The House Behind the Cedars

“He did not speak to her, however, or give her any sign of recognition.”

John’s ability to psychologically separate himself completely from his origins is quickly established. He is determined to avoid being identified and will not risk it to greet someone who he remembers fondly from his childhood.

“As Warwick was neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, he could not foresee that, thirty years later, even this would seem an excessive punishment for so slight a misdemeanor.”

In this period, immediately following the war, black people experienced an unprecedented increase in political and economic rights. To many at the time, it seemed that white supremacy and the South’s racial caste system was mortally wounded, but Chesnutt foreshadows the failure of Reconstruction and the emergence of a new brutal system of segregation: Jim Crow.

“The sound of her voice gave Warwick a thrill. It was sweet and clear—quite in harmony with her appearance. That it had a faint suggestiveness of the old woman’s accent he hardly noticed, for the current Southern speech, including his own, was rarely without a touch of it. The corruption of the white people’s speech was one element—only one—of the negro’s unconscious revenge for his own debasement.”

Here, an important avenue of racial stigmatization is made clear. The speech patterns of formerly enslaved people are viewed as an attempt to corrupt whites rather than due to the historical circumstances of the transatlantic slave trade. 

“‘Yes,’ was the regretful reply, ‘I’ve never be’n able to git that wave out. But her hair’s be’n took good care of, an’ there ain’t nary gal in town that’s got any finer.’”

Hair texture was considered one of the largest physical differences between black and white people, so having straight, loose hair was a part of passing. Molly’s fixation on Rena’s hair reflects her own anxieties and shame. Since Molly’s fortunes have risen through proximity to whites, she hopes that Rena can elevate herself even further.

“My young friend John has builded, whether wisely or not, very well; but he has come back into the old life and carried away a part of it, and I fear that this addition will weaken the structure.”

Judge Straight is happy to see that John, his former office assistant, has escaped the constraints of his birth and is successfully passing in South Carolina. His concern that John would have been safer to have entirely excised himself from his former life is prophetic.

“The influence of Walter Scott was strong upon the old South. The South before the war was essentially feudal, and Scott’s novels of chivalry appealed forcefully to the feudal heart.”

Chesnutt succinctly explains the popularity of Scott and similar writers. In the world of chivalric romance, only the concerns of the great men and women of the land who are important, and the great mass of serfs toiling in the mud can be comfortably banished from the imagination.

“I hope that neither of you may ever regret your choice.”

This statement by John is emblematic of how he obscures his true meaning when talking to white people. There is nothing objectionable about the sentiment, but given the siblings’ secret, John is not so much wishing the couple well as much as praying that the engagement does not expose them.

“Rena had learned in a short time, many things; but she was yet to learn that the innocent suffer with the guilty, and feel the punishment the more keenly because unmerited.”

As Rena considers George’s proposal, she begins to feel guilty at the prospect of deceiving George about her origins. The narrator suggests that no amount of good intentions on Rena’s part will allow her to escape the limitations of her birth. Neither the sin of slavery nor the sin committed by the man who preyed upon Molly belong to Rena, but, nonetheless, she will pay for them.

“The taint of black blood was the unpardonable sin, from the unmerited penalty of which there was no escape except by concealment.”

The author explicitly states John and Rena’s secret for the first time. The central premise of the story, that concealment is the only escape, is plainly stated, though its corollary, that concealment is a precarious position which can be lost at any time, is not.

“In time we shall regain control.”

Dr. Green’s views about white supremacy have not been changed by the outcome of the war. He remains convinced of the inferiority of black people and cannot bear the idea that they are now allowed to participate politically. The doctor’s promise comes across as a threat.

“But no Southerner who loved his poor, downtrodden country, or his race, the proud Anglo-Saxon race which traced the clear stream of its blood to the cavaliers of England, would tolerate the idea that even in distant generations that unsullied current could be polluted by the blood of slaves.”

Having just discovered Rena’s secret, George wonders if he can put the knowledge out of his mind. But he has been too acculturated to the South’s racial hierarchy and benefited too much from it to seriously question its principles. He has accepted the false biological principle underpinning the one-drop rule.

