in The Crisis in April, 1912. 21

It candidly proposes a theory developed earlier in The

Marrow of Tradition in the conflicting characters of

Dr. Miller and Josh Green: in order to do battle with

America's racial problems, Black people must first survive.

"The Doll" proposes that white violence should not cause

the Black to jeopardize financial advancement made in

this country. Its basic premise is that a Black without

money in a capitalistic society is doomed.

To illustrate this point, Chesnutt presents "The

Doll," a tale of a successful Black barber, Tom Taylor,

who is given an opportunity to avenge the death of his

father and improprieties made by a white man towards his

sister. Simultaneously, he is given the choice of either

being punished for avenging himself by killing the murder­

ous colonel, now pompously sitting in his barber chair

spewing his beliefs about Black subservience and cowardice,

or of ignoring the Colonel's past and present behavior and

continuing his prosperous barber shop. Taylor's Hamlet­

like debate with himself on whether or not to have his

revenge takes up the bulk of the story. The author

manipulates his decision somewhat by giving him a choice

not just between either killing his father's murderer or

being a good example of Black progress, but between being primitive or civilized. The desire for vengeance becomes

a metaphor for primitive, jungle-like behavior, which Chesnutt associates with the Black past of slavery and poverty. Maintaining his prosperous business comes to represent civilization, the Black future prosperity. In the end, Tom opts for civilization, especially after casting a glance at his daughter's broken doll, the symbol of her need of him to keep her life in good repair. He has the responsibility to remain so that he can take good care of her. "His own father had died in defense of his daughter; he must live to protect his own. If there Was a righteous

God, who divided evil from good, the Colonel would sometime get his just desserts. Vengenace was God's, must be left to Him to repay" (p. 412).

In this story, Chesnutt is especially adept at pre­ senting the conflict between aspiration, giving in to the primitive desire for vengeance (the equivalent to being poor), and perception, accepting the responsibilities a civilized world requires of one (prosperity). He starts by examining the two natures of man, the primitive and the civilized. Chesnutt first endows Tom with Hamlet-like passiveness and inaction. Early in the tale, the narrator reveals that Tom has dreamed about killing the Colonel several times in the past. "He would see the white man struggling in the water; he would have only to stretch forth his hand to save him; but he would tell him of his hatred and let him drown" (p. 409). At another time, Tom imagines that "He would see him in a burning house, from 23 which he might rescue him; and he would call him a murderer

and let him burn!" (p. 409). Still another time, "He would see him in the dock for murder of a white man, and only his testimony could save him, and he would let him

suffer the fate he doubly deserved" (p. 409). In each of these conditional, imagined episodes, the Colonel's death results not from Tom's aggressive attempts to destroy him but from his inaction. Even in his dreams, Tom does not actively commit murder; he simply refuses to-help the Colo­ nel in a life and death situation. Chesnutt, therefore, establishes that Tom is innately a civilized man who would passively dream of destroying his enemy, but who would not actively cause his death.

But in the barbershop scene, Tom, guided by the primitive instinct for vengeance, would have killed the

Colonel had it not been for two noises which, like the knocking at the gate in Macbeth that DeQuincey writes about, break the hypnotic spell that assumes control of him during the provocation of the Colonel’s physical presence. These noises act as spurts of reality that heighten the tension for the reader about the decision Tom will make while progressively, gently, letting Tom down from his high of primitive rage. The first noise, made by an incoming patron closing the door, draws Tom's attention away from the Colonel and on to a rational examination of the argument against killing--Tom was important as a 24

representative of a civilized and prosperous race, by whom

the race was judged. The livelihood of numerous Black

employees depended upon his remaining calm, for through

him they had jobs. The second noise, a dropped shaving

cup, directs Tom's attention upward where he glimpses the

broken doll that makes his decision. By choosing "society

against self, civilization against the primitive instinct"

Cp. 411), Tom shows himself the man the author has already

uncovered for the reader and, in turn, casts- down the

Colonel, an advocate of the southern code of honor, to the

station of the uncivilized. The Colonel' s derision of

Blacks for not being bloodthirsty indicts him as the

animalistic strain in mankind. That man fights at all is

because this strain exists. When Chesnutt exhibits the

dual nature of men, one which aspires to murder, the other

to civilization, he deflates the white's code which sees

nobility in killing, and reveals it as the genocidal streak

that it is.

Incidentally, as in Tom's case, Chesnutt repeatedly

resorts to religion to resolve some of the conflicts he

creates between aspiration and perception. Often he doles

it out to Blacks like Tom as a palliative against the

trials of white racism. Making religion the thing per­

ceived seems a safe, conventional way to achieve order in

some of the chaos he creates. It also gives some indica­ tion of the limits of the author's creative imagination. 25

Religion is also offered to Peter in "Uncle Peter's

House," Chesnutt's first published short story.^ As in

"The Doll," success is a good worth aspiring for, actually

"the symbol of power, prosperity, and happiness" (p. 168).

Uncle Peter's house is the particular good, for when he attains it, Peter surmises that he can feel like a human being. The tale is not as intricately wrought as "The

Doll," but Peter's determination to own the house despite repeated problems from white racists lets Ch.esnutt restate the theme of vengeance being God's. On his death bed,

Peter sentimentally says: "I see de angels cornin' to carry me home; and. on de othe' side of de ribber I see dat hebbenly mansion--a big white mansion, with green blin’s on de winders, and broad piazzas all 'roun1 it--. ..."

(p. 175) Peter has to die to get his house, for the description of his heavenly home matches that of the house he attempted to build on earth.

Chesnutt uses the technique of conflicting aspiration with perception in The Conjure Woman, but accommodates it to the pre-war setting when Blacks were most oppressed.

The stories are written in the local color tradition^ expanded to include Chesnutt's purpose of exposing slavery's evils. The "inner stories" are told by Uncle Julius and reflect how Black aspiration is very much limited by the times. The characters in these tales mainly seek a mere sense of humanness while under the complete domination of 26

white master's repeated attempts to dehumanize them either

by using them for money or as a means of making money.

What these Blacks try to hold on to is their souls in a

land where their bodies belong to the other. Their only

defense is conjuration, effective because the slavemasters

lack the imagination to believe in it. Perception usually

belongs to the white reader, since the Blacks know of the

injustices they face. White characters find the evil in

their dehumanization of Blacks incomprehensible, despite

its presence directly before their eyes.

In the post-bellum setting of the frame stories,

Uncle Julius's desire for gain is pitted against the narrator's intention to grasp and/or hold on to what Julius wants. His defenses limited, like most Blacks' after the war, Uncle Julius's only weapon against the narrator's greater wealth is the tales he tells in order to surrepti­ tiously dissuade John (the narrator) from taking action

detrimental to his or the Black's livelihood. As William

Andrews notes, "more often than not the motive behind

Julius's story telling is not nostalgia for old times . . . or a delight in entertainment [which is the case in most stories written in the local color tradition] . . . but the economic self-interest of old Julius himself who . . . has no intention of allowing the white man's encroachment on his holdings to go unchallenged."® Therefore, Uncle Julius tells the slave story in "The Goophered Grapevine" in an 27

attempt to subtly convince John not to buy the old MacAdoo plantation. But since the tale's power is endowed it by

its listener or reader's belief or non-belief, the "inner story" is a useless weapon against the rationalistic John who dismisses it because of its supernatural elements, buys the land and later informs the reader that he has since learned that Uncle Julius had earned a respectable income for many years from the neglected grapevines on the place. Unfortunately, John cannot see beyond Julius's economic motive for telling the conjure stories. His wife, Annie, and the reader are left to recognize the inhumanity in slavery they uncover. Only once, in "Dave's

Neckliss," does the liberal-minded John suspect that there is more to Julius than the quaint storyteller he sees.

"The Goophered Grapevine," first published in The

Atlantic Monthly in 1887, is one of the author's most anthologized stories; it also follows his basic technique of creating tension by causing conflict between aspiration and perception. Here, the tension results from a white slavemaster's lust for money in conflict with his ignor­ ance of how his greed exploits both man and nature. The exploitation of man and nature by whites is as important a theme in Chesnutt as it is in Faulkner. Chesnutt's slave- master's desire to make both more profitable increasingly ignores their real value and limitations. This new breed of slavemaster, called a "parsimonious Scot" by Andrews, is in direct contrast to aristocratic slaveowners found in

the works of those writing in plantation school tradition.

Unlike their characters, says Andrews, Chesnutt's slave- masters "cheat each other, indulge in gambling vices, hunt

down their runaways, argue with their wives, curse their

Q slaves, and worry about their bankbooks." Dugal MacAdoo, the slaveholder in "Goophered," learns that the slave,

Henry, was conjured to follow the cycle of the grapevine, becoming young, strong, and productive during the growing season and shriveling up after the harvest. MacAdoo sees this phenomenon as an excellent business opportunity, and over a period of five years, repeatedly sells Henry to an unsuspecting buyer when he is strong and buys him back cheap when he shrivels up. Chesnutt conjoins the fate of

Henry and the vine, of man and nature, to indicate the mutuality of their plight before the whites. Consequently, when MacAdoo over-extends their capacity to produce by permitting a speculator to doctor the vines in an attempt to increase production, they both die.

Henry is a hopeless victim in the tale, keeping silent because he knows silence insures good treatment during the winter when he ages. Chesnutt holds him up to his white readers to make them see the economic motive in slavery.

His plight is Chesnutt's lesson plan, conforming to a general concept of The Conjure Woman as a teaching tool permeated with subtle doses of morality proffered with the 29

expectation that artistic rendering of situations like

Henry's will thrash out the evils of racial injustice. The

author hopes his white readers will be the book's greatest

perceivers. But his expectation apparently goes wanting,

since he later alters his technique by almost eliminating

the subtle approach. The novels yell out the injustices

committed against Blacks, and conjuration, which tends to

forestall tragedy, is eliminated.

The slave characters in "Po1 Sandy," aTso first

published in The Atlantic Monthly (188) , and "Sis Becky's

Pickanniny" are not as passive as Henry because they

actively seek the conjure to protect them from losing part

of their souls, their need to give and receive love. Their

stories advance a theme in Chesnutt detected by Robert

Bone, that human slavery "is a crime against human love,"^

because it separates Black family members. Sandy of

"Po' Sandy" is loaned out as a laborer by Marrabo the

slavemaster, causing frequent and long separations from

loved ones. He returns from a loan once to learn that his

wife has been swapped away for a boot, and not even the

dollar Marrabo offers as compensation assuages his loss.

Only the hopelessness of his grief achieves this. When

Sandy is scheduled to be sent away from Tenie, his second wife, they resort to the conjurer. Andrews notes how "Po1

Sandy" is about as close as Chesnutt comes to real tragedy

in his fiction, and how the depth of Tenie's love and grief for her husband make her his most fully-rounded

female character.

The aspiration/perception conflicts in the frame and

inner stories of MPo 1 Sandy" parallel each other. Both

are precipitated by the white need to possess things.

Both indicate that time differences do not reduce this

need. In the frame story, John's wife wants a new kitchen

and "Of course, I [John] had to build it" (p. 38). In the

inner story, Marrabo wants a new kitchen, too. What neither

John nor Marrabo perceives is the effect of their wants on

Blacks. Julius stands to lose a church meeting place if

John uses the lumber for the kitchen as planned, and Tenie

loses Sandy who is killed for the lumber for Marrabo's

kitchen. Chesnutt, however, gives a detailed explanation

of the effect through Sandy's tragedy in the inner story.

The final scene where the conjured Sandy as a tree is cut up for lumber for Marrabo's kitchen symbolizes the grotesque

cutting up of Blacks through a slavery instituted to satiate

American whites' need to own things and people made things.

The mill men are as unaware that they are cutting up a man as is the slavemaster who thinks nothing of severing the family life of Black slaves. Whites are redeemed somewhat in the frame story when Annie, John's wife, refuses to use the lumber from the schoolhouse to build her kitchen.

But it is small compensation to Blacks who endured the separation and cutting up that Sandy and Tenie suffer. AuntNancy of "Sis Becky's Pickaninny" sympathizes with Becky, whose husband was sold from her and who is separated from their child because the slaveholder traded her for a racehorse to a man who wanted no babies. Nancy visits the conjurer in Becky's behalf, hoping to reunite mother and son. Becky's story ends happily, like that of some Blacks, separated during slavery, who eventually found their family members after the war. But Sandy and Tenie's fate mirrors that of most Blacks who never achieved re­ unification. What is common to both situations is the profit factor in their slavemasters1 motivation for separating them and their willingness to fight for love.

Chesnutt included "The Conjurer's Revenge" in the

Conjure collection to show how the Black can achieve advantage over the white. His greatest weapon is white ignorance of the imaginative powers and the deceptiveness of appearances. Julius aspires to dupe John into buying a defective horse and John, who usually ignores Julius's opinions on business matters, is taken "for the deceitful­ ness of appearances."12 Julius succeeds this time because his aspirations, while conflicting with John's, are un­ perceived by him. Early in the book, Chesnutt establishes that John is a rationalistic thinker, a fact which, in the past, accounted for his skill at discovering the material motives behind Julius's tales. But this time, the author has Julius tell a seemingly purposeless story, one that 32

Annie, John's wife, who usually detects the seriousness behind the tales, says "does not appeal to me . . . and is not up to your usual mark. It isn’t pathetic, it has no moral that I can discover, and I can't see why you should tell it. In fact, it seems to me like nonsense"

(p. 127).

Neither John nor Annie perceives that Julius has begun a series of manipulative acts designed to culminate in John's buying the horse. Neither perceives that Julius tells the seemingly meaningless tale precisely to get the response he does--doubt of its validity. This doubt leads to another stage of his plan, the following discus­ sion in which he tells about an incident of doubt when someone tried to trick him into disbelieving the truth of his senses. The final step in the process is for him to say what he has been aiming at all along: "Ef a man can't b'lieve w'at 'e sees, I can't see no use in libbin1 mought's well die en be whar we can't see nuffin" (p. 178).

Saying this, Julius is catering to the literalism and superficiality inherent in John's rational way of approaching experience, which most Blacks view as the typical way whites think. And preying on these shortcomings he effortlessly suggests that John look at the horse, since he, like Julius, certainly cannot be fooled by what he sees. John, knowing little about horses at the time but smug about his superior ability to know through the physical 33

senses, buys because the horse "appeared sound and

gentle" (p. 130). Julius is more the trickster figure of

Black folklore in this portrayal, cajoling John into

believing appearances which, indeed, can be deceptive,

while cleverly never challenging John's obvious confidence

in his own intellectual superiority. Annie also remains

within the realm of white reasoning powers and, never

venturing into imaginative thought beyond the senses, is

duped. Had she broken the barrier of literalistic white

reason, she might have figured out the meaning behind

Julius's telling the tale. "The Conjurer's Revenge" is

one of the better examples of the remarks David Britt makes

about the conjure tales generally being deliberately struc­

tured to fool the reader who needs to be fooled or "What

You See Is What You Get."13

"The Gray Wolf's Ha'nt" also illustrates the themes

of the failure to use the imagination and the deceptiveness

of appearances, and like other tales in Conjure, follows

the pattern of Julius's telling the tale in order to gain

something. It, like "The Conjurer's Revenge" and "Hot-

Foot Hannibal," the last story in the Conjure collection,

deals with relationships among Blacks, making these stories

unique among others in the book. As Britt indicates, the

concentration among Blacks enables Chesnutt to explode many of the stereotypes of Black behavior with situations presented to reveal their humanity. 34

The short stories included in The Wife of His Youth,

except "The Passing of Grandison," are set after the Civil

War and are drawn around the dominant theme of the color line. They mostly explore the thin line tread by those

Blacks who look more white than Black. Like Chesnutt, who could have passed for white, the people of Wife are the result of Black/white cohabitation which became a profit­ able business during slavery. Lighter-skinned slaves sold for higher prices on the slave market than pure Blacks.

After the war when this economic advantage was destroyed, whites no longer acknowledged the superiority of whiter

Blacks, but these Blacks, having been given favored treat­ ment by whites and Blacks alike, tenaciously held onto the myth of color superiority. "The long association between color and economic and cultural superiority inevitably led blacks in a segregated society to place high value on light skin color, straight hair and thin lips. This esteem of the white beauty standard among blacks at the turn of the century can be traced to the pre-emancipation preferences of whites and their continued preference, through the early years of this century for mulattoes 'because they look more like white peopleThe majority of people characterized in The Wife of His Youth evolved out of these beginnings until they created a Black bourgeoise who 35

did perform some charity and good works, and there were some missionary endeavors among fellow blacks of less fortune on the assumption that lower class blacks could be raised bit by bit from the depths. However, there was little respect for lower class blacks, very little participation in their life, and even less appreciation for their values. Those blacks in positions of authority as teachers provided little example at the distance maintained, though, like missionaries, they made every effort to pass on their preferred morals and manners. Of course the relationship between upper and deprived blacks was largely one based on fear, fear that the upper class minority might be pulled down to the level of the masses. **

Thus, the white-blacks were placed in a rather tenuous position, "one of inconspicuous living between the lower class black world and the world of white. There in insula­ tion grew a privileged but frustrated group, unable to break entirely away from the stigma of the lower black world and unable to break into the even more elusive’ spector of the white world. E. Franklin Frazier describes this class as it exists today, living in a 17 "cultural vacuum their lives devoted largely to fatuities."

