The old Dixie home ain’t what it used to be
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| Charles W. Chesnutt |
The Colonel’s Dream, published in 1905, was the last novel written by Charles W. Chesnutt, one of the great American realist writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A man of mixed-race ancestry, Chesnutt wrote about black/white relations in post-Civil War America. His depictions of social, political, and economic conditions in the South are unflinchingly honest and sometimes brutally realistic. Such frank societal criticism may have been off-putting to audiences of Chesnutt’s day, but it’s that very frankness that makes his work all the more valuable to today’s readers as a literary record of American history. The Colonel’s Dream is yet another great novel in this author’s exceptional body of work.
Colonel Henry French is a former Confederate Army soldier who settled in New York City after the war and struck it rich in the business world. After selling his company, he decides to temporarily relocate to his hometown of Clarendon, North Carolina, partly to benefit the ill health of his son Phil. In Clarendon, the Colonel reconnects with some old friends and relives fond memories, but he finds the town much changed since his youth. Since the war, and the emancipation of the slaves, the town has stagnated. Many of the blacks, though free, can’t find decent work because of racial prejudice, while the whites, used to having their work done for them by slaves, have grown shiftless and idle. What’s worse, the Colonel discovers a system of servitude in place that essentially perpetuates slavery. Blacks are fined heavily for crimes like vagrancy. Their debts are then auctioned off to white employers who get their free labor for months or years. This system is supported by white supremacist William Fetters, a childhood classmate of the Colonel’s, who owns most of the town and whom almost everyone is in debt to. To reinvigorate Clarendon and break Fetters’s hold on the populace, the Colonel decides to inject some much-needed capital into the economy by building a mill.
Although Chesnutt had very liberal, progressive views on racial equality and civil rights, he sometimes expresses some rather conservative ideas about class. In his works, aristocratic “blood” and “breeding” are often cited as the true measure of a man. A specimen of poor white trash can rise above his condition and learn to run a profitable business, as Fetters has done, but he can never learn the true manners, dignity, and honor of a gentleman. The man with blue blood will always be his superior. Colonel French, the descendant of wealthy white landowners, is the epitome of this aristocratic ideal, and his every action is beyond reproach. Not only does this attitude dilute the socially conscious message of Chesnutt’s work, it also sometimes constitutes a departure from realism in favor of a romanticized ideal.
Chesnutt’s writing is not free of melodrama either. The plot contains a few love stories, a subplot about a hidden treasure, and a dramatic courthouse scene, but somehow it all works together. Given its frequent focus on economic matters, The Colonel’s Dream feels a little safe compared to other Chesnutt novels like The Marrow of Tradition, about a race riot, or The House Behind the Cedars, about mixed-race blacks passing as white. Nevertheless, it must have been quite controversial for its time, and its illumination of prejudice and exposure of injustice is still quite relevant today. The novel is extremely well-written, with an unpredictable plot and several emotionally stirring scenes. Though The House Behind the Cedars may be Chesnutt’s best novel, this one is a close second. For a writer whose every book is well worth reading, that’s saying a lot.
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Black and White was not so black-and-white
Charles W. Chesnutt is one of America’s great realist writers. Perhaps the reason he’s not better known today is because he was only active for about a decade around the year 1900, and the subject matter of his writing has a very narrow focus. All of his literary works are about the lives of Americans of mixed black and white ancestry in the years following the Civil War. Chesnutt himself was a mixed-race African American. The stories in his collection The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color-Line, published in 1899, take place in Patesville, North Carolina and Groveland, Ohio—fictional towns based on the communities in which the author was born and raised. With vivid authenticity, blunt candor, and often a wry sense of humor, Chesnutt examines the Byzantine, restrictive, and unjust social structure that governed black, white, and mixed-race relations during this period in American history.
In the time about which Chesnutt is writing, any drop of African blood would put you into the “colored” category, regardless of the hue of your flesh. Stories like “The Wife of His Youth” and “A Matter of Principle” reveal a light-skinned aristocracy of mixed-race blacks who consider themselves superior to those of darker skin. The former story takes the subject seriously, while the latter plays it for laughs. There’s not a trace of humor to be found in “The Sheriff’s Children,” the best entry in the book. When a black man is accused of a crime, the white sheriff who protects him from being lynched receives a stunning revelation. It’s a riveting story just begging for a film adaptation.
In most cases the endings of the stories are pretty predictable, but the subtle touches of humor and pathos that Chesnutt adds make the ride worth while. Not every conclusion is foregone. At the end of “Her Virginia Mammy,” there’s a wonderfully crafted, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment of ambiguity where one character appears to know the big secret while the other clearly does not. Sometimes the ending serves to tame the story a bit, possibly to make it more acceptable to readers of Chesnutt’s era. In “The Passing of Grandison,” a story about a slave who doesn’t want to be freed, the title character’s sheepish acceptance of his enslavement is so ridiculous that after a while you end up feeling guilty for laughing at slavery. In the end, however, Chesnutt relents a little with the satire, letting his readers off the hook. “Uncle Wellington’s Wives” is a story about a former slave who, finding his marriage under slavery to be legally invalid, dreams of running off to the North to marry a white woman. It likewise stirs up mixed emotions by depicting the harsh reality of black life—even in the North—while generating humor from Wellington’s comeuppance.