“The Southern mind, in discussing abstract questions relative to humanity, makes always, consciously or unconsciously, the mental reservation that the conclusions reached do not apply to the negro, unless they can be made to harmonize with the customs of the country.”

This is an excellent example of the dehumanization which makes slavery possible. Southern whites are perfectly accustomed to discussing issues of liberty and freedom, but they have trained themselves not to think of black people as human.

“They were not citizens, yet they were not slaves. No negro, save in books, ever refused freedom; many of them ran frightful risks to achieve it.”

The narrator describes the state of the racial caste system for Molly’s parents. Before the war, free blacks were denied most of the privileges of citizenship, but freedom was still far preferable to enslavement. Pro-slavery propagandists, both before and after the Civil War, would attempt to depict enslaved people as basically happy with their lives. Chesnutt wryly debunks the idea by noting how many died trying to escape their enslavement.

“She had eaten the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.”

Following her patron’s death, Molly goes into mourning. After the war, Molly comes, to some degree, to see her relationship with this man for what it was—the exploitation of a poor child by a wealthy older man, a common occurrence made possible by the South’s racial hierarchy. 

“‘Why shouldn’t it be the other way, if the white blood is so much superior?’ inquired the lad. ‘Because it is more convenient as it is—and more profitable.’”

Judge Straight explains to a teenage John that white supremacy exists because it guarantees some people remain powerful and others powerless. If the upper echelons allowed people of mixed-race ancestry to join them, it would remove much of the stigma of mixed-race unions, fundamentally undermining the whole project of white supremacy.

“He’s gone over on the other side.”

This is how Molly refers to John’s decision to leave Patesville in hopes of passing as white. He has crossed to the other side of the rigid color line and, Molly presumes, will never return to see his mother.

“Surely it were worth while to try some other weapon than scorn and contumely and hard words upon people of our common race,—the human race, which is bigger and broader than Celt or Saxon, barbarian or Greek, Jew or Gentile, black or white; for we are all children of a common Father, forget it as we may, and each of us is in some measure his brother’s keeper.”

Chesnutt groups the current racial divide between black and white with ancient racial divisions which have long since fallen by the wayside. By placing the contemporary racial binary against ancient ones, he is arguing that it is artificial and cannot be sustained indefinitely.

“I would not have believed it—even of a white man.”

Rena is accustomed to the scorn and condescension of white men who deign to compliment her beauty but would never pursue a public romance with her. George’s treatment of her does not even meet those low expectations.

“I shall never marry any man, and I’ll not leave mother again. God is against it; I’ll stay with my own people.”

Rena realizes that her status as a white person was conditional, while her status as a black person is not. Rather than rebel against this reality, she deliberately chooses to identify as a black person and commit herself in common struggle alongside others.

“The experience of his sister had stirred up a certain bitterness against white people…”

John has largely internalized the stigma against blackness and aspires, without reservation, to be exclusively thought of as a white man. To pass, he has suppressed any ambivalence or ill-will towards his white peers. George’s treatment of Rena, however, is too direct a challenge to his sense of security, and his long-buried resentment towards the racial caste system begins to stir.

“No real white person had ever given Peter a mule or a cart.”

Frank, implicitly accepting that giving large gifts is a marker of whiteness, finds that John acts more white than “real” white people.

“Surely in the past centuries of free manners and easy morals that had prevailed in remote parts of the South, there must have been many white persons whose origin would not have borne too microscopic an investigation.”

As George thinks over Rena’s situation, he reminds himself that it is hardly unique. Policing the color line is more difficult in sparsely settled areas where families of mixed-race people can mostly avoid the segregated society.

“The free colored people of Patesville were numerous enough before the war to have their own ‘society,’ and human enough to despise those who did not possess advantages equal to their own; and at this time they still looked down upon those who had once been held in bondage.”

Within rigid discriminatory systems, the narrator notes that it is a human tendency to look down on those in a lower station, an attitude born out of the fear of losing what little privilege one has.