The stories included in Wife seem more indicative of

Chesnutt's personal views. Since they are not plagued by the burden of surviving slavery, the mostly mulatto characters of the collection take the responsibility for their survival as free men. The situations delineated in the stories advance Chesnuttian attitudes or variations on these of how Blacks can survive. The book comprises three 36 major theories for survival success, which remaining stories amplify. Chesnutt still presents his "how to’s" through an aspiration/perception conflict, but unlike in

The Conjure Woman where hopefully the greatest perceiver from the tales is the white reader or listener, characters in Wife join the ranks of those who are expected to see.

The book has a rather bi-partisan tone because of Chesnutt's obvious intention to teach the Black on the rules of survival in post-slavery America, while the white listens in. It is even more partisan in its leanings toward that small, select group of the color line.

The first lesson Chesnutt teaches his color line residents is to remember the past. In "The Wife of His

Youth," the first story in the Wife collection, he con­ trasts a present characterized by achieved Black economic and cultural aspirations with a past of slavery and the horror it bred. This is done to illustrate the need to counteract the temptation among Blacks, in general, and color line residents, in particular, to forget, after achieving nominal security, that slavery bred them.

These Blacks face the danger of achieved aspirations obscuring the harsh realities of their births. Chesnutt makes clear that ignoring the Black past means ignoring

Black love and devotion which slavery could not destroy.

Love and devotion, the author feels, are as valuable as any economic or cultural successes the Black could achieve. 37

The present is symbolized by Ryder in "Wife"who, owning his home, eating fine foods, wearing nice clothes, and

having a chance to assimilate even more into American

culture by marrying an attractive, near-white woman, is

challenged to perceive the importance of the past. The past is symbolized by Liza Jane, who married Ryder during slavery, but shows up twenty-five years later, still

faithful and loving, seeking the husband she lost during the pre-war years. The past, too, is slavery itself implicit in the grotesque physical description of the now- shrunken Liza Jane. "She seemed quite old; for her face was crossed and recrossed with a hundred wrinkles. . . .

She wore a calico gown of ancient cut, a little red shawl fastened around the shoulders with an old-fashioned brass broach, and a large bonnet profusely ornamented with faded and yellow artificial flowers. And she was very black,-- so black that her toothless gums revealed when she opened her mouth to speak were not red, but blue. She looked like a bit of the old plantation life, summoned up from the past by the wave of a magician's wand. . . . Ryder, without sentimentality, embraces this wife of his youth and accepts their past rooted in Blackness, in pain and in love. He unites his past with his present success.

Had he not done so, he more than likely, would have encountered the problem inherent in an observation made by

John Wideman. "Racial awareness must be maintained by a 38

Negro in American society. . . . Ironically, there's no

other means of transcending race. The cost of remembering

blackness may be annoying, painful, an insupportable

burden, or a heightened consciousness of self that is

integrative and toughening but the cost of forgetting

is annihilation sudden or subtle.

Chesnutt, however, does not show the depth of thought

that Wideman does about the importance of the Black past.

Instead, he romanticizes it, is nostalgic about it,

seemingly unaware of the power of the past as a life-

sustaining force. The love theme is responsible for this.

Ryder obviously would not have found anything to embrace

about the past if Liza Jane had not been such a faithful,

loving wife. When he embraced her, he had no choice but

to take along the abstracted past. The romanticization of

the Ryder affair undercuts the importance of history to

Blacks and illustrates instead just one of many occasions

when Chesnutt’s ambivalence obscures his true feelings

about race. This problem will be dealt with later in

this paper.

The characters of "A Matter of Principle," a counter­

part to the "Wife "story, deliberately ignore the past and

become objects of Chesnutt1s satire as a result. "The

fundamental article of Mr. Clayton's social creed was that he himself was not a negro" (p. 94). Wife, like The

Conjure Woman, depends upon a variation on themes to give 39

it structure; therefore, "A Matter of Principle" reverses

the past/present theme of "Wife" in order to permit the

reader to see its underside, the consequences to those

mulatto Blacks who do not heed the message of "Wife" to

remember the past. The Claytons, like Ryder, are success­

ful Blacks aspiring for even more, namely a good marriage

to a Congressman for their daughter. Unlike "Wife," where

the color theme plays a minor role, color in "A Matter of

Principle" is of utmost importance--since th.e epitome of

success is being as light-skinned as possible. Clayton

will not permit his daughter's marriage to even a prominent

Congressman if the man is obviously Black. To the Claytons,

whites are "the most virile and progressive race of modern

times" Cp• 95). Ridicule of them derives from their

ludicrous antics to avoid a coal-Black preacher whom

Clayton has mistaken for the Congressman.

Chastisement of the Claytons for their wrong thinking

occurs in "A Matter of Principle ," but it amounts to a

mere pat on the back of the hand in comparison with the

depth of feeling ignited by the importance of the Black

past brought out in "Wife." Actually, their punishment,

Alice Clayton's loss of the good looking, near-white

Congressman to her greatest rival, undercuts "Wife," which tacitly implies a moral defeat if Ryder denies his

old, Black wife. Additionally, throughout "A Matter of

Principle," the reader and the Claytons know that Alice 40

will lose little, for waiting just off stage is another

eligible suitor, Jack. And the Claytons are never made to

confront their prejudices. They never learn why they are

being punished. They are severely ridiculed for the hypo­

crisy in their adherence to principles of white supremacy while claiming belief in equality, but ridicule is all they get. None of that heightened consciousness Wideman talks

about is offered to them. Instead, by the end of the story, they are the same static characters they were at

its beginning, with Clayton repeating almost verbatim ironic lines from the tale’s opening paragraph: "’What

our country needs most in its treatment of the race / problem . . . is a clearer conception of brotherhood'”

(p. 94). A sad statement on the future of Black progress is made here if those most-influential Blacks remain ignor­ ant of the importance of the Black past. Satirizing people like the Claytons is not enough, since it provokes only a few laughs but resolves no problems. Again, Chesnutt reveals the superficiality of his thought concerning the

Black past; he does not see it beyond love's sentimentality.

Unlike Wideman, he seems not to perceive it as a mechanism for Black survival.

Stories like "A Matter of Principle" have the special knack of uncovering Chesnutt's kinship to the dilemma experienced by color line people. J. Saunders Redding relates Chesnutt's ambiguities concerning color line 41

situations to a basic struggle between the artist and the man most evident in Wife, where he is a man of the color

line dealing with problems of the color line. Redding uncovers Chesnutt's problem when he asks what the author

tries to convince his readers of by holding up these characters to ridicule. He concludes that Chesnutt is unsure about what his attitude is in color line situations.

A good conjecture is that the author recognizes himself in

Clayton, intellectually committed to princip.les of brother­ hood but emotionally chained to principles of success that, unfortunately, eschew equality with and acceptance of true Black skin.

Further support for this line of thought occurs in

"Her Virginia Mammy," where Chesnutt exhibits a tendency to equivocate on the Black past issue by creating a situation where the new rule is that the past should not interfere with the future (a future, by the way, in living white for the near-Blacks involved). As in The

House Behind the Cedars, Chesnutt sets up conditions where it is permissible to pass, thus killing off Black pasts.

He unfortunately adopts an attitude like that of many mainstream writers whose stories with miscegenation themes offered no real solutions to the problems created by the issue. Like them, "Her Virginia Mammy" lays the Black ^ past to rest by suppression, not by resolution. Clara, the heroine of the tale, never learns that she is Black. 42

Here, again, is another example of an emerging aspiration/

perception conflict which seemingly is the author's. His

intellectual need to speak for a race he chose despite

physical features that deny his Blackness is in opposition

with an emotional need to belong to the other and "suc­

cess." Because the Claytons and Clara never had to resolve

their problems of color, one wonders if the author does.

So that Chesnutt can teach another rule of success to

the color line characters, Uncle Wellington'-s aspiration

for a better life in the North, in "Uncle Wellington's

Wives," is in conflict with the realities of his fitness

to survive there. He uses a basic North/South contrast

to best bring out his point. In the South, Wellington has no real challenges since his sustenance is provided for by a hard-working wife. But in the North, where he alone

is breadwinner, Wellington learns that he is untrained and too old to fit the requirements for getting good employ­ ment. Defeated, he returns to the South. William Andrews comments that this tale's strength lies in the fact that

Chesnutt avoids treating Wellington as the wretched freed- man in the northern city but explains how he falls short 21 in the real qualities necessary for success there. In other words, Chesnutt does not see race hindering the success of the qualified Black. "The principal trouble in the matter of the development for colored people is not 43

the trained man, but the untrained man. . . . The trained,

the educated man, of whatever race, seems to be able to

take care of himself in whatever place." 7 7 The second

major message Wife brings is to be trained and qualified

for jobs.

A third way to Black success is introduced in "The

Web of Circumstance" through an opinion commonly held by

color line residents. As mentioned earlier, these Blacks

live in constant fear of being pulled down t.o the level of the Black masses by less fortunate Blacks. "Web" presents a situation when such a thing happens. Ben Davis, a successful mulatto blacksmith, is excessively punished for a crime he did not commit, prompting one to ask the same question asked about Dave in "Dave's Neckliss," Why?

Davis's only "error" throughout the story is probably getting caught up in the eloquence of his own rhetoric.

Chesnutt obviously wants the reader to conclude that he is punished because he talked too much, that Ben's business success gives him the confidence to break a cardinal rule of white supremacy: Blacks should not speak of equality for their people. Ben, therefore, is accused, sentenced to prison, deprived of his family, ruined as a businessman, and eventually killed because he does this. As the judge tells him before sentencing, "Your opinions, too, have been given a wrong turn; you have been heard to utter sentiments which, if disseminated among an ignorant people, would 44

breed discontent, and give rise to strained relations

between them and their best friends, their old masters,

who understand their real nature and their real needs, and

to whose justice and enlightened guidance they can safely

trust” (p. 312).

But the role that Tom, Ben's helper and implied thief

of the whip Ben is accused of stealing, plays, though

seemingly minor, adds further significance to Ben’s plight.

(Chesnutt is especially adept at hiding bits, of information

in his situations that completely reverse their obvious

readings.) Tom is a foil to Ben, aspiring to the same

goals but unlike him unwilling to attain them through the

same hard work. Tom does what the story teaches is wrong,

becomes jealous and envious of the Black who has achieved

and attempts to steal Ben's all from him. Tom, not the whites, by deliberately incriminating Ben, sets into motion the web of circumstances that bring out the whites

against Ben, like vultures to a decaying carcass. He

initiates a chain of events leading to Ben's destruction, a destruction Tom knows the whites have long awaited. That one poor and criminal Black's envy of another Black's prosperity destroys the prosperous one is the message of

"Web." It mirrors the resentment felt by many of the color line inhabitants at being lumped in with all Blacks, including those like Tom. In making this attitude the point of "Web," Chesnutt shows his relationship to the color line people. In truth, he held a great distance between himself and the masses of Blacks and found a

connection more through sympathy than anything else. While

in the South, he did not share their common circumstance,

environment and habit. He did not feel a blood-warm

kinship to their earth, nor a common destiny.23 In the

North, most of Chesnutt's friends were of the color line

or white. "Web of Circumstances" is just another of those

instances in his fiction where we see more of him as the color line resident than we do the Black man. And this tale uncovers more of Chesnutt*s personal aspiration/ perception conflict --his aspiring to color line goals but his being forced by society and a sense of racial loyalty to accept its dictates of color. Unlike Walter White, a former NAACP president during the nineteen forties who, like Chesnutt, could have passed for white but chose not to,

Chesnutt equivocates in his decision and reveals ambivalences that eventually separates him from Black people. Treading the color line only makes his separation more distinct.

The novels are structured on conflict between aspiration and perception. The Marrow of Tradition,

Chesnutt*s second novel, reflects his growing disillusion­ ment with the deterioration of Black status in the South.

As Helen Chesnutt notes, Chesnutt was upset because states like Mississippi, the Carolinas and Louisiana had imposed legislation that robbed Blacks of their suffrage and eventually all other rights. Such strategies as the imposition of a poll tax and the infamous "grandfather

clause" requiring that a person be allowed to vote only if his grandfather had voted (thus eliminating Blacks who had just received the franchise), had been enacted. Chesnutt was indeed incensed by the Wilmington, North Carolina race riots of 1898, on which he based Marrow, and felt that in writing the novel "he might stir up the thinking people of the country to a realization of what was taking place in the

South" (Helen Chesnutt, p. 159). The Marrow of Tradition is a depiction of the author's hope.for Black advancement shattered by the perception of the ends to which whites go to maintain superiority.

The theme of race imperialism in Marrow contrasts with its theme of the futility of integration. How the white race in the South uses imperialistic ideals to control the Black race is what Chesnutt is intent on exposing. Concurrently, he alludes to America's greater commitment to imperialism during the time the book was

\tfritten. Belief in the territorial expansion tenets of manifest destiny, for example, gave it justification for attempted dominance of North America. White characters,

McBane, Carteret, and Belmont, openly bigots for one reason or another, carry the task of conveying the hows and whys of white imperialism inflicted on the Black race. Other white characters, representatives of various facets of their culture, react to the bigots' quest for power and, 47

running truer to the stratum of society they represent

than to fidelity of characterization, provide Chesnutt

the opportunity to pontificate more succinctly on his

theories against race imperialism. The Black characters,

from the lowly "gopher" Jerry, to the bourgeoise

Dr. Miller, run the gamut of Black culture types and are

also reactionaries to the bigots’ actions. Their reaction­

ary roles parallel those of the whites, only the Blacks

convey how the author thinks they should or should not

respond to' being victimized.

Inherent in the imperalism theme is the assumption

of a quest for dominance and this provides the makings

for a conflict between aspiration and perception. How

the conflict works becomes clearer as Carteret, et al.,

aspire to regain white rule from the legal, integrated

government now in power in Wellington. They justify their

actions on a belief that this government has no right to

exist, and they plunge head on into the restitution of white supremacy governmental ideals. To accomplish their goals, they use genocide, the epitome of imperialistic technique, euphemistically called "demonstration" and, later, "revolution" in the novel. Carteret, et al., simply set aside a day to steal the franchise from unsuspecting Blacks by mercilessly slaughtering nearly every one they see. Blacks left untouched by the riot are those who can be useful to them, like the preachers-- 48

"We can make 'em write letters to the newspapers justifying

our cause as a condition of their remaining" (p. 251),

or Dr. Miller, who is not considered a threat because he

is not political-minded. Importantly, another Black is

left unharmed because he has the backing of the United

States government.

Having been shown the bitter cruelty of whites against

Blacks in Wilmington, Chesnutt seems to use Marrow to purge himself and any Black who needs it of any in-tegrationist

attitudes they might have felt. After the author has told his tale of white imperialism against the Black race, after he has uncovered the basest of white characters, he

"ends in the dilemma of having so powerfully documented the corruption of white society that it is impossible to honor the ideal of integration into it."^ Although the novel powerfully documents white corruption and is against integration, Marrow does not entirely support Reilly’s contention that the end is a dilemma for the author.

Indeed it implies that Blacks' perception of the intensity of white hatred of them resolves any dilemma and quashes aspiration for integration. Dr. Miller, the novel's protagonist, who embodies the essence of Chesnutt's economic and social idealism, is brought low. The bulk of Marrow attests to the fact that integration of the races is no answer to the race problem and that the author offers no substantive solution outside a feeble hope. 49

By looking at the results of the imperialism theme , one sees Black expiation of integrationist principles.

All whites are shown as immoral in their dealings with

Blacks. Firstly, the bigots accomplish their goal and disfranchise the Blacks despite momentary revulsion at their own tactics. More importantly, the horror of the riots has no permanent effect on the bigots, who are about as firmly fixed in their beliefs in the end as they are in the beginning. Granted that McBane is killed by Josh

Green but the McBanes, easy haters, come cheap; that another can and will be found is assumed. Belmont, whose major interest in the disfranchisement is economic, quits once he achieves his goals of stopping money from flowing into

Blacks hands and reverts it back to the \\rhite. But he, too, it is suggested, would lead another "revolution" if cir­ cumstances require it. And Carteret, who participated in the conspiracy because of idealistic belief in the divine rights of whites is made to see Dr. Miller as a human being equal to himself. Yet this perception is uncon­ vincingly achieved under duress, leading the reader to surmise that it will last about as long as Carteret needs

Miller to administer medical aid to his son. Also Carteret is appalled by the violence of the white mob, but when he cannot stop it, he absolves himself of any responsibility for what happens, preferring instead to take the tradi­ tional white way out in these matters and blame everything 50

on the Blacks. "We can do nothing. The negroes have

themselves to blame,--they tempted us beyond endurance.

