{"id":10518,"date":"2010-12-05T04:55:36","date_gmt":"2010-12-05T04:55:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=10518"},"modified":"2017-03-01T13:43:39","modified_gmt":"2017-03-01T13:43:39","slug":"whiteness-in-the-novels-of-charles-w-chesnutt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=10518","title":{"rendered":"Whiteness in the Novels of Charles W. Chesnutt"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whiteness in the Novels of Charles W. Chesnutt<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

University Press of Mississippi
\n<\/a>2004
\n248 pages
\nbibliography, index
\nCloth ISBN: 1578066670 (9781578066674)
\nPaper ISBN: 9781604732481<\/p>\n

Matthew Wilson<\/a><\/strong>, Professor of English and Humanities
\nPennsylvania State University, Harrisburg<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

An examination of race and audience in an American innovator\u2019s writings<\/em><\/p>\n

Charles W. Chesnutt<\/a> (1858-1932), critically acclaimed for his novels, short stories, and essays, was one of the most ambitious and influential African American writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Today recognized as a major innovator of American fiction, Chesnutt is an important contributor to de-romanticizing trends in post-Civil War<\/a> Southern literature, and a singular voice among turn-of-the-century realists who wrote about race in American life.<\/p>\n

Whiteness in the Novels of Charles W. Chesnutt<\/em> is the first study to focus exclusively on Chesnutt\u2019s novels. Examining the three published in Chesnutt\u2019s lifetime\u2014The House Behind the Cedars<\/a><\/em>, The Marrow of Tradition<\/a><\/em>, and The Colonel\u2019s Dream\u2014<\/em>as well as his posthumously published novels, this study explores the dilemma of a black writer who wrote primarily for a white audience.<\/p>\n

Throughout, Matthew Wilson analyzes the ways in which Chesnutt crafted narratives for his white readership and focuses on how he attempted to infiltrate and manipulate the feelings and convictions of that audience.<\/p>\n

Wilson pays close attention to the genres in which Chesnutt was working and also to the social and historical context of the novels. In articulating the development of Chesnutt\u2019s career, Wilson shows how Chesnutt\u2019s views on race evolved. By the end of his career, he felt that racial differences were not genetically inherent, but social constructions based on our background and upbringing. Finally, the book closely examines Chesnutt\u2019s unpublished manuscripts that did not deal with race. Even in these works, in which African Americans are only minor characters, Wilson finds Chesnutt engaged with the conundrum of race and reveals him as one of America’s most significant writers on the subject.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Whiteness in the Novels of Charles W. Chesnutt” is the first study to focus exclusively on Chesnutt\u2019s novels. Examining the three published in Chesnutt\u2019s lifetime\u2014”The House Behind the Cedars,” “The Marrow of Tradition,” and “The Colonel\u2019s Dream”\u2014as well as his posthumously published novels, this study explores the dilemma of a black writer who wrote primarily for a white audience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1196,8,17,20],"tags":[333,898,897,4629,1420],"class_list":["post-10518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-monographs","category-usa","tag-charles-chesnutt","tag-charles-w-chesnutt","tag-charles-waddell-chesnutt","tag-matthew-wilson","tag-university-press-of-mississippi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10518"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51951,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10518\/revisions\/51951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}