Charles Chesnutt

“I see an epoch in our nation's history . . . when there shall be in the United States but one people, moulded by the same culture . . . holding their citizenship in such high esteem that for another to share it is of itself to entitle him to fraternal regard; when men will be esteemed and honored for their character and talents."¹ Charles W. Chesnutt, an African American author and political activist, envisioned a future where racial tensions were a thing of the past. Chesnutt’s books and short stories reveal a writing style that stood out in its desire to illuminate the African American community’s experience of living in nineteenth-century America.

Charles W. Chesnutt Biography

Charles Waddell Chesnutt was born on June 20, 1858, and died on November 15, 1932. Chesnutt’s parents were “free persons of color” who left the South before the Civil War. His grandfather was a white slaveholder. Chesnutt was seven-eighths white, but he always identified as African American.

After the Civil War ended, the Chesnutt family returned to North Carolina, where they opened a grocery store, and Charles attended school. Unfortunately, the grocery store eventually failed due to his dad’s bad business sense and the South’s stagnant economy, so Chesnutt became a pupil-teacher when he was fourteen to help support the family.

Once he was an adult, Chesnutt received a promotion to assistant principal and then principal at the African American college now known as Fayetteville State University. After he was married, Chesnutt and his wife moved to New York City to raise a family away from the poverty and racism of the South. Chesnutt chose New York because he wanted to become a writer, but they relocated to Cleveland six months later.

In Cleveland, he studied law, and after passing the bar exam, Chesnutt put that and the skills he’d learned when he was young to good use by opening a very successful stenography business. Chesnutt wrote in his spare time, and his story, “The Goophered Grapevine” (1887), was the first story published in The Atlantic by an African American.

Chesnutt continued to publish his short stories in prestigious magazines until he had enough of a literary reputation to begin publishing books. While his short stories were popular with white readers (because of the subtle irony Chesnutt used to criticize the South’s racial history often went over their heads), his longer prose was more straightforward in its negative assessments. As a result, Chesnutt lost most of his audience and could never write full-time as he would have liked.

Fig. 1 - Chesnutt's first book was an anthology of his famous "Uncle Julius Tales" called The Conjure Woman (1899).

Once the Harlem Renaissance emerged in the 1920s, the new generation of African American writers labeled him old-fashioned and said his short stories promoted prejudicial African American stereotypes. However, although he didn’t publish much more, Chesnutt remained highly respected.

Modern critics recognize that his work offers a unique perspective of a period in history that preferred his silence. Charles Waddell Chesnutt's writing is an invaluable resource that introduced cultural subjects, like the difficulties faced by people of mixed race, and political issues, such as segregation, to mainstream audiences. Chesnutt offered a realistic portrait of the African American experience in the South both before and after the Civil War.

Working in his father’s grocery store as a kid left a deep impression on Chesnutt about the complexities of Southern life and the differences between its people. These impressions laid the foundation for Chesnutt’s fictional stories about the African American community’s struggles with the color line in the South and conflicts within the African American community. As a young adult, Chesnutt believed writing literature would create a space for an honest conversation about race and the color line, leading to societal change. But unfortunately, experience showed him differently, and he became more cynical as he grew older.

Because Chesnutt was motivated by his desire to offer readers a window into the African American and mixed-race experience, he wrote in a realistic style that included local color characteristics.

Realism

As early as the 1830s realism became a popular way to write about previously overlooked subjects and the social and economic commotion of the nineteenth century. Realism rejected the idealization and beautification of life and nature offered by its predecessor, Romanticism.

The Civil War and its aftereffects caused massive loss and uncertainty. The Civil War brought with it levels of death and destruction that had never been seen before. After it was over, the United States shifted its level of industrialization into high gear, creating an urban population explosion. The trauma and culture shock associated with these changes made Romanticism seem completely out of touch with reality. Science and philosophy argued that reality existed independently of the human mind, so writers aimed to capture it objectively in their work.

Realist writers centered their stories around everyday people living their ordinary lives. Chesnutt’s writing is classified as Realism because his characters include formerly enslaved people, people of mixed races, and people in the lower and middle classes. Chesnutt was one of the first writers to portray African Americans authentically in fictional writing.

Local Color

Local color refers to a writing style in the late nineteenth century that included the customs, beliefs, and traditions of rural regions in the United States in a way that confirmed urban stereotypes. Local color often uses humor, and its dialogue is written in a way that mimics the region’s speech patterns, sometimes with an exaggerated effect.