I counseled firmness, and firm measures were taken, and

our purposes accomplished. I am not responsible for these

subsequent horrors--I wash my hands of them. Let us go!"

(p. 307). At the somber end of the novel, the assumption

is that white bigots like those responsible for the riots need only meet and reorgnize, and that they will.

Secondly, Chesnutt uncovers the hypocrisy of the liberal-minded whites. Ellis is "horror-stricken" by the tragedy of the afternoon, but "there was nothing for

Ellis to say. In his heart he could not defend the deeds of the day. The petty annoyances which the whites had felt at the spectacle of a few negroes in office; the most unnatural resentment of a proud people at what had seemed to them a presumptous freedom of speech and lack of deference on the part of their inferior-these things which he knew were to be made the excuse for overturning the city governments, he realized full well were no sort of justification for the wholesale murder or other horrors which might well ensue before the day was done. He could not approve the acts of his own people; neither could he, to a Negro, condemn them. Hence he was silent" (p. 291).

Ellis represents the liberal-minded, middle class of white society, the silent majority, and he, when confronted with the tragic riots, chooses to be a white man rather than a 51 moral one. By remaining silent he consents to the crime he abhors. Like most white liberals, he backs down when situations involving Blacks become too controversial or violent. Chesnutt shows that he is the white the Black cannot rely on when things get serious.

Thirdly, the author ridicules Janet Miller for wasting years, yearning for recognition and acceptance from her white half-sister, Olivia Carteret. He achieves this by showing Olivia unworthy of Janet's recognition. Olivia coldly burns the legal papers proving Janet's legitimacy and right to inherit equally from their father's estate.

Her meager offering of a donation to the Miller hospital compounds Olivia's sin. Chesnutt also ridicules Janet by granting her desire and permitting Olivia to accept her as her sister. But the author attaches a string to this recognition, making Janet pay for it with her son's life.

Janet and Olivia's acceptance of each other could have been the novel's strongest statement for integration. The author makes the recognition a farce.

Every white character in the novel, except Clara

Pemberton who is never tested, is shown unfit for associa­ tion with Blacks because of his or her moral turpitude.

Even good, old aristocratic Delamere, who barely saves his servant Sandy from lynching, is found immoral. He remains silent on the fact that Sandy actually was being blamed for a murder his grandson, Tom, committed. Delamere rational­ izes that he could not sully the family name by revealing 52

the truth about Tom, but he certainly could risk Black

Sandy's life to protect the name. After overwhelming

evidence of the whites' unfitness for interaction with

Blacks, most of whom are portrayed as victims, the Black

should be cleansed of any feeling of trust in or respect

for whites. He should attain a pride in his Blackness

similar to that of Walter White writing in The Saturday

Review of Literature on the aftermath of a youthful experience when he and his family.faced a white mob intent on burning out the upwardly mobile Black family.

In the quiet that followed I put my gun aside and tried to relax. But a tension different from anything I had ever known possessed me. I was gripped by the knowledge of my soul. . . . I was sick with loathing for the hatred which had flared before me that night and come so close to making me a killer; but I was glad I was not one of those who hated; I was glad I was not one of those sick and murderous by pride. I was glad I w a s not one of those whose story is in the history ^ of the world, a record of bloodshed, rapine and pillage. I was glad my mind and spirit were part of the races that had not fully awakened, and who therefore had still before them the opportunity to write a record of 25 virtue as a memorandum to Armaggeddon.

But in case there are Blacks who still find integration with whites of value, Chesnutt brings low Dr. Miller,

"Wellington's most successful Negro in the sense that he is as close to white as the town-'s written and unwritten laws will allow any blacks to be. His 'white' appearance, his superior education, deportment, speech, wealth and 53

social standing seem to place Miller in a class by himself,

making him the classic ’middle man,’ neither fish nor

fowl, whose existence both dramatizes the arbitrariness

of distinctions based on race and simultaneously reinforces

the absolute force of such distinctions."2^ Miller's

character is a projection of Chesnutt1s--industrious,

hardworking, stable and disciplined. The imperialism

theme is influential in his reduction because through it

the author sets the limits for Miller's phil.osophy of

survival. Miller carries the philosophy too far, so that

he sinks too deep in the mire of white dominance. When

Blacks were being slaughtered one by one during the riots,

Miller, full of illusions, should not have fed them

impotent doctrine about not fighting back in order to

survive. He could not see that the only ones surviving were those who had shunned political activity, like himself.

Political inaction stifles Black progress by closing off

the one means to Black advancement offered in the novel.

Miller's thinking would leave all Blacks like him, politically inactive and impotent in controlling their own

lives.

A hint of Miller's end is given early in the novel during a discussion among the conspirators deciding which

Blacks to leave unharmed during the riots and which ones to attack. It was suggested that Miller be left unharmed because "'He's a very good sort of a negro, doesn't meddle 54

with politics, nor tread on any one else's toes; . . .

He's spending money in the community too, and contributes

to its prosperity"1 (p. 252). Miller is no threat to

these whites because he does not demand the vote for

Blacks and only wants to be left alone to peddle his

trade. This*'aspect of his character resembles the one

side of Booker T. Washington's thinking most disputed by

Chesnutt and others, the part about not fighting for the

Black right to vote and participate fully in. America's political and economic system. Chesnutt makes clear that

the educated Black should especially have political inter­ ests lest all other interests not survive. Miller's hospital is burned during the riots, he loses his son and becomes symbolically invisible when forced to step down from his carriage by poor-white trash. He is even incapa­ ble of making a doctor's decision. He has to ask his wife, Janet, to decide whether he should attend to the

Carteret baby. The moral victory at the end of The Marrow of Tradition is Janet's, not Miller's.

If there is any hope in the novel, it does not come from Miller's finally being allowed to enter the Carteret front door to take care of their sick child. If anything, it comes from liberals like Ellis, old Delamere and

Dr. Burns who, though faulty, are all the Blacks have in the novel. The novel's overwhelming portrayal of white immorality in dealing with Blacks requires Blacks to accept the lesser of two evils. 55

Chesnutt's advocation of miscegenation as the key to the race problem in his essays and his daughter's biography of him do not jibe well with the philosophy of

Marrow. Therefore, critics try to explain away Marrow1s overwhelmingly unflattering picture of the white race with explanations'of "dilemmas" as Reilley does. But William

Dean Howells might have been more perceptive than most when 2 7 he claimed that Chesnutt was bitter in Marrow. Howells might have glimpsed that Chesnutt was not above momentarily hating whites for their immorality to Black people. Even though Chesnutt is not generally seen as hating whites, who is to say that writing Marrow did not allow him to vent the frustrating anger and hate he felt after learning about the Wilmington riots? Such an incident should have incensed the best. The biggest problem of Marrow, the unflattering portrait of whites, indicates that the riots, indeed, got to Chesnutt. Writing the book was probably his way of not allowing the hate he felt to destroy him. The ending is filled with the author's hope.

Although the Colonel's Dream, Chesnutt's last published novel, is not in the tradition of the American 2 8 economic novel, it is the author’s examination of economic policy as it existed in the post-bellum South.

To create an atmosphere of aspiration, the author uses the conventional character type of the idealist aiming to correct the evils of the world. Tension results from the 56

conflict created when perception of the obstacles to

aspiration occurs. The quest motif of the novel leads to

questions of how and why Colonel French, the idealistic

protagonist, fails in fulfilling his ideals. It also

highlights tl^e novel's biggest problem, again, the

Colonel's failure. Briefly, Colonel French, having lived

the majority of his adult years in the industrial North,

returns to his southern homeland intent on using large

sums of money to make this once prosperous land live again

in the aftermath of the Civil War. Once economic security

is established, he assumes, every other facet of living

will stabilize itself. In other words, the Colonel

espouses a basic assumption of economic prosperity bringing

harmony. But despite a seemingly endless sincerity,

enthusiasm for the job, commitment and money, French is

unable to build the cotton gin that he feels will bring

jobs and subsequent economic and cultural stability to the

land.

One reason French is defeated is his lack of perception

about the intensity of white hatred of Blacks in the

South and the extent of white commitment to the principles

of white supremacy. A basic premise of slavery was an

assumption of Black inferiority and animality. The novel

refutes this, however, by Black achievers like Nichols.

French fails to perceive that white acceptance of Black equality requires a simultaneous recognition of the lie 57 used to justify slavery. He does not see that the whites cannot face realities like these and that they take the easy way out by institutionalizing white hatred of Blacks.

The hatred is no more than unexpiated guilt moved beyond the extremes of resentment. The profundity of the crime blocks white perception. Moreover, French does not see that white supremacy is an extremely privileged and profitable circumstance, to which the zeal to hold on to it displayed by South Africans today attests.. Insecure

Clarendon whites are not about to relinquish one iota of what amounts to ego-food stolen from Blacks through this system, especially during the rather precarious post-war era of the novel. Their attempts to hold onto the advantages of slavery through the peonage system is but one example of their insecurity. The self-esteem and sense of importance derived from white supremacy buttress the whites against accepting the truth of their roles in slavery and against the traumas of just being human, which are less trying experiences with Black props.

How badly these whites need Black props is demon­ strated in a scene in which Black men try to raise a fallen horse caught in the shaft of a wagon, to the conflicting advice on how to do it from white men standing by. This exercise in futility continues until French runs out of a nearby hotel, and with common-sense directions, frees the horse. A southern general, however, uses the 58 incident to illustrate how Black incompetence has caused the South's backwardness. "That's why the South is behind the No'th. The niggers in one way or another, take up most of our time and energy you folks up there have half 2 9 your work done before we get our'n started." In placing the blame on the shoulders of Blacks whose problem was trying to follow confused white advice, the major absolves the Southerners from responsibility for incompetent leadership. With the Blacks to blame, they continue in the demeanor of self-righteousness, self-importance and self-delusion, unable to face the fact that without the

Blacks, they would have only themselves to blame. That notorious stance of American innocence does not give way.

When the Colonel remains blind to these almost obvious facts, he qualifies as the white northern liberal lacking in total commitment to race equality. Lerone Bennett explains this rather paradoxical creature best. "The white liberal is a man who finds himself defined as a white man, as an oppressor, in short, and retreats only halfway, disavowing the title without giving up the privileges, tearing out . . . the table of contents and

'Z n keeping the book." In other words, French feigns blindness to the race problems. He saw numerous occasions where whites mistreated Blacks--one which involved his dear friend Uncle Peter. Yet French knew complete align­ ment against immoralities like these would cut him off 59

from lines to whiteness and privilege. Being morally

right was not worth giving this up. So French limits

action on what he sees.

Another reason French fails is that his character--

sympathetic, passionate, romantic, nostalgic, and containing many of the attributes of the typical Yankee businessman-- works against him. The latter descriptive element is the

greatest culprit, for supported by his liberalism, it poses a great threat to a complete commitment to humanity.

It also paints French as less than the one-dimensional

character he sometimes appears. French is totally com­ mitted to the tenets of Yankee capitalism, which makes for defeat in a non-industrialized South built on slave labor.

Capitalistic zeal for profits tends to ignore human rights.

Labor problems in the North are but one indication of this.

When they reach southern shores, capitalistic attitudes must be especially tempered to accommodate the fact that slavery existed there. Chesnutt emphasizes that total commitment to change must be given in order to cleanse it from its stain of slavery. But French, faithful to proven capitalistic ideals, practices capitalism's basic precept: "Business is business, and a man's own interests are his first concerns" (p. 1 3 2 ) . French makes all concerns second to his personal ones and those of busi­ ness, thus lessening the commitment he can make to the revitalization of Clarendon. His liberal position, 60

described by Bennet as "the Shadow of safety, the Shadow •z n of comfort, the Shadow of greed, the Shadow of status,"

supports him in his choice of priorities, providing the

flexibility he needs to survive in both the world of the

reformer and the world of the businessman. Playing this

dual role, French becomes what Henry F. May terms a

"practical idealist,"-53 fulfilling a puritanic need to

adhere to God's teachings (Yankee liberalism is steeped in

• 7 A this attitude), even though it is self-serving.

And French is motivated by projects he suspects will turn a profit. No doubt, he wants to build the mill for humanitarian purposes, "to shake up this lethargic community; to put its people to work and teach them habits of industry, efficiency and thrift" (p. 106). But French is more the capitalist who is very much aware of the South's industrial potential. "Shrewd minds in the cotton industry had long ago conceived the idea that the South, by reason of its nearness to the source of raw materials, its abun­ dance of water power, and its cheaper labor . . . was destined in time to rival and perhaps displace New England in cotton manufacturing" (p. 104). Businessman that he is,

French scouts the terrain of the mill's location and decides that "Such cotton mill would require only an inconsiderable portion of his capital, the body of which would be left for investment elsewhere" (p. 106). Chesnutt reinforces the image of French, the Yankee businessman, through the frame story set in New York at the beginning of the novel. 61

His business partner, Kirby, characterizes French after

seeing him off on his trip south. "'He'll be back in six

weeks'. . . . 'I know him well; he can't live without his

club and his counting room. It is hard to teach an old dog

new tricks'" (p. 4). Kirby, whose remarks amount to fore­

shadowing, misses French's return date by a little, but he

is fairly accurate otherwise. For French thrills in

business competition, a character trait also foreshadowed

in the frame in the sports terminology used in his response

to Mrs, Jerviss about the profitable deal they had just

successfully closed. "'It was all in the game,' he said,

'and we have won'" (p. 11). There is little surprise

that his competition with Fetters provides him with a new

game in the South and that it explains, as well as any­

thing else in the novel, his hasty retreat north when he realizes how formidable an opponent Fetters is. French can no longer kick Fetters' behind through the streets of

Clarendon as he had done years before. This time, he

loses the game, and the battle becomes merely a tactic that delays the trip back north and causes kirby to miss on his exact return date.

Some of French's blindness to the force of racism results from his being too much the businessman and a lot less the human being sensitive more to the needs of the people with x^hom he must live and work than to profit.

Since he envisions the cotton mill as a good investment, he is determined to build it at all cost. French is so busy trying to accomplish this feat that he has little

insight into the conditions around him. Maybe if the

Colonel had made more effort to promote good human rela­

tions, making both races see their mutual benefits from the mill's success, for example, he might have forestalled the consequences of such incidents as that involving the firing of his white foreman, Jim Green, and the hiring of a Black man to take his place. Subsequent desecration of the graves of French's son and Uncle Peter by Green and his friends has a direct link to this incident. No one asks French to cater to white supremacy and racism. But, he, indeed, is challenged to acknowledge their existence and find ways to handle them. French was trying to build a mill; however, he was no expert in human relations. His being a liberal made him appear that way, but his sincere human concerns are repeatedly undermined by his business interests.

French's strong propensity for self-indulgence also interferes with the success of his plan to improve

Clarendon. The first evidence of this quality appears when he impetuously buys back the family estate from

William Nichols after giving in to a period of nostalgic musings about his old southern home. Before Nicols agrees to sell, French tells him, '"I had no notion of buying the place when I came in and I may not be of the same mind 63 tomorrow'" (p. 81). The self-indulgent aspect of his character was predicted by a warning rendered by an intrus­ ive narrator in the frame story that French is "more likely to be misled by the heart than the head" (p. 3). Buying the house as'he does, French's heart mistakenly leads him to believe that he can go home again. Unfortunately, this home, envisioned by French as a kind of Shangrila, does not exist (if it ever did). Trying to recapture the past is mere self-pandering, but French never recognizes this.

His business ventures in Clarendon also make for much catering to his ego. He is the sole energy force behind the growing activity of the community. "The stream of ready money thus put into circulation by the Colonel, soon permeated all channels of local enterprise. . . .

General trade felt the influence of the enhanced pros­ perity. Groceries, dry-goods stores and saloons, did a thriving business" (pp. 88-89). While the community thrives, French gets to appear God-like despite his personal profit. His visibility before the community satis­ fies the good puritan businessman makeup, for it is a certain ego boost to the man who can initiate single- handedly such activity and response. Some of this egoism is sensed later when in the same breath that French utters the humanitarian rewards building the mill will bring, he also thinks, "this [building the mill], he imagined, would be a pleasant occupation for his vacation, as well as a 64 true missionary enterprise --a contribution to human pro­ gress . . . it would not interfere at all with his freedom of movement; for once built, equipped and put in operation under a competent manager, it would no more require his personal oversight than had the New England bagging mills which his firm conducted for so many years" (p. 106).