This is the fourth book I’ve read by Chesnutt, which is about half of his total career output. All of his works are exceptional, but this is one of his better ones. Only his excellent novel The House Behind the Cedars supersedes this one. Chesnutt’s other 1899 short story collection, The Conjure Woman, is concerned with Southern black culture, its folk tales and superstitions. While it provides a frank portrayal of African American life in the South, its fairy tale elements often overpower its depictions of social conditions. The Wife of His Youth is a much more forthright call for social justice and really opens one’s eyes to the conundrums—from the comical to the dangerous—that blacks had to face in navigating the societal norms of the time. If you like realist or naturalist literature, and are thinking of giving Chesnutt a try, this book is a good one to start with.
Stories in this collection
The Wife of His Youth
Her Virginia Mammy
The Sheriff’s Children
A Matter of Principle
Cicely’s Dream
The Passing of Grandison
Uncle Wellington’s Wives
The Bouquet
The Web of Circumstance
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Anatomy of a race riot
The Marrow of Tradition, originally published in 1901, is a novel by Charles W. Chesnutt, an author of mixed African and European ancestry who often wrote about racial issues in the American South. This book is set in Wellington, a fictional surrogate for Wilmington, NC. It is based on an actual event that occurred there in 1898 which has been alternately referred to by different parties as an insurrection, a coup d’etat, a massacre, and a race riot.
Olivia Carteret is the wife of Major Carteret, publisher of the town newspaper. When her mother died, Olivia’s father became involved with one of his black servants, resulting in a second daughter, Janet. Olivia considers her mulatto half sister to be a stain on her good name, yet she also secretly envies Janet’s happiness and success. Janet is married to William Miller, a respected black doctor educated in Europe, who has established a hospital to serve the community’s black population. Many of the town’s white citizens, some of whom still remember the days of slavery, are uncomfortable with the rising fortunes and strides toward equality made by their black neighbors. Major Carteret, a white supremacist, feels that the black folks need a reminder of their proper place in Southern society. He and a couple of like-minded associates start a propaganda campaign to promote their pro-white agenda in an attempt to oust the local black-friendly political party from power.
Stylistically, Chesnutt was a naturalist, and he depicts Southern society with unflinching clarity. He illustrates the tense relations between the black and white races through a series of discriminatory acts. For starters, Dr. Miller is kicked out of a white train car, then denied access to a medical procedure. Chesnutt also depicts the working lives of lower class blacks—laborers and servants—who are treated with insulting condescension and threatening disdain by their white employers and customers. Beatings and lynchings are still a threat for those who don’t toe the line. As the story proceeds, the racial unrest intensifies and the incidents of white antagonism toward the blacks escalates from unjust discrimination to violent persecution. This is by no means a simple us vs. them story, however. A large cast of characters and a wide array of subplots allows for Chesnutt to explore a variety of motives and perspectives, presenting a black and white society blurred by shades of gray. In contrast to Major Carteret’s cronies, some whites sympathize with the plight of the blacks. Among the black men, some are like caged prisoners ready to strike at their captors, while others are compliant subjects resigned to the perceived inevitability of their second-class citizenship. Chesnutt explores class issues as well as race. One of the white supremacists, Captain McBane, represents uppity “white trash,” despised by the aristocratic Major Carteret for his lack of breeding. Conversely, Dr. Miller is resented by whites for displaying admirable gentility in spite of his African pedigree.
Amidst the generally realistic discussion of such serious fare, Chesnutt mixes in a fair amount of soap opera melodrama. For example, a young white woman is courted by two white suitors—one a wealthy, rakish cad; the other an earnest, hardworking underdog. Given the era of the book’s publication, such frivolities can be forgiven. If written today, the narrative would no doubt be darker and grittier. Overall, however, The Marrow of Tradition is an eye-opening history lesson that’s remarkably frank for its time. The reader comes away with an admiration for Chesnutt’s brave forthrightness as well as his formidable skills as a novelist.
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Folklore of the American South
The Conjure Woman, a collection of short stories by Charles W. Chesnutt, was originally published in 1899. In the opening story, the narrator explains that due to his wife’s poor health, a doctor advises him to move her to a warmer climate. So they pack up, leave Ohio, and move down to central North Carolina. The narrator, named John, has an interest in “grape-culture,” so he buys an old vineyard which he hopes to restore to prosperity. This takes place “a sufficient time” after the Civil War, yet memories of slavery and the old plantation system still linger. Soon after arriving, John and his wife meet an old black man named Julius who in former times was a slave to the vineyard’s previous owner. They hire him on as a farm hand and handyman. Whenever opportunity presents itself, old Julius regales his employers with superstitious folk tales of the old pre-war days.
