Chesnutt’s Evolving Treatment of the Color Line Through Naturalism Essa

Chesnutts Evolving Treatment of the subterfuge hunt through and through Naturalismin A Matter of Principle and The theater of operations tin the CedarsCharles W. Chesnutt, a well-educated mulatto man, lived his life on the excuse line. Chesnutts skin was in truth light and was sometimes mistaken for a fresh man. Chesnutt chose to identify himself as a black man, but in his works, his characters move back and forth across the color line and seek with the world they exist in. The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line was published one year before The House crapper the Cedars and include the short story, A Matter of Principle, where Chesnutt clearly begins to explore what options are on tap(predicate) to a mulatto man and his family, which will later evolve in Cedars. Chesnutt incorporates his philosophical system of literary naturalism to show John Walden, Rena, and Mr. Clayton in relation to their milieu and as governed by their instincts, passions, heredity and environment.The physical nature of a person carried great weight in the South. Both John Walden and Cicero Clayton are very light mulatto men with good educations, wealth, and clear ideas about how the world should work, in the main in their favor. The South Carolina society in which they exist considers the men black, disrespect their outer appearance and treats them as such. This treatment is often base and degrading causing the men to feel that they have been harmed by the small issue forth of black blood coursing in their veins. The reader is told that as a young boy, John Walden thinks that the mirror proved that God, the Father of all, had made him whitehaving made him white, He must have meant him to be white (The House Behind the Cedars 107) . The stories reveal John and Claytons u... ...erican Literature. Literary Movements. (Updated 02/22/03). (Accessed 12/08/03). <http//www.gonzaga.edu/faculty/campbell/enl413/natural.htm.Chesnutt, Charles W. A Matter of Princ iple. The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line. NC U of NC at Chapel Hill Electronic Edition, 1997.Chesnutt, Charles W. The House Behind the Cedars. NY Penguin, 1993. Chesnutt, Charles W. Letter to George Washington Cable. 25, July 1890. To Be an Author. Eds. Joseph R. McElrath, Jr., and Robert C. Leitz, III. NJ Princeton UP, 1997.Duncan, Charles. The Absent Man The Narratives of Charles W. Chesnutt. capital of Greece Ohio UP, 1998.Works ConsultedKeller, Frances Richardson. An American Crusade The Life of Charles Waddell Chesnutt. Utah BYU P, 1978.Wonham, Henry B. Charles W. Chesnutt A Study of the Short Fiction. NY Twayne Publishers, 1998.