Like a true company man in the General Motors tradition,

French egoistically adopts a policy that reads what is good for him and business is good for Clarendon. This attitude is the epitome of capitalistic arrogance. When the Clarendonians do not adhere to this line of thinking and impudently demand that French recognize the South for what it is, a land festering in the aftermath of slavery's sin, French takes all his marbles and scurries back to

New York where play is less hate-filled. The narrator earlier tells of French's awareness "that the people of

Clarendon might not relish the thought that they are fit subjects for reform" (p. 108). Foolishly though, French's ego helps him to ignore the warning inherent in this statement.

Finally, French's overwhelming need to win in business and to indulge in personal pleasures with minimal respect for the needs of others is illustrated in his approval and support of Bud Johnson's illegal escape from the Fetters farm. Personal benefit and business expediency combine with humanitarianism in one final, concerted effort to free 65

Johnson. After French tries every legitimate means to get Johnson freedom--even trying to buy him from Fetters-- and fails, he does what businessmen do when backed into a corner: he finds illegal means of accomplishing his desires. Like modern companies that pay kickbacks to foreign governments or that fix prices illegally, French goes illegal by approving a scheme of bribery and theft that eventually frees Johnson. His actions are as much motivated by his aristocratic need to prove himself superior to Fetters, a poor-white-made-good, as by a need to fulfill a promise made to his fiancee, Laura Treadwell, to free Johnson, the husband of Laura's maid. But this time, French's mixture of motives turns loose an attempted murderer to prey on the community. French could not perceive that Johnson was beyond hope, that repeated abuses by whites had created a man capable of murder. It could be said that French's imperception results from ignorance of human nature--that he, like many whites, believed Blacks immune to pain, having suffered so much of it. They believe Blacks incapable of progressing from maltreatment to hate to, finally, revenge, as Johnson does.

Still, French's mixture of motives finally causes him to unconsciously unleash a heinous criminal for whom he took no responsibility.

French works to establish himself in the new South.

But the needs of the people of Clarendon are not his own 66 and their rage will not permit him to succeed. French is clearly the outsider. Clarendon needs the money French brings but, more importantly, it needs concerted, long- suffering effort untainted by ulterior motives to remedy the travesty made of democratic ideals by slavery. Neither

French nor the America he symbolizes has.ever faced this challenge head on, preferring instead to send down some variation of it from one generation to another. Evidence of the challenge not being met is given in a recent article in Newsweek Magazine recalling remedies for social problems of the 1960's. "In the '60's, people thought massive infusion of Federal aid would solve the problems of the ghettos. [French is Chesnutt1s equivalent of Federal aid.]

The money did not work well enough, so the country collectively sort of threw up its hands. After all, on sunny summer days the lakes and swimming pools beckon us 3 3 from the cities." Certain leaders of the sixties tried techniques Chesnutt proved ineffective over sixty years ago. And the continuing problems of busing, reverse dis­ crimination (if there is such a thing], desegregation, and so on provide more evidence of unmet challenge and the fact that the problems do not go away.

The shortcomings in French's character are subtly exposed, for Chesnutt mainly portrays him sympathetically, prompting one to recall another Lerone Bennett remark about the white liberal. "The Negro senses dimly that the 67

white liberals, despite their failings, are the best

America has to offer. And he clings to the white liberal,

as a drowning man clings to a plank in a raging sea, not

because the plank offers hope of salvation but because it

is the very best he has.”^ If men like French are the

best America offers the Black man, then the novel ends

pessimistically, with the closing words of hope amounting

to deus ex machina totally out of step with what has

preceded. This hope, though, is indicative 'of Chesnutt's

aspiration/perception conflict, his personal desire for a

better land despite the truths he has revealed about the

land. French as a symbol of America's best has an extremely

difficult task before him because he is the creator of the

problem he tries to stamp out. Had it not been for the

profit element in slavery, Blacks more likely would have

remained in Africa. The duality of Chesnutt's portrait

of French, sympathy for his good intentions combined with

contempt for his weaknesses, reflects the view of America

most Blacks hold, simultaneous love and hate.

When Chesnutt presents the failure of capitalistic

enterprise in the South, he also implies an end to

.capitalistic democracy since one does not survive without

the other.His advocacy is not a strong one, since he

calls for a pessimistic hope for something better within

the capitalistic system and since he gives no details of

an alternative system, as John Steinbeck does, for example, 68

in The Grapes of Wrathrs emphasis on the successful

socialist migrant camps. Even suggesting an alternative to

capitalism is a radical move for Chesnutt, assimilationist

and accommodationist that he was. He was not as fortunate

as later Black writers, Richard Wright for one, who found

ideologies like communism viable options for bringing

equality to their people. But Chesnutt is one of the

first Black American writers to hint that another political

system might be more beneficial to Blacks, even though he had no idea what that other system was.

The conjure stories indicate Chesnutt’s concerns were with pointing out to white readers the evils of slavery.

Thus showing how slavery was destructive to the human

spirit in Black people became a favorite theme. Around the

same time, Chesnutt aspired to explain the rules of success to Blacks like himself who were struggling to gain a foothold on the benefits in America's mainstream. A cardinal rule during this time was to ignore harassment from whites because the word for Blacks was survival. But the race riots in Wilmington, North Carolina, altered

Chesnutt's vision of Black advancement potential in the

South; so, in Marrow, he created a situation where white harassment of upward mobile Blacks reaches an extreme and

Blacks sink too low as human beings when they court a survival policy in the midst of the slaughter of their 69 people. By the time his last novel, The Colonel’s Dream, is published, a pessimistic Chesnutt has progressed to envision a different political system under which Blacks can develop without white harassment. But as in Marrow, where the author indicts the whites, The Colonel’s Dream ends with a phony hope that denies the overwhelming realities of the novel. Consequently, this chapter expands the aspiration/perception conflict beyond technique to reflect the author's personal hopes for racial harmony that deny racial facts. FOOTNOTES--CHAPTER 1

1 Helen P. Chesnutt, Charles W. Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line, p. 21. 2 Ibid., p . 21.

3 For discussions of Black stereotype in American fiction, see Sterling Brown' s "Negro Character as Seen by White Authors," Journal of Negro Education, 2 (April, 1933), 179-203; Catherine Starke, Black Portraiture in American Fiction (New York: Basic Books', Inc. , 1971) ; W. YT, IT DuBois, "Criteria of Negro Art," Crisis, 30-32 (October, 1926), 297.

4 This and most of the previously published short works have been collected by Sylvia Lyons Render, ed., The Short Fiction of Charles W. Chesnutt (Washington, Ih C. : Howard University Press, 1974) , p . 64. All future references to short items not included in collections will be to this edition and cited parenthetically in the text.

5 Sigmund Freud. Collected Papers-Volume 5 , ed. James Strachey (London": The Hogarth Press, i"95'0) , p. 156.

6 It was published in the Cleveland News and H eraid in 1885.

7 See Robert Bone, Down Home (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1975), p. xiii. Bone details how Chesnutt expands this tradition to suit his own literary ends.

8 "The Significance of Charles W. Chesnutt's Conjure Stories," The Southern Literary Journal, 7 (Fall, 1974), 78-99.

9 William Andrews, "The Significance of Charles W. Chesnutt's Conjure Stories," p. 91.

-70- 71

10 Down Home, p. 87.

11 William Andrews, "The Fiction of Charles W. Chesnutt," Dissertation, 1973. The University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), p. 87.

12 Charles W. Chesnutt, The Conjure Woman (Ann Harbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1972)7 p. T30. All future references are to this edition and will be cited parenthetically in the text.

13 "Chesnutt's Conjure Tales: What You See Is What You Get," College Language Association Journal, -15 (March, 1972) , 269-283.

14 Joseph R. Washington, Jr., Marriage in Black and White (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970) , p. 102. “ ■ ■» 15 Ibid., p. 104.

16 Ibid., p . 108.

17 E. Franklin Frazier. Black Bourgeoise (London: Collier-McMillan, Ltd., 1957), p. 98.

18 Charles W. Chesnutt, The Wife of His Youth (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1972), p. 10. All future references are to this edition and will be cited parenthetically in the text.

19 "Charles W. Chesnutt: The Marrow of Tradition," American Scholar, 42 (Winter, 1972-73), 128.

20 Andrews, Dissertation, p. 130.

21 Ibid., pp. 99-100.

22 Ibid., p . 112 . 72

23 J. Saunders Redding, To Make a Poet Black (College Park, Maryland: McGrath Publishing Company, 1^68), p. 68.

24 John M. Reilly, "The Dilemma in Chesnutt*s The Marrow of Tradition," Phylon, 32 (Spring, 1971), 21-38.

25 "Why I Remain a Negro," 30 (October 11, 1947), 13-14 and 49-52.

26 Wideman, p. 130.

27 "Psychological Counter Current in Rec'ent Fiction," The North American Review, 173 (December, 1901), 882-883,

28 See Walter Fuller Taylor. The Economic Novel in America (New York: Octagon Books, Inc., 1964). The ~ author explains this tradition in America.

29 Charles W. Chesnutt. The Colonel's Dream (New York: Doubleday, Page and Company, 1905); rpt. Miami: Mnemosyne Publishing Company Inc., 1969), p. 72. All future references are to this edition and will be cited parenthetically in the text.

30 The Negro Mood (Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company, 1964), p. 77.

31 French says this in response to Judge Baldwin's announcement that he was dropping him as a client because he was bad for the judge's business.

32 Bennet, p. 78.

33 Henry F. May, The End of American Innocence (New York: Alfred A. Knopf" 1959) , pp. 14-19.

34 Vernon Louis Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1963) , p . 272. 35 Michael Pousner, "The Urban Riots" in "My Turn, Newsweek,89 (June 27, 1977), 11.

36 Bennet, p. 79.

37 See R. Joseph Munsen, Jr. Modern American Capitalism (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, T^"63), p . 75. CHAPTER II

RACE

The stories and novels discussed in the previous

chapter and other examples of Chesnutt’s fiction give

evidence of his almost total preoccupation with racial

issues. Even though he wrote pieces to make statements

on economics and other subjects, Chesnutt’s writings

exhibit a more prevalent need to heighten white moral

consciousnesses to an understanding of the evils of

racism and prejudice. The previous chapter showed that

the author is usually quite adept at presenting his case.

Even so, Chesnutt falters somewhat in his self-appointed

task of artistically presenting the argument for the

immorality of Black debasement when dealing with color

line Blacks. In most of the author's encounters with

these usually economically successful people, issues are not unequivocably resolved, but are compromised. Earlier, the presence of this tendency led one to conclude, along with J. Saunders Redding, that Chesnutt's numerous vacillations result from a conflict of priorities between

the artist and the man, himself a color line resident.

But for the moment, this explanation seems incomplete because Chesnutt was not so shallow a thinker or so sloppy

-74- 75

a craftsman to allow rampant indecisiveness to continue unchecked. There must be more to why the color line stories

in particular pose special problems throughout his fiction.

Other variable(s) must be influencing behavior; if not, why the constant equivocation on crucial themes concerning

Blacks? Why does the author embrace the past in "Her

Virginia Mammy" but play it down in "A Matter of Principle?"

On another issue, why does Chesnutt go to such elaborate extremes to promote a philosophy of Black survival in the face of white violence in "The Doll" while he ridicules the same in The Marrow of Tradition? He certainly does not swing and sway like this in the conjure stories. Why is there specifically a problem in the color line stories?

A clue to a solution can be found in the general settings and circumstances of the tales. In the pre-war setting of the conjure stories, the author contends with one all-consuming purpose--showing the degradation done to Blacks by the institution of slavery. He constructs a philosophy based on the immorality inherent in the system to express its horror. Because the greatest consequence of the setting is slavery, which made men objects of ownership, the overwhelming circumstance of the conjure stories or the author's task is finding ways to expose the wrongs of the institution. His accomplishing this is limited to the number of themes the setting presents.

And slavery offers one basic theme to Chesnutt; its 76

immorality is the enemy to be perceived and contended with. Consequently, the conjure stories are always

structured on the theme of slavery's evils or the varia­ tions thereof.

In the color line stories, hoiirever, the possibilities for situations increase because the enemy is no longer just slavery but the diversities in life itself in a racist setting. In these post-war situations, the Black has to confront the slave past, white violence, religious belief, moral responsibilities and more subtly disguised enemies of the body and spirit. He is forced to develop beyond the confines of finding escape from slavery's immorality into finding escape from all of life's immoralities. Realist that he is, Chesnutt has a keen eye for preparing Blacks to adjust to life's more varied and complex dramas. He recognizes that freedom, the greatest consequence of the color line stories, creates moments of decision-making and uncertainty that tax the survivability of a race whose minds and bodies are newly unchained. The debasement of Black people remains a constant theme of the color line fiction, but now forces other than slavery can debase them. The color line stories, therefore, reflect the change in Black status in

America, a change to freedom that brings choices in con­ trast to a slavery which gave none. In these tales, the

Blacks are distinctly-American individuals, steeped in 77

the determination to make their own way in a free land.

Moving from Chesnutt's conjure stories to his color line

tales is analogous to the Black move from an excruciatingly

ironic innocence in slavery into the maturity of manhood.

The characters of the latter indicate that, to Chesnutt, when slaves become men, racial attitudes must give defer­

ence to the change and become more pragmatic. Ex-slaves must develop racial strategies designed to teach Black

survival in a new day.

Looking at Chesnutt's racial ideas as strategies

adapted to change, one can better see why the issue of the

Black past is equivocated in the color line stories.

Each of the situations depicted requires coming to terms with the influence of the past on Black lives. Characters must survey present conditions and decide if matters will have good or bad effect on them now and in the future.

For example, Ryder of "The Wife of His Youth" is chal­ lenged more to accept a loving and faithful wife than to reaffirm the Black past. He will receive the greatest disapproval if he rejects the good human being that she is. Chesnutt concentrates on the circumstances of their relationship to make her an individual and show that Ryder's denial of the concrete person is more wrong than his rejection of the abstract past she represents. In other words, the author unceremoniously separates fact from symbol, concentrating more on the merits of the wife than 78

on those of the Black past. Under these circumstances,

Ryder can do nothing but accept the wife, with the past

she symbolizes following close at hand. The important

thing for Ryder to know is a good wife when he sees one.

Circumstances are again the rule in "Our Virginia

Mammy" where the author, agreeing with William Dean

Howells' opinions in An Imperative Duty, sees nothing

wrong in permitting a Black raised as white to remain so

after it is learned that she is Black. Like. Howells'

Rhoda, Chesnutt's Clara marries her white lover and leaves

her strain of Black blood in the past. Since she does not know of her Blackness and is neurotic about being an

orphan without fine heritage, her fiance and mother decide

she should never be told. Telling her that her father was

a Virginia blueblood but that her mother was Black would not have been good for her present mental state.

In another example, "A Matter of Principle," Chesnutt chastises the characters' hypocrisy about their Black roots,but not too severely. The author's obvious preju­ dices interfere with the art of the tale. James Gecau points out in his dissertation that "impelled by his aware­ ness and concern for improvement of the black man's social and economic situation, Chesnutt had no way of measuring the goal toward which the black man must aspire other than by using established and acceptable middle class standards. 79

His thrust was toward the final recognition and acceptance of the black person in the terms of these standards. He could not be but sympathetic to his characters' aspira­ tions, capabilities, education and attitudes which were recognizable as ’cultured’ and the ’best’ from the white audience's point of view."-*- After considering this information, one can see why Chesnutt found the Claytons' hypocrisy easier to take than their poverty.

On another racial issue, Black response- to physical violence from whites, Chesnutt again takes an equivocating stand, and, again, the greatest influence on his behavior is time and circumstance. In "The Doll," the violence had occurred years ago and time has made the Black protagonist an economic success. His enemy is not the violence-prone braggart he now encounters but the poverty his child and other Blacks face if he has his revenge. With so much responsibility for others confronting him, the protagonist has no choice but to forget past violence and continue in a successful business.

Circumstances change somewhat in The Marrow of Tradition where the protagonist, Dr. Miller, looks for a better time and place to fight while Blacks are being slaughtered in the streets around him. The author ridicules Miller's behavior because the situation requires fighting back then.

Miller loses everything because he does not perceive the limitations of his survival policy. Surely it cannot 80 prevail when no Blacks but those like him, apolitical accommodationists, are surviving.

In each of the above situations, characters compro­ mise their Blackness for status, and the integrity of the

Black race is lost somewhere along the way. This common happening in Chesnutt's fiction causes one to wonder just how much of Blackness Chesnutt is willing to forego for economic advancement, love, and so on. Just how far is he willing to go for change? Since freedom presents alternatives and choices to Blacks, Chesnutt's color line stories and novels best reveal his attitudes on race because they indicate the limits to which he will go to adapt to the change in Black status. He, like his characters, can no longer count on the security of slavery's chains to dictate race ideology. He must also confront the complexities of freedom. Chesnutt's first novel,

The House Behind the Cedars (1899), is set in the South nine years after the Civil War and gives an intricate portrayal of the influence of the new time and circum­ stance on the decision-making of newly freed Blacks and the author. It does this through Chesnutt's artistic technique of conflicting aspiration with perception, or in this case, through John and Rena Warwick’s aspirations for a better life in conflict with racial realities. The novel's love and passing themes have the added advantage of exposing the author's rather controversial attitudes on race. 81

The two main questions that the novel poses are why

Rena fails at passing and dies when her brother, John, succeeds at it and lives, or why John's aspirations are realized and Rena's are not. To respond to the first question, one has to consider the characters of the two.

