Posted: May 9th, 2015

Charles Chesnutt, The House Behind the Cedars

Charles Chesnutt, The House Behind the Cedars

Answer the following questions in paragraph form. There needs to be at least three paragraphs per question and, where possible, identify one or two examples from the novel.

1. 1)  How can Charles Chesnutt’s The House Behind the Cedars, a novel about miscegenation, passing, and the appropriation of privileges that only belong to white Americans, be argued as a response to Plessey vs. Ferguson, which legalized the practice of separate but equal? How is miscegenation a threat to, and passing a violation of, Plessey vs. Ferguson?
2. 2)  While waiting for Dr. Green, George Tryon reads a journal article about the consequences of miscegenation. If this scientific journal article is true (and Troyon does believe it is true), how could a union with Rena be perceived as racial holocaust? What fear about the mixture of the races is Charles Chesnutt responding to?
3. 3)  Now here is a good question, especially since love stories usually have happy endings. Is it racist of Charles Chesnutt not to make it possible for Frank Fowler, clearly the very dark-skinned hero of The House Behind the Cedars, not to get the girl (Rena)?

Context of The House Behind the Cedars

The idea that racial mixing resulted in degeneration grew out of the belief that black racial traits were themselves inferior to those of the white man. These traits had been developed in the early stages of the black’s evolution in Africa, yet they still marked him as a type distinct from the white man. Even those who were optimistic over the black race’s progress under the influence and guidance of the white man remained convinced that deep inside the American black retained virtually all of his African characteristics. To those less able or willing to see such progress, the explanation for the African American’s inability to function in white America was also to be found in his African heritage.

One turn of the century Columbia professor wrote: “The Mulatto, inferior physically both to the pure black and to the pure white, has increased at the expense of the pure black; adding to the crossing of the two races has been detrimental to the colored population. There seems to be little ground for thinking that a successful blending of the two races on a large scale is probable. On the contrary, the crowding together of the colored people in cities and the excess of women over men leads to prostitution for gain and an increase of illegitimates, with the accompanying increase of infant mortality… or weakling mulattoes. Such amalgamation can only mean degeneration.”

According to the science of the time, people of African descent reverted, under freedom, to their primitive state of savagery and sexuality, revealing the ancient features of the race through a process of reversion.

The fear was growing that degenerations within civilized peoples threatened civilization itself. And intermixture produced degeneration.

Many scientist argued that mulattos were particularly inclined to produce “morbid proclivities” and “retrogressive tendencies.” In the mulatto, the struggle for existence between the reproductive element (the primal sexual instinct) and the mental usually resulted in the success of the reproductive.

It was also argued that, at most, a mixed-racial lineage was a short one. Basically, for your family tree, getting sexually involved with a mulatto was the kiss of death, the ultimate holocaust and the absolute damnation of Southern civilzation.

Mulattoes, then, were highly ephemeral people whose white ancestry would be rendered irrelevant by their early disappearance, and whose presence was unimportant because they could not procreate as mulattoes beyond two or three generations.

The terms mine and inflitrate are the locus classicus for Chesnutt scholarship and are preceded by his statement about elevating whites: “The object of my writing would be not so much the elevation of the colored people as the elevation of the whites.” He says that he would lead “a determined crusade” against prejudice, but he would not use force: “the subtle almost indefinable 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 within their midst before we think it.”