Local color is similar to Regionalism, which uses the region’s customs and beliefs to highlight its ways of life or offer social critique. Although Chesnutt was traditionally included as a local color writer because of his use of dialect and African American stereotypes in his writing, modern critics disagree. Revisiting Chesnutt’s writing in the 1960s and comparing it to other local color writers of the Plantation Tradition shows stark differences between them.

Juxtaposing Chesnutt’s writing with other examples of the Plantation Tradition exposes his use of irony and satire. For instance, Chesnutt’s Southern African Americans speak in a dialect that a nineteenth-century white audience would find ignorant. However, their exaggerated dialect uses the stereotype of low intelligence to their advantage. While the white “masters” are laughing at their stupidity, the African American characters are tricking them into giving them what they want.

Charles W. Chesnutt's Books

Charles W. Chesnutt published six books while alive, and five additional manuscripts were published after his death. Of the books published during his lifetime, two were short story anthologies, one was a biography of Frederick Douglass, and the final three were novels.

The House Behind the Cedars (1900)

The House Behind the Cedars is set after the Civil War and about John and Rena, a mixed-race brother and sister from North Carolina. They move to South Carolina as adults and live successfully by passing as white. Rena and George, a white colleague of John’s, fall in love, but he ends their relationship after discovering Rena is mixed. George eventually regrets his decision, but Rena dies before he can rekindle their love.

The House Behind the Cedars is innovative because Chesnutt offers a profound examination of racial identity. He uses the act of passing to show that fair skin offers opportunities not extended to darker hues and uses characters’ reactions to expose racial expectations. The House Behind the Cedars was critically successful but not popular because of the controversy surrounding its interracial love affair.

The Marrow of Tradition (1901)

The Marrow of Tradition offers a fictionalized account of the rise of white supremism that climaxes with a fictionalized version of the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898. During the actual insurrection, African Americans were murdered by white people, and the county government was overthrown and replaced with white supremacists.

Chesnutt’s novel attempted to counteract the unreliable media reports and biased books written by white supremacists who were providing information and defining how the subject should be thought about in the North. However, its laid bare discussion of lynching, Jim Crow racism, and segregation alienated white audiences. Critics dismissed it as well-written but hostile.

Fig. 2 - Unlike other Plantation Tradition stories that idealized slavery, Chesnutt's short stories used stereotypes to give enslaved people a level of control.

Charles W. Chesnutt's Short Stories

Chesnutt’s short stories were trendier than his novels, mainly because he disguised his social critiques using humor or structuring them to read like conventional plantation fiction. In truth, Chesnutt portrayed slavery as violent and psychologically damaging in his stories.

“Dave’s Neckliss” (1889)

This short story exemplifies Chesnutt’s “Uncle Julius Tales.” Following the structure of plantation literature, “Uncle Julius Tales” are framed by the white narrator John acting as an interpreter for a good-humored, elderly former enslaved person’s stories.

“Dave’s Neckliss” is the story of an enslaved person who is humiliated and eventually commits suicide after being punished for crimes he didn’t commit. Underneath John’s disbelief and confusion that Uncle Julius shares the story without condemning the slaveholder lies the moral judgment that the slaveholder’s behavior should have been condemned. In addition, Uncle Julius’s objective point of view allows the horrors of slavery to speak for themselves.

“The Passing of Grandison” (1898)

“The Passing of Grandison” is a trickster tale about an enslaved person pretending to be satisfied with his life to escape with his family. The title is a play on words because Grandison never tries to “pass” as white as the title implies. Instead, he “passes” as a stereotypical enslaved person who is happy to rely on his master.

Early interpretations of Chesnutt’s short stories focus on his African American characters' exaggerated dialect and stereotypical behavior and gloss over how they work together to subvert white authority.

For example, in “The Passing of Grandison,” Grandison is used as a pawn to help the slaveholder’s son win a girl’s affection. Grandison is taken on a trip with the hopes he’ll try to escape. When he doesn’t, the slaveholder’s son has him kidnapped. However, Grandison is aware of how he’s being used and soon returns to the plantation. And he stays until he sees his chance to escape again with his family. By playing into stereotypes, Grandison upends the power structure and has control over his freedom.

Charles W. Chesnutt Quotes

Chesnutt offered critical observations about social hierarchy in his writing.

Chesnutt employs the technique of “masking” in his writing. Masking refers to African American people hiding their authentic selves as a survival tactic. Grandison’s compliment flatters his slaveholder’s ego and masks his desire to escape.

Chesnutt’s response to critics of The Marrow of Tradition notes the circular relationship between the public and the media. The public's opinion is created by the media, and the media talks about what the public is talking about.