John is raised Black, but even at an early age, he fear­ lessly declares his whiteness. "The mirror proved that

God, the Father of all, had made him white; and God, he had been taught, made no mistakes--having ma*de him white ? He must have meant him to be white." He uses God to justify passing for white, as Rena will do later to justify her remaining Black. Benjamin Mays notices that "the idea that God meant for him to be white supported his desires to pass over into the white race in order that he might more nearly secure the things necessary for abundant existence on the earth. There is no remorse, and no sense of sin in doing this. He construes it to be God's will.

Though a selfish view with little group significance, it is an idea of God that is used to stimulate an individual to put forth definite steps to improve his status by 3 losing his racial identity." John's character eventually conforms to that of the white liberal--rational but emotional when self-serving. He is shret^d and manipulative, intelligent and independent. Except for an absence of an overriding hatred of Blacks, John is the typical Chesnuttian white. And he passes easily. 82

Secondly, John is shrewd and shows it in his ability to manipulate his mother and sister to his own ends. He best exhibits this skill in the manner used to instill enough guilt in Molly (his mother) to induce her to consent to Rena's passing. He uses similar guilt-inducing tactics on Rena who, though eager to pass, hesitates about leaving her mother. The reader is alerted to this aspect of

John's make-up early by the narrator's ironic tone while relating the first recognition scene between John and his mother. "'I couldn't live without seeing you mother,' he said. He meant it, too, or thought he did, although he had not seen her for ten years" (p 17). A more definite instance of John's shrewdness appears in the tone of a later warning by the narrator. "Men who have elected to govern their lives by principles of abstract right and reason, which happens, perhaps to be at variance with what society considers to be equally right and reasonable, should, for the fear of complications, be careful about descending from the lofty heights of logic to the common level of impulse and affection" (p. 26). The narrator warns that the usually rational John errs by giving in to emotion and visiting the mother after having opted for the white world. The narrator's thinking compares favorably with that of Chesnutt in an unpublished paper, "Crossing the Bar," which explains that the number one sacrifice passers must make is to "cut any furtive intercourse with 83 4 them [relatives]. Chesnutt is not openly hostile to

John, but suggests that his coming back for Rena is a moment of self-indulgence which proves disastrous for her because he never questions Rena's fitness for passing.

John's emotionalism is proved sheer shrewdness, though, when the reader discovers that he is motivated by the belief that a blood relative like Rena would give his son better care than a hired nurse.

Rena is not like John. Although she makes no grand dramatic declarations about being Black, her actions throughout the novel indicate that she is emotionally a

Black woman and not the white southern belle for which she tries to pass. The author takes special pains to make this point. He shows Rena's affinity to the Black folk group by revealing how tacitly she holds on to the folk superstition about dreams which, ironically, becomes her undoing when she passes for white. She accepts the dreams about her mother's being ill as fact and, unlike the realistic John, risks detection of her Blackness on the evidence of the dreams. John, on the other hand, denies their validity. From the Freudian perspective, Rena's acceptance of the dream as truth uncovers her preconscious desire to return to her mother and the Black world.

After all, she deliberately does what Chesnutt warns the passer against. Simultaneously, the dreams unfold Rena's

Blackness and her aspiration/perception problem--her trying to be white when she cannot entirely kill off her Blackness. 84

Her clingings to Blackness make her unable to adjust to

her change to whiteness. She is doomed to failure.

Chesnutt gives even more evidence of Rena's Blackness

by showing that her compelling need for sentiment in love

is something that can only be fulfilled in Frank Fowler

in the Black world. She becomes engaged to George Tryon

but still seeks proof of his deep feelings for her. Her

continuous search for sentiment in Tryon's feelings

reflect unarticulated fears about the dubiou.sness of his

love, fears that are confirmed once he learns she is

Black. He rejects her completely and tells her brother,

"I cannot marry your sister" (House, p. 138). All of this

occurs within an aspiration/perception framework which

illustrates the irony of Rena's seeking deep love from

white George who has none instead of from Black Frank

who overflows with it. Had Rena been more perceptive about

her Blackness and George's shallowness, she would have

sought feeling where it existed or would not have asked

for proof from George.

To ensure that the reader does not judge Rena too

harshly, Chesnutt depicts her as a passive, immature girl

instead of a sophisticated woman. For all intents and purposes, Rena is cast in the mold of the typical southern belle while she passes, and like this character, acts

like her counterpart in the plantation romance. These girls possess extreme youthfulness (Rena is seventeen) 85

and are the "crystalization of all legends of fair women,

perfect and peerless, 'created out of every creature's

best.'"6 Their chastity is "almost axiomatic, a spotless­

ness of thought and act . . . accentuated whiteness of

soul."6 Unfortunately, this type is not known for her

high intelligence, either a native ability or extended

mental training. Rena mirrors this traditional woman in

her we11-documented passivity that enables John to simply

dominate her life. Ironically, her Black characteristics,

the superstition and the emotionalism at the root of her

need for sentiment, give her the only will she possesses

in the novel. Rena, nevertheless, is more girl than woman

when she becomes engaged to George Tryon who, also stepping

out of the fanciful plantation romance, is the young

girl's ideal knight-in-shining armor. This is literally

what the tournament scenes make him out to be. Because

she is too much a girl to penetrate Tryon's knightly

facade, she never meets the man behind the knight, who does 7 not begin to emerge until the end of the novel. The

George she meets must believe she is his ideal queen, not

a Black woman. This man of the tradition cannot love her.

Had Rena been more mature, the superficiality of

George's character would have repulsed her and she might

' have seen that accepting him meant conforming to his image

of ideal woman who, unfortunately, could not be tainted by

Blackness. She would have discovered that she was something 86 unreal to George, the manifestation of a lovely woman who

reconciled accepted white societal manners and morals in her person. She was, in fact, his Queen of Love and

Beauty, the title she won the night of the tournament ball. Then, she was the "boast and idol of masculine

O society." This person, however, has no substance in real

life. Tryon's courtship of Rena permits the author to

suggest that this kind of idealization of each other passes

for love between white men and women. And there must be

something to this idea since modern white women of the

liberation movement are rebelling aginst objectification of them by their men. They are no longer afraidctondemand recognition as human beings and eschew the man i\rho, thinking he is a khight-in-shining armor--the modern day fair-haired boy--expects them to be such a substanceless thing. Chesnutt suggests that Rena's image of George is as big a sham as his idealized vision of her. Neither sees an individual, only societal creations of knight and lady.

Both aspire to love something that is not real and miss the two extant people they are.

But one cannot judge Rena and George too harshly because they are products of the times. Grown men and women believed in the faiiy tale romance then. (Some believe even now.) The literary aspect of the plantation tradition emphasized a correctness and conventionality that caused its writers not to report the world with any 87

degree of realism. Therefore, one does not wonder that

George and Rena consort only with their knight and lady

types. The plantation romance shares the blame for Rena

and George's problems, since it keeps them children amidst

the trials of adults. When George begins to shake the

effects of the tradition, Rena is dead.

Shaping itself out of what has preceded is a beginning

explanation of why John passes successfully and Rena does not, why he lives and she dies. John has no. problem with

identity and, knowing who he is gives clear insight into

his life's ambitions and the means of accomplishing them.

"Once persuaded that he had certain rights, or sought to

have them, by virtue of the laws of nature, in definance

of the custom of mankind, he had sought to enjoy" (House, p. 72). Such awareness makes him flexible to time and

circumstance, to change from Black society to white.

"This he had been able to do by simply concealing his

antecedents and making the most of his opportunities, with no troublesome qualm of conscience whatever" (p. 72).

Rena, however, aspires to John's goals but has none of his awareness and emotional strength, and John increases her problems by treating her as if she does. He knew,

for example, that Rena felt things deeper than he. "But

he had perceived, in their brief intercourse, that Rena's

emotions, while less easily stirred, touched a deeper note

than his, and dwelt upon it with greater intensity than if 88 they had been spread over the larger field to which a more ready sympathy would have supplied so many points of access; hers was a deep and silent current flowing between the narrow walls of a self-contained life, his the spread­ ing river that ran through a pleasant landscape" (p. 7 2).

John passes so well because his practical side outweighs his imaginative and sentimental sides. Poor Rena, lacking in a "discursive imagination," among other things, has nothing but feeling with little practicality, to offset it.

From all of this, one must conclude that Chesnutt believes that passing is not for everyone. He suggests through

House that extenuating circumstances, of character, for example, are worth consideration before entrance into this deception. If the soul is white as John believes his is, one should take his destiny in the white world. But if the soul is still Black like Rena's, one has no business passing for white. The problem of passing becomes a dilemma if the person is as unaware of her true identity as Rena is.

This is a radical philosophy of race for a time in

America’s history when one drop of Black blood made a person Black, no matter how white he looked. It is especially interesting that House does not follow literary tradition of the times and deal with the moral issue of passing. The novel, instead, examines the characters of two individuals and reaches conclusions based on evidence 89 i i provided by the content of thosej characters. Also, tradition often presents Black and white societies as

antagonists of each other. Butjan unsigned reviewer of ! House notices that Chesnutt shows a "frank recognition of

i racial differences, yet, seeing! both black and white through

a fine literary temperament, is;not concerned to set one 9 against the other either for praise or disparagement."

The problem of this novel is determining where one belongs,

not which is the superior race.

Yet House presents another problem of inconsistency

along the color line, similar to the one Redding explains

earlier. Frequent references are made to the Warwick

children being fated to atone for their parents. Too

often these references are made only to Rena. Strangely

enough, John pays for no such thing, but Rena’s death is partly in payment for the parents' miscegenation. The question now presents itself of why John gets off scot-

free and Rena is left to bear the entire burden. And

since the major difference between the two is John's

denouncement of Blackness and Rena's acceptance of it, one concludes that John's choice sets him free while Rena's dooms her. By placing the entire burden on Rena, the author implies that being Black! is the sin in'1 the novel and choosing whiteness is the way to redemption. If Rena • | had passed successfully, like John, she too would have j been saved. Chesnutt's position on this is made clearer 90 by his killing off Rena instead of permitting her to return to the Black world to live peaceably with Frank.

Given the choice of remaining Black or passing, the author opts for passing, despite an awareness that some Blacks are Black to the core.

This line of thinking is consistent with race opinions expressed by Chesnutt in his essays. They, more than the fiction, reveal his belief that Blacks were economically, socially, and politically inferior to whites- in America--

"a despised and struggling race" that, paradoxically, could lift itself up by gradually phasing itself out through dilution by white blood. These articles state

Chesnutt's belief that different racial types trying to survive in the same country form the basis for constant racial strife. For him, racial purity creates racial upset.

Chesnutt prepares the foundation for explaining this theory in a series of three articles, "The Future American," written between August 18 and September, 1900, for the

Boston Evening Transcript. His purpose in these is "to set out the reasons why it seems likely that the future

American ethnic type will be formed by a fusion of all the various races now peopling the continent, and to show that this process has been under way slowly but surely, like all evolutionary movements for several hundred years. A later speech, "Race Prejudice: Its Causes and Cure," originally delivered before the Boston Historical Literary Association,-*'1 advances the purpose of the Transcript

articles by justifying movement toward formation of the

one ethnic type. Racial prejudice, Chesnutt claims, results

from the presence of racial differences; "antagonisms,” he calls them. Removal of the "antagonisms" will remove

racial problems. He admits that prejudices will still

exist but that they will not be of racial origin.

Chesnutt supports his theory by a contrast of Blacks and whites that suggests how prejudices arise. "They differ physically, the one being black and the other white. The

one had constituted for poets and sculptors the ideal of beauty and grace: the other was rude and unpolished in form and feature. The one possessed the arts of civiliza­ tion and the learning of schools, the other at the most, the simple speech and rude handicrafts of his native tribe and no written language at all. The one was heathen. The one master of the soul; the other frankly- alien and him- 1 7 self the object of ownership." No matter how erroneous the thinking, this passage provides sufficient evidence of Chesnutt’s general belief in white superiority and

Black inferiority. Rena's retention of Black qualities after her complete acceptance in the white world, puts her in contention with Chesnutt’s theory of race develop­ ment. Her bungling her opportunity to marry white and well retards an evolutionary process leading to more Black status in the society. Therefore, in Chesnutt’s eyes, 92

Rena commits a crime against humanity when she fails to pass because racial sufferings continue when miscegenation does not occur. This crime makes Rena a marked person and sets up the non-assimilator for extinction. Because

Rena could not stop being Black, she dies.

The severity of Rena's punishment mirrors the severity of her failure. She looks white and possesses characteris­ tics worthy of "recognition and equality" in the white society of the time. The only part of her Black side that is visible is the natural wave in her hair that will not straighten out, but which adds to her charm and complements her natural majestic manner, good looks, and finishing school training. "It was a source of much gratification for Warwick that his sister seemed to adapt herself so easily to the new conditions. Her graceful movements, the quiet elegance with which she wore even the simplest gown, the easy authoritativeness with which she directed the servants were to him proofs of superior quality. . . ."

(p. 60). Her problems arise when she fails despite,.,tj;gse good prospects for female success. This failure kills her.

By viewing Rena's plight from this perspective, one can see that Chesnutt has indicated throughout the novel that Rena's Blackness is her shortcoming. Her superstition about the dreams, for example, causes the greatest pain in her life because giving in to it prompts her return to

Patesville where an unsuspecting George discovers her true 93

identity. From Chesnutt's perspective, giving in to the

dreams is an act of defiance of "recognition and equality."

In the words of Trudier Harris, "part of the preparation

for 'recognition and equality' would entail a substitution of the nonsense of folk tradition with the argument of a

society less geared to superstition. Until such a change 13 is made blacks cannot show themselves equal to whites."

When Rena passes, she never becomes more than a Black passing for white or a substitute white. She never becomes

Chesnutt's colorless, equal, assimilated human being, the one ethnic type.

Another example of Chesnutt showing the reader that

Rena's Blackness is a flaw evolves through a comparison between her and John's attitudes toward love and marriage.

The author obviously prefers John's reasonable way of choosing a wife to Rena's longings for sentiment in love.

John, one is told, receives marriage to a prosperous white woman as payment for doing a good job as manager of her father's estate. He wastes no time with longings for sentiment but takes advantage of an opportunity to move up.

"He had filled the place so acceptably, that at the close of the war he found himself--he was modest enough to think, too, in default of a better man--the husband of the orphan daughter of the gentlemen who had owned the plantation. . . .

Warwick's wife was of a good family, and in a more settled condition of society it would not have been easy for a 94

young man of no visible antecedents to win her hand"

(House, p. 21). Because he pragmatically adapts human

emotion to time and circumstances instead of being

dominated by it like Rena, John is awarded the good life,

"without the worry of sordid cares, and with marked suc­

cess for one of his age" (p. 21). But Rena seeks deep personal fulfillment from love that reaches beyond Tryon's

conventional trappings of "success" to something that

touches her soul. By putting this kind of love in Frank,

residing in comparative poverty in the Black world,

Chesnutt indicates his disapproval of Rena's need for

feeling. His action exhibits a strong affinity for the

Black bourgeoise and middle class ethic by suggesting

there should be more to marriage than feeling. Economic, social and cultural entities are of utmost importance.

This action also indicates how much Chesnutt has become a tool to change and the influence change has on his view of race. It has made economic and social advancement more

important than human feeling and racial pride. John says that he loved his wife, but one assumes that he would not have married her if she had been poor and Black. An article, "Advice to Young Men,"-^ signed with Chesnutt's

Uncle Soloman pseudonym, though, humorously offering advice on how to marry well, takes on a more serious note when one considers that two of its six rules--marry for money and marry an orphan--are exactly what John Warwick does. Although it seems so, Chesnutt is not against Rena's

desire for deep love, only against her being sentimental

about it to the point of permitting herself to sacrifice

all kinds of advancement for it. He believes even love

should buckle under to reason and give its just due to

promoting the one ethnic type. This thinking puts Chesnutt

in opposition with Kelly Miller who believes that "if such

a policy [active miscegenation] were allowed to dominate

the imagination of the colored race its women would give

themselves over to the unrestrained passion of white men,

in quest of tawny offspring, which would give rise to a

state of indescribable moral debauchery." Miller shows

his ignorance of real Black women/white men relationships

in post-bellum America, but what he says is essentially

what Chesnutt asks of Rena. Obsessed with achieving

"success," Chesnutt would sacrifice everything for the

formation of the ethnic type. To the Black satisfied to

love and live in the Black world he proclaims: "Do not

let your orators deceive you when they tell you what a

fine thing it is to be at the bottom, because you have so much higher to climb. Everyone of them is trying to place

his children higher in life than he is. If it is such a

privilege to be so low donw [down], why drprive [deprive] X 6 our children of it."

