Patrimony

The reading for this week by Charles Waddell Chesnutt has a very unusual quality that I cannot place along side of any other literary work. We read a selection of his Tales of Conjure and The Color Line which show a unique side of irony. If we define irony as a discrepancy of meaning or as an author saying one thing and meaning another we come to an interesting delema when dealing with Chesnutt’s stories. For he employs a double or it could be argued a triple irony. Himself being of the “mulatto” racial classification, he self describes his advantage when looking at the racial tension. For he is apart of two worlds; the white elite with a classic British education and the underclass colored world with the education of slavery fixed upon it. The writer being able to pass for white but with that drop of blood which legally classifies him as being a “negro”, Chesnutt is a man between.

With this outlook we should not be surprised to find within his stories the thoughts and actions and social views of each “world” of each race vividly depicted with stunning reality. He does not put on display a bleeding sentimentality for the reader to be convinced by, nor does he give us a biting satire on the white society. When he shows us the white world in all of its justice and books in The Sheriff’s Children the next seen depicts the extra judicial “committee” mobbing around the jail.

Even when we think that Chesnutt is solidly on the side of the oppressed slave he makes us think again. For when Uncle Julius tells us stories in the happy plantation fashion we can see the darker side of slaver underneath by what he reveals. But just when you stop and say, O.k. this is what Chesnutt is doing he is giving a subtle subvertisement of the peaceful plantation ideal, you have to reconsider. For Uncle Julius is just telling the story in order to get what he wants out of the new plantation owner. Therefore Chesnutt does not seem to be recommending that black culture in that period is good either.

This is that double irony, settling with a defense of neither white nor black. But then you might ask yourself if he is defending his “in between” or the mulatto. But as we discussed he is not following in this tradition either. Therefore I think he is using this triple irony; where he can see two different world from his position as a no body class but then look out side of his own position as a mulatto and reach for a higher truth. By this higher truth he is able to give an intriguing account of the social climate within the times. But what truth he is grasping I cannot relate, for indeed I think that in part comes just from seeing what he has written. For after all, if he thought that the truth was worth expressing in a simple definition and propagating as a moral he would have undoubtedly proceeded down the course of a moral teacher and not a writer.