The seven stories all roughly follow the same format. The couple gets a visit from Julius on their porch, or he takes them for a drive in the wagon. For whatever reason the task or errand at hand is delayed, giving Julius the opportunity to tell one of his imaginative tales. All the stories feature a conjurer—usually a woman named Aunt Peggy, but sometimes another woman or man. For the price of some corn or a chicken these conjurers will mix up their roots and perform their magic. Often this involves transforming people into animals, or putting a “goopher”—or hex—on someone. At story’s end, it’s always revealed that Julius has an ulterior motive for his narrative—he doesn’t want his boss to buy a particular piece of land or go down a certain road. The narrator is a diehard skeptic who doesn’t believe a word of Julius’s fantastical stories, but usually his wife is emotionally affected by the tales. Her husband acquiesces to her wishes, and Julius gets his way. The book’s main weakness is that it never varies from this template. Julius’s stories are always entertaining and often laugh-out-loud funny, but the scenes that bookend them get a little tiresome.
The stories are written in a heavy black Southern dialect, like what you might find in passages of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. The “n-word” is ubiquitous. Chesnutt was a mixed race author, and I think it’s implied that the narrator and his wife have African ancestry as well. There’s no racism in Chesnutt’s telling of these tales, but there is a hint of classist condescension. John and his wife are like that couple on the old TV series Green Acres who move to the country and find themselves surrounded by bumpkins. Because these tales delve into the realm of fantasy, they don’t provide the realistic portrait of Southern life that one finds in Chesnutt’s naturalistic novel The House Behind the Cedars. The Conjure Woman does, however, provide some insight into life under slavery. Not all of the masters are depicted as cruel and heartless, yet almost every story involves the separation of slave families when husbands, wives, or children are sold or transferred to another plantation. The conjurers and their witchcraft offer the only hope of circumventing the harsh reality of slave life. They represent the hope of freedom amidst a life of bondage.
The original edition of The Conjure Woman contained seven stories. Later editions, like the one available for free at Amazon or Project Gutenberg, entitled The Conjure Woman, and Other Stories, contain three additional “uncollected Uncle Julius stories” and a short essay by Chesnutt called “Superstitions and Folk-Lore of the American South.”
Stories in this collection
The Goophered Grapevine
Po’ Sandy
Mars Jeems’s Nightmare
The Conjurer’s Revenge
Sis’ Becky’s Pickaninny
The Gray Wolf’s Ha’nt
Hot-Foot Hannibal
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Fable of the Reconstruction
Charles W. Chesnutt was an author of mixed African American and white European ancestry. His first novel, The House Behind the Cedars, was published in 1900. It takes place in the American South a few years after the Civil War. John Warwick pays a visit to Patesville, North Carolina, the town where he grew up. He has since made a name for himself as a successful lawyer in Clarence, South Carolina. Despite his admirable position and achievements, he chooses to keep his hometown return a secret. Warwick is an assumed name, and he sneaks through the streets avoiding recognition. He has come seeking his sister Rena, with the intention of taking her back with him to South Carolina, in hopes of elevating her station in life to a level equal with his own. His family has a big secret that must be kept at all costs if his plan is to succeed.
Chesnutt doesn’t tell the reader what this secret is. He skillfully keeps that detail hidden, slowly dropping hints and innuendos. If you know anything about the author, you’ve got a pretty good idea as to the nature of this skeleton in the closet, and by the time Chesnutt reveals the truth it’s more like a recognition of assumed fact than the dropping of a bomb. The House Behind the Cedars offers a fascinatingly nuanced portrait of race relations in the American South. After the Civil War, blacks were nominally free, but few enjoyed the full rights of free people. One drop of African blood was enough to mark someone as a second-class citizen. Chesnutt illustrates the difficulty of living under this oppressive code of racial segregation. Some of the whites are outright racists, while others are favorably disposed toward equality. Some appear one way on the surface, but beneath a liberal facade lie deep-seated prejudices. Chesnutt also explores racism within the black community between those of lighter and darker complexions. The picture he paints of the Southern social landscape is intriguingly complex and diverse. While the subject matter calls to mind William Faulkner, Chesnutt tells his story in the straightforward naturalistic voice of turn-of-the-last-century realists like Hamlin Garland and Frank Norris.
The book’s one major flaw is that it relies far too heavily upon coincidence to move the plot forward. The Carolinas must be small territory indeed if people run into each other as often as they do in this novel. But this is fiction, after all, and at times departures must be made from reality in order to make a point or simply to entertain. After a while the story morphs into a romance like something Anthony Trollope might have written. Readers of today, so used to cinematic and literary depictions of white brutality against blacks in the 19th-century South, might consider this story a bit too rosy to be credible. Nowadays when it comes to this subject matter, we almost expect violence and cruelty. Though that threat is ever-present, Chesnutt’s tale is more concerned with social and moral dangers. He lived through these times, as a man of mixed race, and there is a ring of truth in his forthright prose that begs to be believed.
This is my first experience reading Chesnutt’s work, and he is a remarkable storyteller. The House Behind the Cedars is not only an educational and thought-provoking piece of social commentary, it’s also immensely entertaining. Though it defers to the conventions of Victorian romance fiction when convenient, the story is anything but conventional and the outcome is unpredictable until the very last page. Anyone with an appreciation for classic books should read this excellent novel.
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