Chesnutt believes that nothing Black is worth salvaging

to his reality that racial strife may be lessened through

the elimination of racial differences. The fact that 96 formation of the one ethnic type defies creation and more saliently unveils man's inability to live with his fellow- man has no import. Miller points out that "you would hardly expect the Negro, in derogation of his common human qualities, to proclaim that he is so diverse from

God's other creatures as to make the blending of the races 17 contrary to the law of nature." Yet this is exactly what Chesnutt expects. Miller argues with a white racist in his remark, but the same could be said to' Chesnutt, who includes no Black resistance in his list of deterrents to assimilation, Gecau explains that "while Chesnutt could expose the overbearing attitudes of his characters, he could not escape looking down on those characters whose life­ style was black. To him black culture and lifestyle was beneath serious consideration, a result of ignorance legislated by the black man's enslavement. Blackness as a structural quality did not exist in Chesnutt's sensibility, and, if it did actually exist in the real life of black people, it was to be hastily gotten rid of through educa- 18 tion." Chesnutt does not deny that Black is beautiful but argues against those who support doctrines of racial integrity. In that same address delivered before the

Boston Historical and Literary Association, Chesnutt flatly states "I take no stock in this doctrine. It seems to me a modern invention of the white people to perpetuate the color line. It is they who preach it, and it is their 97

racial integrity which they wish to preserve: They have never been unduly careful of the purity of the black race,"19

He adds that "I can scarcely restrain a smile when I hear

a mulatto talking of race pride. What they mean is a

fine thing and a desirable thing but it is not at all what they say. Why should a man be proud any more than he should be ashamed for a thing for which he is not at

all responsible? Manly self-respect, based upon one's humanity, a self-respect which claims nothing for color and yields nothing to color, every man should cherish."20

For him, the Black basking in the sun of racial pride reduces himself to the level of whites who use white supremacy ideals to justify Black enslavement. "But the

Negro in the United States has suffered too much from the racial pride of other people to justify him in cultivating something equally for himself. Of what should we be proud? Of an inherent superiority? Why deny it in others proclaiming the equality of all men?"^ Much of Chesnutt's thinking is based on seemingly unshakable belief in a basic principle of racial development: "I ask you to dismiss from your mind any theory, however cherished, that there can be built up in a free country, equal laws, two standards of human development."^

Chesnutt's idealism is admirable though misguided, since he simply refuses to perceive the enormity of what

George Schuyler calls "the Caucasian problem." "Stated briefly, the problem confronting the colored peoples of the world is how to live in freedom, peace and security without being invaded, subjugated, expropriated, exploited, persecuted and humiliated by Caucasians justifying their action by the myth of white racial superiority."^ He adds that white ascendency throughout the world was achieved through "conquest, enslavement, exploitation and debasement" of all peoples of color. The combination of

Bibles and bullets was an effective weapon in accomplishing this goal. Peoples of color, however, possess a strong natural aversion to such tactics, recognizing that their humanity is the cost for the fulfillment of the myth. In other words, to make the myth real, whites gave up their souls. Schuyler implies that this soulless, dehumanized being is with what the peoples of color must contend. But

Chesnutt seeks unity with this being not in an attempt to cleanse it but to cleanse himself. Passing, a euphemism for dying, kills the Black. Accepting it is suicidal, the epitome of self-hate.

By standards set by E. Franklin Frazier, Chesnutt's race philosophy indicates his failure as a Black intellec­ tual. For to Chesnutt, mixing with whites means "the emptying of his [the black's] life of meaningful content and ridding him of all Negro identification. For them

[black intellectual-integrationists], integration and eventual assimilation mean the annihilation of the Negro-- 99 physically, culturally, and spiritually."^ Chesnutt would take all of this from the Black despite the reality that these things are unavailable to him in the white world. Frazier thinks that the Black intellectual "must rid himself of his obsession with assimilation. He must come to realize that integration should not mean annihila­ tion- -self -effacement , the escaping from his identifica­ tion."^ Having done this, Frazier believes the Black intellectual can "dig down into the experience of the

Negro and bring about a transvaluation of that experience so that the Negro could have a new self-image or a new n A conception of himself."

Actually, Chesnutt adheres somewhat to Frazier's teachings with his folk settings in The Conjure Woman.

Frazier recognizes this when he states that "this book was not only a sincere work of art but it also exhibited originality and rare skill in its execution."2? But most of Conjure's characters are not of the Black masses but are house slaves, forbears of the color line folk. The fact that the characters are not of the masses is important, since contempt for the Black masses was the vogue among the "talented tenth" Black novelist during the time Chesnutt 2 8 wrote. Even more significant is the fact that several of Chesnutt's writings ("Baxter's Procrustes" being the most artistic example) have no Black characters. Chesnutt's 100 choice of characters provides a fairly accurate measure of the extent of his failure as Frazier’s Black intellectual.

Frazier does not deny that, eventually, race admixture might bring about changes in the Black folk type in

America, but he believes that "if the Negro is ever assimilated into American Society his heritage should become a part of the American heritage, and it should be recognized as the contribution of the Negro as one recog­ nizes the contributions of the English, Irish, Germans and other people.”29 He bases his opinion on a realistic view of the racial temper of the country. Black integration into

America's mainstream is a slow, time-consuming process--

"Guy Johnson has written recently that in the next twenty- five years there will be more integration but far less than the Negro hopes for, and as a consequence there will be much frustration."^ Unlike Chesnutt, who seeks every possible opportunity to integrate, Frazier and Miller recognize that the pressing need of the Black is to survive a present dependent upon development of the extant dis­ tinctive Black. The Black intellectual has the expressed responsibility to reveal the intricacies of the Black to a group whose non-identity as an African people and non­ identity as an American people leaves him in constant confusion about who he is.

Blacks like Frazier ease the problems for Blacks like

Rena, making them unashamed to be themselves. Above all, 101 the Fraziers would let Renas live in peace, following the dictates of their souls. The only time Chesnutt even hints at having these feelings is during the bitterness of The Marrow of Tradition. When the Blacks in that novel are compared to the whites, they are so much more moral.

Marrow, more than anything Chesnutt wrote, has a tone that expresses the author's momentary contempt for whites.

Still, the assimilationist spirit in Chesnutt seeps through the bitterness, manifesting itself in an aura of hope so strong as to cause misinterpretation of the novel. Some believe that Chesnutt's attitude is that of Dr. Miller, whose philosophy of survival sends him off hopeful that providing medical care to the Carterets1 baby will help end the racial prejudices of its parents. These critics view Miller's action as his moral triumph when actually the moral triumph belongs to Miller's wife, Janet. She decides that he must go to the Carterets because, by the end of Marrow, Miller's philosophy of survival has so emasculated him that he cannot make decisions. The ironic tone at the end destroys Miller's philosophy, mocking him for a foolish hope.

Nevertheless, the hope persists. Bert Bender best describes it as "an underlying urgency which controlled . . . occasionally reaches lyrical intensity. Bender adds that lyrical writers express "'the singer's' emotional aware­ ness rather than the development of plot. The lyrical writer's effort . . . is typically to seek consolation

either by expressing his emotional comprehension of his

situation or by projecting a fictional or hoped for solu­

tion to his troubles. Chesnutt makes his hope, his

integrationist spirit, incarnate with Miller's, but his

lingers on after irony reduces Miller's. Chesnutt's is

a pervasive, irrational hope that is in opposition to the previous anger of the novel. It is an expression of the

author's need to unite with whiteness. This is an

emotional Chesnutt clinging to visions of a racial utopia

that the bitterness of Marrow keeps from him. At the root of Chesnutt's "underlying urgency" is his most blatant

aspiration/perception conflict, his refusal to accept what he himself has explored. He will not perceive the

futility of his hope and becomes like Sophy of "The

Bouquet," longing to put flowers on the grave of her white teacher but being turned away because of her Black­ ness. Or he is like Cicely of "Cicely's Dream," who envisions improved conditions with a white lover only to awaken to the fact that "her dream was clearly one of the kind that go by contraries" (Wife, p. 140). Like the characters he creates, Chesnutt seeks escape from the

"mark of oppression," the fact that the Black was enslaved

in America. "The process by which the Negroes were cap­ tured and enslaved in the United States stripped them of their African culture and destroyed their personality. 103

Under the slavery regime and for a century since emancipa­ tion everything in American society has stamped the Negro as subhuman, as a member of an inferior race that had not achieved even the first steps in civilization. There is no parallel in human history where a people have been subjected to similar mutilation of body and soul.

Chesnutt's greatest aspiration/perception conflict is that he, like the whites with whom he would assimilate, cannot honestly admit that this atrocity happened in the land of the free. America is not innocent.

Rena Warwick's confusion about her identity mirrors

Chesnutt's confusion about his self-image. In an unpub­ lished speech included among the Chesnutt papers at Fisk

University, he writes that "I am neither proud nor ashamed of the colored blood in my veins. If it has brought me any good, as I think it has--it gave me the impulse to write, the material for, and a hearing for the books to which I owe such little reputation. If it has subjected me to any disabilities, as I am sure it has, as it has for all of us who share it, I have tried to bear them with

T C patience and to look upon the bright side of the shield.

This attempt at objectivity about what being Black means to him gives way to unrestrained pride exuding from the following statements about his white blood. "In his

[W. E. B. DuBois'] autobiography published in a recent issue of the Crisis, of the anniversary of his fiftieth 104

year, he thanks God, that while he has traces of good old

Holland blood, some Indian and some French,--in his makeup,

he has none of the Anglo-Saxon I Well most of my blood is

Anglo-Saxon, and I am not at all sore with God for giving

me soem [some] of the blood of a race which produced

Lincoln, Wendell Phillips Garrison, Charles Sumner, John

Brown, and whose blood flowed in the veins of Frederick 7 (I Douglass and of Booker T. Washington.'1 Although Chesnutt

tries not to find either shame or pride in h-is Black

blood, which, by his own admission, made him what he is,

he finds much pride in his white blood, which gave him

nothing but his appearance, the superficiality of which

he documents throughout his fiction. Additionally, the

latter statement implies that Washington and Douglass's

Black blood had little to do with their successes, or that

they succeeded in spite of it. (William Shockley could

not have said it better.) James Giles explains that

Chesnutt has the tendency to credit Black success to Black

possession of white blood. Giles notices in "The Goophered

Grapevine" that Julius's shrewdness is attributed to his

white blood. Giles concludes that Chesnutt believes

"Julius' cunning, which allows him to outwit the Northern white couple . . . is a gift from Anglo forebears, and it

is difficult to see any other way of viewing such a state- 3 7 ment except as condescending to blacks." John Warwick

is another example of a Chesnutt Black whose Blackness 105

supposedly has little to do with his success. In fact, he

is a success because he denies Blackness. Chesnutt was of

two minds, schizoid actually. Or else, why should he not have found satisfaction in the race that made him?

The principles of Chesnutt's philosophy of race are far-reaching since their assumptions of Black inferiority play down white responsibility for Black inferior status

in America and give fuel to racists. More than that, they cater to those unable to accept creation which eschews one ethnic type and embraces instead diversity of types among men. But in the end, Chesnutt would make Black people, initially victims of the shortcomings of whites, pay for their victimization. He would make the Black die so that the conquest-mad white can live. Chesnutt would unearth

Carteret, who so arrogantly blames Blacks in Marrow for whites killing them. He predicts, as well, white racists during the sixties who justified their attacks on unarmed civil rights workers with the argument of the workers' actions providing provocation. Finally, Chesnutt caters to the first myopic white who, seeing little humanity in himself, was unable to perceive it in a Black man standing on Africa's shores.

A basis for sympathy for Blacks like Chesnutt abides in America's denial to them of full opprotunity to become whole human beings. It is a spiritual denial that makes it impossible for them to acknowledge white progenitors, for acceptance of one means denial of the other. Chesnutt

tries to strike a balance between the two but cannot.

From this viewpoint, one can see that Chesnutt's

aspiration/perception conflict belongs to the society that

created Blacks like him. It raped their mothers, and left

their illegitimate children to fare for themselves. "The

Sheriff's Children," despite its obtrusive coincidences,

explores this phenomenon. It curses the white father who

gave his son his hopes without the means for- accomplishing

them. And this is the tragedy of the Black American.

Unlike the sheriff's son, proud American Blacks will not

commit suicide, not even with Chesnutt's coaching. They

stay and remember.

Charles Chesnutt knew that great change came at the end of the Civil War. And he was ready for it. Only he was willing to give up too much to a change destined to wipe Blackness from the earth. While he pleaded for morality and racial justice, he was willing to commit the greatest immorality and racial injustice. Whites could not destroy Blacks more handily than Chesnutt's theory of race. FOOTNOTES--CHAPTER II

1 James Gecau. "Charles W. Chesnutt and His Literary Crusade." Dissertation, 1975. State University of New York (Buffalo), p. 83.

2 Charles W. Chesnutt, The House Behind the Cedars (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1969) , p! 145. All future references are to this edition and will be cited parenthetically in the text.

3 Benjamin E. Mays, The Negro's God as Reflected in His Literature (New York! Russell and Russell, 1938) , p . 151.

4 Charles Chesnutt Papers, Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee.

5 Francis Pendleton Gaines, The Southern Plantation (New York: Columbia University Press, 19'25)"," p'. 174.

6 Ibid. , p . 176.

7 Ibid., p . 17 5.

8 Ibid., p. 180.

9 The Nation, 72 (February 28, 1901), 182.

10 Charles W. Chesnutt, "The Future American: A Complete Race--Amalgamation Likely to Occur," Boston Evening Transcript, September 1, 1900, p. 24.

11 Published in Alexander's Magazine, 10 (July 15, 1906), 21-26.

-107- 108

12 Ibid., p . 21.

13 Trudier Harris, "The Tie That Binds: The Function of Folklore in the Fiction of Charles Waddell Chesnutt, Jean Toomer, and Ralph Ellison." Dissertation, 1973. The Ohio State University (Columbus), pp. 10-11.

14 The Social Circle Journal, 38 (November, 1886) , p . 1.

15 Radicals and Conservatives and Other Essays on the Negro in America (New York: Schocken Books, 1968), pp. 61-62.

16 Untitled, Unpublished paper, Chesnutt Collection, Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee.

17 Kelly Miller, Radicals and Conservatives, p. 62.

18 James Gecau, p. 84.

19 Charles Chesnutt, "Race Prejudices: Its Causes and Cure," p. 62.

20 Ibid., p . 25.

21 Ibid., p . 25.

22 Ibid., p. 26 .

23 "The Caucasian Problem," in What the Negro Wants, ed. by Rayford W. Logan (New York: Agh thorn"Pres’s^ Inc. , 1969), p. 283.

24 "The Failure of the Negro Intellectual" in On Race Relations (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1968) , p. 278 . 109

25 Ibid., p . 279.

26 Ibid., p. 278.

27 The Negro in the United States (New York: The MacMillan Company, 195 7)7 P» 505.

28 Robert Bone, The Negro Novel in America, pp. 13. 18-19.

29 "The Failure of the Negro Intellectual," p. 279.

30 Ibid., p. 278 .

31 Radicals and Conservatives, p. 62.

32 "The Lyrical Short Fiction of Dunbar and Chesnutt," in A Singer in the Dawn: Reinterpretation of Paul Laurence Dunbar, ed. by Jay Martin- (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1975), p. 219.

33 Ibid., p . 211.

34 "The Failure of the Negro Intellectual," pp. 277-278.

35 Untitled, p. 2.

36 Ibid., p . 2.

37 The Markam Review, 3 (February, 1972), p. 47. CHAPTER III

ART

The task of determining Chesnutt's artistic theory is

not a difficult one, since he readily tells what it is.

It is stated at the beginning of Chapter One, and it is

worth note that Chesnutt never strays far from its basic

tenets. Throughout his years of writing which peaked in

the early 1900's, Chesnutt uses literature as a tool to

educate whites on the immorality of slavery and its

subsequent racism. His creative imagination arises out

of his need to remedy social ills. Chesnutt saw litera­

ture as part of a two-fold plan in which "the Negro's part

is to prepare himself for recognition and equality, and

it is the province of literature to open the way for him

to get in--to accustom the public mind to the idea: to

lead people out, imperceptibly, unconsciously, step by

step, to the desired state of feelings." Chesnutt

imagines himself the creative artist-soldier, directing bands of newly enlightened whites and stalwart Blacks

into the milk and honey of a unified, racism-free America.

"If I can do anything to further the work, and can see

likelihood of obtaining success in it, I would gladly devote my life to it."

