Passing in the Works of Charles W. Chesnutt (Margaret Walker Alexander Series in African American Studies)

147 Pages·2010·1.12 MB·English

by  Susan Prothro Wright

Passing in the Works of
CHARLES W. CHESNUTT
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Passing in the Works of
CHARLES W. CHESNUTT
Edited by Susan Prothro Wright
and Ernestine Pickens Glass
university press of mississippi
jackson
Margaret Walker Alexander Series in African American Studies
www.upress.state.ms.us
TheUniversity Press of Mississippi is a member of the
Association of American University Presses.
Copyright © 2010 by University Press of Mississippi
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
First printing 2010
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Passing in the works of Charles W. Chesnutt / edited by Susan Prothro Wright
and Ernestine Pickens Glass.
p. cm. — (Margaret Walker Alexander series in African American studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-1-60473-416-4 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Chesnutt, Charles W. (Charles
Waddell), 1858–1932—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Passing (Identity)—
Fiction. I. Wright, Susan Prothro. II. Glass, Ernestine Pickens.
PS1292.C6Z8 2010
813’.4—dc22 2009020701
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
To the memory of James Francis and Harriet Maxine Wright
For my husband, William Glass
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Contents
ix Preface
xiii Acknowledgments
3 Charles W. Chesnutt’s Historical Imagination
Werner Sollors
9 Signifying the Other
Chesnutt’s “Methods of Teaching”
SallyAnn H. Ferguson
23 On Flags and Fraternities
Lessons in History in Charles Chesnutt’s “Po’ Sandy”
Margaret D. Bauer
39 Passing as Narrative and Textual Strategy in Charles Chesnutt’s
“The Passing of Grandison”
Martha J. Cutter
51 The Dream of History
Memory and the Unconscious in Charles Chesnutt’s The House
behind the Cedars
Aaron Ritzenberg
67 In the Wake of D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation
Chesnutt’s Paul Marchand, F.M.C. as Command Performance
Susan Prothro Wright
84 Performing Race
Mixed-Race Characters in the Novels of Charles Chesnutt
Keith Byerman
viii Contents
93 A Question of Passing or a Question of Conscience
Toward Resolving the Ending of Mandy Oxendine
Donald B. Gibson
110 “They Were All Colored to the Life”
Historicizing “Whiteness” inEvelyn’s Husband
Scott Thomas Gibson
127 Contributors
130 Index
Preface
Charles Chesnutt’s writing is informed by a uniquely historical perspective, one
that is often mistaken for what it is not—a subordination of “all things” African
American to all things white. On the other hand, Chesnutt’s imaginative histo-
ricizing is frequently dismissed as superficial when readers fail to recognize what
it is—an often ironic or even harshly satiric attack on notions of white superior-
ity balanced by an objective rendering of the human qualities, good and bad,
of whites and all hues of African Americans. In sum, the richness of Chesnutt’s
writing requires a variety of critical approaches, and the essays in the collection
rise to the challenge by looking at his works through a number of perspectives—
intertextual, signifying/discourse analysis, narratological, formal, psychoanalyti-
cal, new historical, reader response, and performative, for example—all of which
serve to recover the significance of Chesnutt’s works in their on-going historical
and literary contexts. The essays in this collection, grown out of special sessions
on Chesnutt at Modern Language Association, American Literature Association,
and College Language Association conferences, are included both because of
their original approaches to Chesnutt’s work and because of their illuminating
intersection with each other, an exchange that serves to expand the understand-
ing of Chesnutt’s ideologies, his artistry, and his place in social and literary his-
tory while uncovering new paths of inquiry into Chesnutt scholarship.
In relation to the collection more specifically, the essays set out to illustrate
Chesnutt’s genius in transforming historical reality from an African American
perspective into his writing without destroying his relationship with a white read-
ership, both his target audience and the source of his livelihood. Related to the
imaginative rendering of history in Chesnutt’s works is the recurring theme of
“passing,” along with its various implications for American society. This concern
provides the thread that ties together the essays in this collection. Performance in
Chesnutt’s fiction—whites passing for black, blacks passing for white, aristocrats
posing as genteel, illiterate but astute slaves and former slaves posturing as igno-
rant and dependent in order to achieve autonomy, and, in general, appearance
functioning as reality—produced a palatable “realism” for white readers. Indeed,
as the essays in the collection will show, performance is part and parcel of all of
the genres utilized by Chesnutt, including journal entries, speeches, and essays, as
well as his short and long fiction.
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