A Study Guide for Charles Waddell Chesnutt's "The House Behind the Cedars"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Charles Waddell Chesnutt's "The House Behind the Cedars," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jun 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535837415

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The House Behind the Cedars

Charles W. Chesnutt

1900

Introduction

Charles W. Chesnutt is the author of The House behind the Cedars, published in 1900. The novel, regarded as among the author's major works, is about passing, that is, the ability of people with black ancestry but fair skin to assume a white identity in white society. Set in the years following the Civil War, the novel features Rena Walden, a woman of mixed-race ancestry who leaves her home to join her brother, John War-wick, in a new town, where she, like her brother, passes as white. She falls in love with a white aristocrat, but he rejects her when he learns the truth about her ancestry. The House behind the Cedars was well received by critics, but because it dealt with racial themes that were controversial at the time, including interracial relations and racial identity, it was not highly successful in the marketplace.

Chesnutt began writing the novel in 1889, although he originally conceived it as a short story titled Rena Walden. However, the publisher, Houghton Mifflin, urged Chesnutt to revise and rewrite the story, and in the process it evolved into a novel, though a relatively short one (some 73,000 words). Chesnutt was personally qualified to write such a novel. He, like his protagonist, came from a mixed-race background, and although his heritage was predominantly European, he celebrated his African American roots. He remarked later in life that the issue of the position of mixed-race people became an overriding one for him.

The House behind the Cedars is available online at the Documenting the American South website at http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/chesnutthouse/menu.html.

Author Biography

Charles Waddell Chesnutt was born on June 20, 1858, in Cleveland, Ohio, the first of six surviving children of Andrew Jackson Chesnutt and Ann Maria Sampson Chesnutt. His parents, who came from Fayetteville, North Carolina, were among the 465 free blacks living there in 1850, according to the US census. Ann was the daughter of a mixed-race mother and a white slave owner, although there remains some doubt about the identity of her father. Andrew was the son of a mixed-race mother and a white landowner in Fayetteville. These details are relevant to an understanding of Chesnutt's exploration of racial issues and racial identity in his writings.

Chesnutt's parents left Fayetteville in 1856 and traveled north with a small band of free blacks to settle in Cleveland in 1857. Shortly after Charles was born, the family moved to Oberlin, Ohio, where the father worked as a horse-car driver. During the Civil War he worked as a teamster for the Union army. After the war, the family returned to Fayetteville, where Andrew opened a grocery store and was later