-110- But Chesnutt became disillusioned with the role he

chose and greatly reduced his crusade through literature

after 1905, twenty-seven years before his death. He

published only four short stories after 1905. His decision

to give up writing as a career and return to work in the

business world forces a re-evaluation of his original

theory of art because it suggests dissatisfaction with his

original goals and his prospects for accomplishing them.

(Note the emphasis placed on success in the ‘statement ending

the last paragraph.) Apparently, literature did not have

his expected influence on the race problem. This re-

evaluation prompts an examination of the author in con­

junction with the social crusader who inspired him. One

is forced to identify more closely the relationship between

the two. Could more or less of one or the other be

responsible for the artist giving up publishing? Then,

what is the quality of art such a combination produces?

Most critics document how the economic and racial milieu influenced Chesnutt's decision to quit writing as

a career. J. Noel Heermance in Charles W. Chesnutt:

America's First Great Black Novelist, for example, concludes

that Chesnutt's social crusading diminished his position

as an artist. Heermance and many others paint the picture

of Chesnutt the frustrated artist driven from the publish­

ing arena by a mostly white reading public unprepared to

accept the education on race he generously gives through 112 his fiction. Its unpreparedness takes several forms, the least of which is the refusal to buy Chesnutt's books.

The Marrow of Tradition and The Colonel's Dream did not pay 4 the cost of paper and printing. There is truth to much of what Heermance and the others say. But if one considers that Chesnutt faced the crucial problem of audience throughout his artistic career, yet wrote some things that are artistic gems and others that are not, the argument of audience hostility weakens. Even a more racially liberal public of the late twentieth century recognizes the artistry of The Conjure Woman but decries its absence in

The Marrow of Tradition. Moreover, the social commentary

Conjure is often more poignant than that of Marrow and other pieces of the fiction. Nothing Chesnutt wrote after

Conj ure surpasses its ability to fulfill his primary purpose of using art to counteract the image of Blacks given them by whites in American literature. But few would call The Conjure Woman open propaganda, a criticism readily made against Marrow and other works.

Obviously, something in addition to Chesnutt's social crusading and meager financial returns from book sales influenced the quality of his fiction. Ignoring this other element leads one to commit a crucial error pointed out by

James Weldon Johnson in "Negro Authors and White Publishers," the mistake of believing an author is not getting published because his writing is "too good." Johnson thinks "this is 113

the way that leads to making a fetish of failure. It is

a too easy explanation of the lack of accomplishment. It

is this 'superior work--sordid publishers --low brow public*

complex that gives rise to the numerous small coteries of

unsuccessful writers, white as well as colored; the chief

function of the members of these coteries being the mutual admiration of each other’s unpublished manuscripts.

This attitude brings its adherents to a pathetic futility c or ludicrous superiority." Chesnutt rarely held this

attitude, but some critics overuse it to excuse shortcomings

in his fiction. Keeping in mind the tremendous economic

and social pressures Chesnutt faced, but not ignoring the artistic responsibility he incurred with the decision to make literature a tool for reform, this chapter evaluates the fiction through the merits of the author's performance and theory of art. Surely this is the way he would want it.

Another brief look at the theory recalls its basic

tenets. It makes certain assumptions: that the author will write for a moral purpose and that his technique will be one of stealth that eventually evokes a moral resolution in America. Black people need only prepare themselves for this millenium-like happening by educating everything black out of their systems. A final resolve is that Chesnutt will write for a white audience. 114

A good way o£ detecting quality in an artist's writing is to determine how well he deals with the problem of audience. For the Black writer, this problem amounts to the dilemma of deciding for whom he should write, Blacks or whites. If he chooses a white audience, he is expected to conform to certain artistic conceptions about Black character that force him to skirt the Truth (and Beauty, too, if they are the same) art requires. And if he chooses a Black audience, its sensitivity engendered by centuries of abuse of Black character causes him to evade Truth. In white American art, the bright view of the Black is that he is "a simple, indolent, docile, improvident peasant; a singing, dancing, laughing, weeping child . . . a pathetic and pitiable figure."6 On the darker side, he is "an impulsive, irrational, passionate savage, reluc­ tantly wearing a thin coat of culture, sullenly hating the white man, but holding an innate and inescapable belief in the white man's superiority; an everlasting alien and irredeemable element in the nation . . . a figure casting 7 a sinister shadow across the future of the country."

Characterizations like these have created thin-skinned

Blacks filled up with the "razortoting, gin guzzling, chicken stealing Negro; or the pompous walking, dictionary spouting malapropism; we have heard so much of. . . . We 8 are certainly fed up." Consequently, Blacks insist that

Black writers portray only their best sides; the whites 115 have shown too much of their worst. Chesnutt encountered the Black author's dilemma about audience but resolved it by choosing to write for a white audience. "The object of my writings would be not so much the elevation of the colored people as the elevation of the whites. . . ."®

The Conjure Woman's artistic worth arises out of the mastery with which Chesnutt solves or greatly reduces the problem of audience. On the other hand, some pieces of his fiction show their artistic failure by the same criterion. Conj ure illustrates how Chesnutt accepts white artistic conceptions about Blacks, confronts and defeats them. The first evidence of this ability is shown in the decision to write in the local color tradition popular at the time. His central figure, Uncle Julius, appears to have stepped out of it. The public was well acquainted with the folktales collected by Joel Chandler Harris and told by his Black creation, Uncle Remus. So it was not difficult for Chesnutt to peddle Julius's stories as being akin to those told by Remus. As he later acknowledged,

"the name of the story teller, 'Uncle' Julius, and the locale of the stories as well as the cover design were suggestive of Mr. Harris's Uncle Remus.B u t Chesnutt's

Julius goes beyond the tradition, expands it to include the perspective of the Black man. Richard Baldwin explains that "the sentiments of white America could easily enough be touched, but the important task was 116 changing their perceptions. Whites had to be trained to perceive black experience from the black point of view, for until the white man was so changed no serious black literature could receive a hearing because it would not be understood.Chesnutt had to find ground whereon the

Black man could speak and be heard by the white, and

Conjure's local color trappings provide him with a vehicle for establishing a foothold.

Robert Bone observes that "the truth is- that Chesnutt used Harris as a protective mask. His strategy, in the face of a racist culture unwilling to accept him on his own terms, was to present himself in the guise of the harmless and the familiar. He was able to appropriate a literary form made popular by Harris and infuse it with a content that was not only strikingly original, but pro­ foundly subversive of the smiling face of slavery put forth 12 in the Harris books." To achieve his artistic ends,

Chesnutt tricked the white audience by offering The Conjure

Woman as a literary Trojan horse he hoped would cure instead of kill. In keeping with the warlike imagery of his theory of art, he "mined" the audience's position and Blacks found themselves "in its midst" before whites knew it.

But Chesnutt is not so adept in his manipulation of audience in his first novel, The House Behind the Cedars, and his ineptness detracts from the art of the book. 117

Perhaps his good reputation from Conjure and The Wife of

His Youth made him so secure that he falsely believed the public sufficiently predisposed to accepting Black perspec­ tive. Nonetheless, Chesnutt makes a grave mistake when he shies away from his responsibilities to audience and blames it and not his lack of racial pride for Rena's death. Blaming the audience is the greatest flaw in the novel because doing it creates, in turn, an inconsistency of structure, theme, and tone. Artistic integrity requires that they change only for purposes dictated by art. Tryon's rejection of Rena at the end of the first half of the book, for example, precipitates her awareness that "God made us all, . . . 'and for some good purpose, though we may not see it. He made some people white, and strong and masterful, and--heartless. He made others black and homely, and poor and weak--'" (House, p. 163). Her racial consciousness now expanded as far as Chesnutt will permit,

Rena should and does return to Black society to begin a new life. The beginning of Chapter Twenty-one, an early part of the second half of the novel, rightly abounds in references to her rebirth--her "quickened intelligence,"

"illumination," and "new-born desire." Her awakening sends her home prepared "to do something for the advance­ ment of those who had just set their feet upon the ladder of success" (House, p. 175). At this point in the novel, it is clear that Rena is no longer a naive, innocent, 118

imitation white girl, but a young Black woman who survived rejection and grew strong from this maturing experience.

Either she develops beyond this stage or Rena should have remained here.

But Chesnutt is not content to have her remain in this position and wrecks thematic unity by setting up a punishment process that ends in Rena's death, (As was shown earlier in Chapter Two, Rena pays for her decision to accept Blackness.) Wrecking thematic uni-ty also dis­ rupts the novel's linear structure which should have continued to an end where Rena finds unromanticized dignity in the Black world. Surely before whites could change their view of Blacks, they had to see the Black victim rising above her victimization. Yet, early evidence that

Rena is going to pay surfaces in Chapter Twenty-one when her enthusiasm for starting a new life is dampened by the author's artificial imposition of his will disguised as the power of the fates over her. This power is the central theme of the novel, the fact that time has not brought meaingful change to racial attitudes of the South. Rena's ^ struggle and John's, to some degree, carry this theme.

Chesnutt introduces Jeff Wain, a Black villain, whose presence brings on Rena's unhappiness and changes the novel's tone from one of hope to one of disappointment and sadness. George Tryon's character elicits a similar 119

response when he changes from the gallant knight of the

first part of the book to the white racist to the white

male lusting after Rena's "friendship," George's changes

reflect his developing character, but Rena dies before his

growth benefits her.

There are also unbelievable alterations in Rena's

character that refute the maturer woman who left to teach

in Sampson County. Rena's deterioration into an emotional

cripple is artificial and not justifiable in- a woman newly grown strong through emotional experience. Her

deterioration, however, is emblematic of how the author 13 portrays women as foolish and impulsive. Certainly,

Rena's survival and development from George's rejection

are sufficient evidence of her capacity to cope with those

last few days in Sampson County, during which she might have run into-Tryon. This same opinion applies to her fear of Wain, who "never seems much of a threat except in her sometimes fervid imagination."'1'^ The lack of believability in this new Rena is partly why her death seems so arbi­ trary, as Robert Bone contends. Moreover, this lack makes the reader more cognizant of the author in the act of exercising his will and not conforming to the dictates of art. Consequently, the episodes whose purpose is to use character change to show the active influence of the power of the fates over Rena fall short. Instead, they prove that the fates are as meaningless in Rena's life as they 120 are in John's. Had Chesnutt been artistically honest, he would have placed John as much under their control as Rena.

The language of the passage introducing the fates seems to echo their impotence, for its abstractness implies an attempt to obscure importance rather than present it.

As with the fates, the language shows the author using it to hide his disbelief in the ability of Black people to lessen their potential for victimization.

The House Behind the Cedars was written over a ten year period beginning in 1889. Robert Sedlack maps out three discernible periods in its development during a writing that carried through five manuscripts. In the first stage, from 1889 to 1891, Chesnutt is concerned with color prejudice within the Black culture group. His literary mentor, George Washington Cable, read this version, was not impressed and suggested he not try to publish it. But Chesnutt attempted to get "Rena," then a short story, published and set it aside tdien his attempt proved unsuccessful. He took it up again in April, 1895, reworking it into a novelette. In this version, Chesnutt is concerned with color prejudice within the Black folk group but adds George Tryon in an attempt to show the white as being partly responsible for Rena's downfall.

In the final version, Rena is made entirely innocent, and white racism is blamed entirely for what happens to her. 121

Chesnutt softens white responsibility somewhat by making

Tryon a victim, but not to the point of reducing white responsibility.

Following the development of the House manuscripts uncovers the deliberateness in the author's eventual blame of the white audience. More importantly, it shows him avoiding his artistic responsibility to portray the dignity of the human spirit amidst adversity. The victim who does not exert the human.will to survive breeds contempt and seems better off dead. Indeed, the human zest for life persists when all else is barren. Additionally, Chesnutt evades Truth because a Black Rena surviving despite her hardship compares favorably with what Blacks have done in

America for centuries, and under similar or worse condi­ tions. If Chesnutt had presented facts like these, he would not have reduced one iota the damage done by white racism but would have made its role more striking, indicat­ ing more poignantly how it hurts real people. But

Chesnutt's Rena is a lifeless mannequin whose total passivity and lack of will before the white foe evokes a mixture of sympathy and contempt that prevents the novel from reaching real tragedy.

Apparently, the artist cannot imagine what the man cannot perceive, or better still, Rena's aspirations for a new life are in conflict not only with what she must perceive about old South life but with Chesnutt's inability 122 to perceive dignity in Blackness. He could not create a

Rena transcending white racism in a Black setting because such a setting never exists for him. Chesnutt's lack of vision is Rena's tragedy. It made him a faulty artist and eventually lost him his audience. It had to know, if but subconsciously, that Rena's death was not all its fault.

Chesnutt's blame of the white audience is more severe in The Marrow of Tradition. He subsequently alienates it even more here than he does in House. For Marrow's artistry arises out of the author's skill at producing realistic, hard-driving propaganda, not in his mastery of novelistic technique. The writer minces few words in this tale of how whites callously disenfranchised Blacks through Hitler-like slaughter. Its comparison to Uncle

Tom's Cabin is not just chance. Because of its over­ whelming indictment of whites, Marrow failed to sell despite many reviews attesting to how interesting, dramatic, well-constructed and well-written it was. Chesnutt blamed its economic failure on its Black subject. When

William Dean Howells claimed in his review of the book that there was no color line in literature, Chesnutt replies "On that point I take issue with him. I am pretty fairly convinced that the color line runs everywhere so

1 f i far as the United States is concerned."xo In the biography,

Helen Chesnutt observes that criticism of the book ignores 123

its artistry but reveals sectional biases. "The northern

papers expressed unqualified praise for it, [but]

stressing the fact that it was the first novel in American

literature to depict the collision between the whites and 17 the educated, cultivated colored people of the South." '

Southern criticism resorts to namecalling, labeling the book "lies and slander about the South . . . utterly repel­

lent to Southern sentiment and one calculated to do infinite harm to the South if widely read. Another called it

'ridiculous silly rot.* A leading Washington paper ques­ tioned the wisdom of such a book as it arouses bitter 18 resentments in politics and personal relations."

That the book is blatant propaganda is illustrated by its stereotyped characters, existing to support a thesis and not to live as human beings. When one criticizes

Marrow, he must suspend awareness of novelistic skill, including characterization, since the author's purpose is

"not to tell a story or develop a set of characters but to use the characters to convey or illustrate the main

'character' in the novel, which is not a person, but an entire atmosphere of old opinions, shifting loyalties, conflicting motives and embedded traditions." 19 Carteret is the Southern aristocracy; McBane, the rising poor; and

Belmont, the economy-minded southerner looking for profits in a potentially prosperous South. Together they illus­ trate how diverse groups of whites unite to "solve" the 124

race problem. The author presents the liberal wing of

southern white society through Old Mr. Delamere and the middle class through Ellis. Blacks are similarly used, with Mammy Jane the devoted, faithful Thomasina; her

grandson, Jerry, an Uncle Tom; and Sandy, the faithful servant educated and given culture by the good whites.

The Carterets1 young Black nurse symbolizes emerging Black consciousness and Janet Miller is the tragic mulatto.

Fortunately, she rises above her stereotype by the end of the novel. Her husband, Dr. Miller, is the educated accommodationist Black and John Green is his antithesis as the Black brute. Like the whites, the Black characters represent varying aspects of Black society, from the Black one step removed from servitude to the Black elite. None of the characters, however--Black or white--lives.

Other elements of propaganda prevail in Marrow, It overuses usually preachy authorial intrusions, and its plot and subplots detract from rather than complement each other. The plots are deliberately weak to stunt character growth in order that philosophy rather than people can emerge. Then there are the dramatic scenes that do not come off. For example, the reader is left waiting for the scene when Old Mr. Delamere exposes his nephew Tom's criminality. But it, like many others, fizzles out, unbelievably permitting a murderer to go unpunished. But

Chesnutt is concerned not with the immorality of murder in 125

Marrow, but with the immorality of racial injustice. Even

the language exposes the propagandistic bent; usually

inconsistent with character or mood, it better fits

ideology than people. In other words, Chesnutt writes

Marrow for a purpose, a high and holy purpose: to elevate

the whites by showing them their iniquities.

Chesnutt's problems in Marrow arise when he chooses

to write propaganda while ignoring one of its basic rules.

Propaganda requires association with the "prevailing needs

and desires and attitudes of its audience. Its program must

provide a seemingly simple and rational solution to their 21 wishes and insecurities." x Chesnutt wanted the audience

to accept his wishes and attitudes, but for it to do this,

he had to convince it skillfully that his thinking and its

thinking were the same. Paradoxically, to do this, he had

to submit his offering under the guise of novelistic art,

which requires fidelity to the genre. Reaching an impasse,

he is forced to write either a novel or propaganda. And \ this is where Chesnutt probably perceived that using the

form of the realistic novel then in vogue required him to

concentrate on better development of setting and on charac­

ter that was more sustained and more subtly explored. His plots would have to be more complex and the bare facts

that make up the content of novels like Marrow would have

to be infused with creative imagination. Unfortunately,

adherence to these criteria leaves little room for racial

advocacy. Even if Chesnutt possessed the skill to create 126

a Wright-like protest novel (which he did not), his racial

beliefs would have to be muted by novelistic art, A basic

flaw in Chesnutt's theory of art and another of his personal

aspiration/perception conflicts now are exposed. Assuming

that art can cure social ills' is naive. Chesnutt aspires

to the unattainable, at least for him, and eventually had

to accept that fidelity to his racial aspiration meant

infidelity to art. The two are not as compatible as his

theory assumes.

Chesnutt does not seem to accept this fact until

after The Colonel's Dream is published in 1905. Before

that time, he continues to use propaganda, though less blatantly, avoiding it only once in "Baxter's Procrustes"

in 1904, which, revealingly, has no Black characters.

Consequently, one can assume that Chesnutt's decision to return to business was as much influenced by his perceptions of the limitations of his theory of art as by economics and racism. Unable to modify the theory, not possessing the skills to create new art forms and aware that he chose an ineffective tool with which to fight a heinous problem, he returned to a more secure setting, leaving behind some good pieces, a few interesting ones and a mass of good intentions.

Chesnutt's decision to write propaganda uncovers another weakness about his theory of art. It shows that he conceives of art as not necessarily soul-edifying or 127

beautiful but as a means to solving racial conflict. His

theory emphasizes art as craft, an implication of ingenuity

and subtlety in workmanship, trickery or guile with a lack

of real creative power. Chesnutt's art is one of

conscious application of skill, taste and creativity which

does not put stress on "something other." The "something

other" is an unanalyzable force that transmits and raises

art from the level of artifice. This is where one can make distinctions between the writer and the social crusader, with the latter first emerging. He is the beginning and 2 2 all else will "inspire me to greater effort." Therefore, one can assume that fine, artistic pieces like The Conjure

Woman happened on Chesnutt's way to alleviating racial tensions, not during a deliberate attempt to create art.

When it and Wife did not abate racial problems quickly enough, the social crusader resorted to open propaganda.

Marrow is the point at which he reaches the apex of his propagandizing. There, the social crusader and artist converge, briefly commune about their aspirations and the prospects for accomplishing them, separate to slowly descend to the brief art of "Baxter's Proscrustes" and the other pieces done.

A return to Uncle Julius shows the author in control of the audience and his art. He has used the local color tradition to predispose the reading public to accept him.

His problem now is to hold its attention while pleading his cause. Although modern Black writers seem oblivious to white audiences, the skill with which Chesnutt holds his in Conjure is endemic to the book's art. It was mentioned earlier that Uncle Remus is Uncle Julius's pro­ totype, with Julius possessing more depth of character.

Julius "had an axe to grind, for himself or his church, or some member of his family, or a white friend . . ,

[he had an] ulterior purpose, which, as a general thing, 2 ^ is accomplished." ° But Chesnutt’s achievement with the

Julius character lies in how well Julius alleviates the problem of dramatic incident, an offshoot from the Black writer's problem of audience. William Couch, Jr., explains it thus: "Serious dramatic situation necessitates conse­ quential action committed by a protagonist with whom we can sympathize and admire. The assumptions of American culture, on the other hand, are not congenial to emphatic and uncompromising action on the part of a Negro [especially where a white is concerned]. . . . Therefore, a dramatic situation capable of producing a powerful effect, will usually suffer a distortion of that effect when the agent of the action is a Negro character. Couch adds that

"submissive suffering becomes an important element in the dramatic representation of Negro life. But it is not the

Tragedy of Suffering. The suffering goes on without reference to and in excess of causes established within the particular work and is endured without resistance or 129

investigation on the part o£ the protagonist. Indeed, he

anticipates it. Suffering is accepted in expiation of his

sin, the sin being what he is--black. Black in the per­

sistence of a medieval morality, is unclean, the color of

evil."• i <12 5

The effect of the lack of control over dramatic

incident has already surfaced in Chesnutt's characteriza­

tion of Rena Walden in The House Behind the Cedars.

Evidence from outside the novel explained th’e whys of her

death that the novel does not. One will recall that she

supposedly dies because fate deems her death should expiate

her parents' sin of miscegenation. But further investiga­

tion uncovered that she dies because she cannot rid herself

of Blackness. For to Chesnutt and other contemporaries, preparation for recognition and equality meant educating out

Blackness, which Rena fails to do despite her natural talent and training. Rena's shortcomings and death prompt

Robert Bone to comment that "the dramatic conflict never transcends plot level; there is no characterization worthy of the name; and in the end, Chesnutt avoids his artistic responsibilities by arbitrarily putting his heroine to

O £ L death." Had Chesnutt not avoided these faults, Rena could have found peace as a Black. The vigor of his imagination would have produced an artistic result that was "superior to the gross and muddled conditions of 7 7 ordinary life.' Chesnutt, instead, imposed not the

creative will but the warped, racist will of whites on

Rena, and House is all the worse for it.

Chesnutt's lapse in artistic integrity in Rena’s case

reflects the common aspiration/perception conflict strain

of his fiction. The imposition of other wills obscures

his ability to perceive his artistic responsibility to

respect the sanctity of human creation.

Dr. Miller in The Marrow of Tradition also shows

Chesnutt avoiding artistic responsibility. Evidence out­

side the novel again explains why the irony at the novel's end, Dr. Miller foolishly going off with hope to administer

to the Carteret baby, is undercut. Irony is supposed to

establish Miller's folly, but fails to because the reader continues to believe Miller's action is right, even though what has preceded in the novel discounts it. It was discovered that a lyrical quality in the language belonging to the author causes misinterpretation. He lacks the necessary objectivity to separate himself from his characte thus allowing his feelings to confuse those of his characte

What the reader actually gets is the author’s accommodation

ist attitudes on race which require Blacks to assimilate with whites to the detriment of Black humanity. Therefore,

Chesnutt seems somewhat ridiculous at the end of Marrow, neurotically courting a non-conformed white bigot who earlier that same day abetted in the open slaughter of 131 numerous Blacks and liberal whites. Ironically, Chesnutt knew well the failure of those who remained too close to their subject. In an article in the Crisis, he stated that "the prevailing weakness of Negro writings, from the viewpoint of art, is that they are too subjective. The colored writer, generally speaking, has not yet passed the point of thinking of himself first as a Negro burdened with the responsibility of defending and uplifting his race. Such a frame of mind, however, praiseworthy from 2 8 a moral standpoint is bad for art." In Marrow, the author should have listened to himself.

But Chesnutt overcomes the cowardice of Miller with the integrity exhibited through Uncle Julius. Of course, he makes small concession to his white audience, but for the most part, Julius enters into dramatic situations with whites and emerges with his dignity intact. Also, with

Julius, Chesnutt does not resort to a common practice among Black writers of creating dramatic incidents by conflicting virtuous Blacks with vicious whites. He sees here that doing this does not resolve the dilemma.

Instead, as Richard Baldwin notes, "the tales which Julius tells are in the tradition of subterfuge, indirection, and subtle manipulation of whites. . . . Chesnutt's conjure stories turn the strategy of puttin' on ol' massa' into effective dramatic action through parallels and tensions between the frames established by the white narrator and the tales told by Uncle Julius."2^ In "The Conjure's

Revenge," the only tale where Julius dupes the white narrator directly and not through his wife, Julius's seemingly pointless tale convinces the narrator to buy a horse that looks like a fine animal, but which, in fact, is blind in one eye with defective sight in the other and develops most of the diseases of horses within a few months of purchase, and which is the most "worthless, broken- winded, spavined quadruped" that ever disgraced the name of horse. Luckily it dies after two or three months in a fit of colic. Julius emerges from "The Conjurer's Revenge" unscathed by white expectation that he be a quaint but dumb darky. Instead, his person is reinforcement of the deceptiveness of appearances theme of the inner story he tells. Julius never lives down to Uncle Remus. Julius is more a man.

The double narrative framework Chesnutt uses in

The Conjure Woman is an example of his artistic superiority.

The form was not new, having been used as early as Chaucer, rediscovered by Thomas Nelson Page and later employed by 30 his imitators in the plantation tradition. The Page formula required the raconteur to recount his memories of ante-bellum times in an affecting and authentic manner to a curious and appreciative white outsider who recorded them. The form was similarly used in local color fiction.

Chesnutt altered the frame story by adding the ironic 133 conclusion which grows out of repeated affirmation of 31 Julius's ingenuity. The important thing about the form is how well it fulfills the author's artistic and social expectations. First, it enables him to keep up the mask of conforming to white artistic conceptions of Blacks by fooling the reader who needs to be fooled. If the reader seeks the superficial Julius, his stories are so sandwiched between John's to have John's give the official (though superficial) view.*^ If the reader seeks more, he finds the pathos, the tragedy. Periodically, Chesnutt swings the pendulum somewhat in favor of Julius's perceptions by having Annie, the narrator's wife, attest to the validity of the tales. For example, after hearing Julius tell about

"Po' Sandy," she proclaims, "'What a system it [slavery] was'

. . . under which such things were possible.'" After hearing "Sis Becky's Pickanniny," Annie says severely

"'Why John!' . . . 'the story bears the stamp of truth, if ever a story did. . . . The story is true to nature, and might have happened half a hundred times, and no doubt did happen, in those horrible days before the war" (The

Conjure Woman, pp. 60-61).

Secondly, the double narrative framework lets Chesnutt set up two opposing fictive worlds, the real one of the white capitalistic narrator and the imaginative world of

Uncle Julius. Julius's world of the conjure is, as Robert

Bone puts it, "the domain of the wonderful and marvelous. . . . 134

The world of the conjure tale confronts us not with the

present but the past; not with realism but romanticism; not with reason but emotion; not with calculation but 33 accident." In a Coleridegean fashion, Chesnutt's conjure world attests to the truth of the imagination, the lack of which created the narrator and, to a lesser degree, his wife's domain, which is lacking in imagination except where it came to making money. Their world does not hesi­

tate to trade in human flesh.

Art became the medium for accomplishing a social goal because Chesnutt always loved literature and learning.

In evaluating him as an artist, one should keep in mind his goals and his prospects for accomplishing them. But like other things in his life, Chesnutt's aspirations for art exceeded realities unforeseen before undertaking his task. He had not perceived the limitations of his creative and artistic powers. He had to discover that he lacked the artistic ability to write propaganda that was art.

When he discovered his shortcomings, Chesnutt returned to the business world, a more advantageous position from which to launch his social aims. Yet, sensitive critics recognize when he reached artistic heights and credit the emotional and moral forces motivating him. FOOTNOTES--CHAPTER III

1 During his earliest years, literature provided Chesnutt with psychological and mental stimulation. See J. Noel Heermance, Charles W. Chesnutt: America's First Great Black Novelist [Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, 197 4)“ PP- 108-110.

2 Helen P. Chesnutt, Charles W. Chesnutt: Pioneer of The Color Line, p. 21.

3 Ibid., p . 21.

4 J. Saunders Redding, "American Negro Literature," American Scholar, 18 (Spring, 1949), 139. Also see Helen Chesnutt, p. 178.

5 "The Dilemma of the Negro Author," The American Mercury, 15 (December, 1928), 478.

6 Ibid., p. 478.

7 Sterling A. Brown, "Our Literary Audience," Oppor­ tunity , 7-8 (February, 1930), 43.

8 W. E. B. DuBois, "Criteria of Negro Art," Crisis, 30-32 (October, 1926), 297.

9 Helen P. Chesnutt, p. 21.

10 Charles W. Chesnutt, "Post-Bellum--Pre-Harlem" in Breaking into Print, ed. by Elmer Adler (New York: Simon and Shuster Publishers, 1931), p. 50.

11 "The Art of the Conjure Woman," American Literature, 43 (November, 1971), 385.

-135- 136

12 Down Home , p. 81.

13 See especially "The Doctor's Wife."

14 ! Robert P. Sedlack, "The Evolution of Charles Chesnutt's The House Behind the Cedars, 19 [December, 1975), 132.

15 Ibid., p . 131.

16 Helen M. Chesnutt, p. 178.

17 Ibid., p . 176.

18 Ibid., pp. 176-77.

19 William Andrews, Dissertation, p. 80.

20 Ibid., pp. 80-81.

21 Oliver Carlson, Handbook on Propaganda for the Alert Citizen, 2, Studies of the Foundation for Social Research [Winter, 1953) , 15.

22 Helen M. Chesnutt, p. 21.

23 Charles W. Chesnutt, "Post-Bellum--Pre-Harlem," p . 49.

24 "The Problem of Negro Character and Dramatic Incident," Phylon, 2 (Second Quarter, 1950), 128.

25 Ibid., p. 131.

26 The Negro Novel in America (New Haven: Yale University-Press"! 1969) , p^ 37 . 137

27 William Couch, p. 131.

28 33 (November, 1926), 28-29.

29 "The Art of The Conjure Woman," p. 387.

30 William L. Andrews, "The Significance of Charles W. Chesnutt's 'Conjure Stories,"' The Southern Literary Journal, 7 (Fall, 1974), 85-86.

31 Ibid., p . 86,

32 David D. Britt, "Chesnutt's Conjure Tales: What You See Is What You Get," 269-283.

33 P o m Home, p. 82.

34 Ibid., p . 8 2. CHAPTER IV

CONCLUSION

Aspiration in conflict with perception means tech­

nique that permits Charles Waddell Chesnutt to generate

dramatic tension in his fiction. The technique works best

in stories set in slavery because it presents the author

with a more favorable forum for accomplishing his major

moral purpose in writing. Slavery is an immoral norm

here; so, Chesnutt patterns stories set in this time on

usually conflicting Black and white aspirations that con­

flict even further with Chesnutt’s perceptions of human

morality. Uncle Julius and John of The Conjure Woman

often contend for economic gains but do so on the periphery

of the author's more profound insight into the universal

need for love and family life, the importance of the

imagination, of learning, and so on. The seeming ease with which Chesnutt is able to remove himself from the

scene attests to how he controls his art best in this

setting, being objective and probing yet passionate as he

exposes slavery's immorality.

The author continues use of the technique and for the

same purpose in stories with post-slavery settings; only

in this time, aspiration and perception are adjusted to

-138- 139 accommodate the change from slavery to freedom. Aspira­ tion now takes the form of quests for social, economic and political success and perception the means to achieve these. Perception may be ignoring the desire for revenge, as is the case in "The Doll," or controlling jealousy, as in "The Web of Circumstance." Sometimes, it is perception of racial realities, as in The House Behind the

Cedars and The Colonel's Dream. The moral purpose continues still in Chesnutt's writing, but p.roblems arise when the technique uncovers inconsistency in its applica­ tion. It seems that a pervasive opportunism comes along with the change in setting, and it too often forces compro­ mises that greatly reduce both Chesnutt's moral and artis­ tic commitments. The most striking occasion when this happens occurs in The House Behind the Cedars when the author's miscegenation advocacy prevents acceptance of

Black skin and, in turn, limits his capacity to create fully rounded Black characters. In a like manner, the decision to write propaganda in The Marrow of Tradition limits his capacity to employ novelistic skills.

Compromises continue until by the time Chesnutt writes his last published novel, The Colonel's Dream, he shows beginning alteration of his theory of art. He still writes for the moral purpose of educating whites on the evils of the mistreatment of Blacks, but his message is now carried by a white, basically good protagonist with 140 whom his predominantly white aduience can more readily

identify. But this concession is not enough to salvage

the author's still waning popularity; therefore, Chesnutt writes two last novels entirely about whites, both of which are never published. William Andrews explains how

Chesnutt virtually abandons his moral purpose altogether as he placed himself in the hands of advisors in a vain attempt to regain lost prestige. Andrews sees a more complex and tragic view of Chesnutt as an author who, attempting to attract even a moderately sized readership, would willingly set aside or otherwise modify his funda­ mental subject on the suggestion of friends and advisors.^-

The aspiration/perception conflict in the fiction, in the end, unmasks the author's own aspiration/perception problems, for Chesnutt's later artistic decisions indicate an awareness of the tenuousness of his racial advocacy and of his initial moral reasons for writing. When change made it less opportune to cater to these, Chesnutt alters his course to fit it. He adapts as handily as his John does in The House Behind the Cedars. The fiction presents a symbolic testimony of his perception with the move from

Black to white themes, settings. Maybe this move is what prompted W. E. B. DuBois to write a postscript on the occasion of Chesnutt's death that characterizes the author 2 as one "of that group of whites who because of a more or 141

less remote Negro ancestor identified himself voluntarily with the darker group, studied them, expressed them, defended them. . . . "3 FOOTNOTES--CHAPTER IV

1 "A Reconsideration of Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line,"College Language Association Journal, 9 (December, 1975)"j 147-150". 2 Underlining mine.

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