Transferring of the “other”:A post colonial Interpretation of The House behind t

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Abstract: The house behind the Cedars describes the colored people tortured by discrimination and racism after the Civil War. This essay tries to analyze the work in a light of post colonialism, and reveal the meaning and significance of work-that is to reflect the construction of “the otherness” in such an unequal society. The white’s colonial consciousness damages the ego of the black. Therefore, this novel is significant for the black to reconstruct their own identities.

Key words: post colonialism other racism

Charles Waddell Chestnutt(1858-1932) is one of the most famous black novelist at the turning of the 20th century. His works describe a southern America where racial discrimination prevailed after the Civil War. “The new south” may be different from the old one on the surface, but they are identical in nature. Therefore, Chestnutt’s works can be regarded as “concealed political presentations by the whole black race.”

The heroine of The House behind the Cedars is Rena Walden, who and her brother are mulattoes. John Walden, the brother, left his hometown, changed his name into Warwick and become a lawyer. After achieving his success, John brings Rena from their hometown, Patesville of North Carolina to Clarence of South Carolina, and changes her name into Rowena Warwick, with whom a handsome white man, George falls in love. However, Rena’s identity is revealed by accident. Though George said that he was generous and tolerable to the background and identity of his future wife, he can’t bear the fact that he is going to marry a colored girl. Perplexed by the torture, Rena is too weak to live on. She dies in a society of racial discrimination.

This essay tries to analyze the work in a light of post colonialism, and reveal the meaning and significance of work-to reflect the construction of the “other” in racism.

I. The origin of theories about the “other”

Post colonialism, in Literary Criticism by Charles E. Bressler, is defined as an approach to literary analysis that is particularly concerned with literature written in English in formerly colonized countries. Also known as “third world literature”, postcolonial literature and its theorists investigate what happens when two cultures clash and, more specially, what happens when one of them, with its accessory ideology, empowers and deems itself superior to the other.

For white Westerners, the peoples from Africa, Asia and America were heathens who had heathen ways of mentality and behavior, and thus had to be Christianized. As a result, how the colonized were treated was not of much concern to the Westerners because they were thought to be inferior and subhuman. In colonial narratives, these subhuman and savages quickly became the inferior and evil “others”.

Frantz Fanon thinks that racism generates harmful psychological constructs that blind the black man to his subjection to a universalized white norm and alienate his consciousness. Consequently, a racist culture jeopardizes psychological health in the black man. In case of African-French, speaking French means that one accepts, or is coerced into accepting, the collective consciousness of the French, which identifies blackness with evil and sin. Since cultural values are internalized into consciousness and the black man’s desperate attempt to escape the association of blackness with evil, they virtually create a fundamental disjuncture between the black man’s consciousness and his body. Under these circumstances, it is inevitable that the black man is therefore alienated from himself.

Besides, as one of the most important theorists of post colonialism, the main contribution of Michel Foucault, a French historian,philosopher and psychologist, is the analysis of power. Foucault believes that the seemingly chaotic occurrences of history are conflicts of power. Every action and every historical event is seen by him as the exchange of power at work. Foucault sees the society as a huge web, and in this web much of the power tends to be concentrated toward the higher echelons. The overall volume of power increases with each individual involved in the play. Therefore, in deconstructing the antithesis of the cultures between the white and the black, the black are regarded as“deepest and most recurring images of the ‘Other.’”

II. The white’s supremacy: The “other” construction of the subject

Since the publication of Said’s Orientalism in 1978, the application of postcolonial theories in literary criticism has been notably increased and rapidly developed. Said points out that the idea of Europe is a collective notion which identifies Europeans as “us” while at the same time all non-Europeans as “others”. Said proceeds that the major component in European culture is just what makes culture hegemonic both with and without Europe: “…the idea of European identity as a superior one in comparison with all the non-European peoples and cultures…reiterating European superiority over Oriental backwardness”

In the novel, the representative of the “us” is Dr. Green, a white man, he says to George:

In time we shall regain control. The negro is an inferior creature; God has marked him with the badge of servitude, and has adjusted his intellectual to a servile condition.

The House behind the Cedars concerns a sensitive problem in society: miscegenation among different races. Miscegenation between the white and the colored was forbidden in some northern states, which deepens the black’s “other” identity crisis. Blacks’ human rights and civil rights are deprived and trampled down by white racists. In his speech in 1913, Chestnutt criticized: “the last generation of white was unrestrained; this generation scare the miscegenation would be legalized. But miscegenation wasn’t and isn’t possible without the consensus of the white.”

The author tells the story in third person narrative. He just depicts the development of the story objectively, without his own judgment or argument. However, all white people under his pen are racialists more or less. Though George promised that he loved Rena just for herself, not for her background of family, when he discovered Rena’s secret, all his love had given place to anger and disgust. In South America, it was regarded as a sin to marry a black in the white society. George proudly thinks Anglo-Saxon race which traced the clear stream of its blood to the cavaliers of England, no southerner “could tolerate the idea that even in distant generations that unsullied current could be polluted by the blood of slaves.”

III. The black’s internal colorization: The “other” construction of the other

“From the beginning of Western speculation about the Orient, the one thing the Orient could not do was to represent itself”[6] Black people has developed a sense of inferiority and become paralyzed to what is happening around. This self-contempt makes them worship the foreign conquerors, imitating their way of speech, behavior and customs. The colored see it an honor to leave their community and go to the white society.

In the novel another problem is passing: the black pretend to be the white. Identity is the basic theme of the novel. The nature of the American society determines that the white forbid the black from knowing who they really are. It is difficult for black people to identity themselves. To some extent, the black in the novel feign themselves the white more or less.

In chapter Ⅲ, after George discovers Rena’s secret, Rena will begin her life as a teacher in a school. Before her leaving hometown, her family has a farewell party. All the guests are mulattoes. There were dark mulattoes and light mulattoes. Mis’Molly (Rena’s mother)’s guests were mostly of the bright class, most of them more than half white, and few of them less. In Mis’Molly’s small social circle, “straight hair was the only palliative of a dark complexion.”Those people of mixed blood have their own “society”, and look down upon others who are not equal to them. Frank, a real friend to Rena’s family, was excluded from the party because of his black skin. This proves that the attitude and conception which imbued into the black by the white is so dangerous that the black’s health is at stake, physically or mentally.

John, brother of Rena, wants desperately to be elite of the American society-this kind of elite can only be the white but not the black. In post colonial theories, this phenomenon reflects the internal colonization in Black Skin, White Masks: “I”, who is in colonization, has been framed by colonizers. The black are taught to accept the policies and attitudes of the white, therefore another “I” form, and the black regard it as the only identity, for which they are willing to relinquish their own culture.

Conclusion

White racists’ maltreatment of black is assumed as anti-humanity, anti-civilization and anti-society violence. The white have been the offer and controller of the black’s ontological significance. In the novel The House behind the Cedars, as a result of erosion of white culture to ideology and value of the black, colored people experience collapse of the ego. The white’s colonial consciousness brings danger to the black in terms of desire to hate their own identity and to become others. Therefore, this novel is significant for the black to reconstruct their identities.

Bibliography:

1. Henry Louis Gates,ed.Three Classic African-American Novels(New York:Vintage Classics,1990), pp.-Ⅹ

2.Charles Waddell Chestnutt . The House behind the Cedars

3.Salvia Lyons Render. Charles W Chestnutt.Twayne Publishers, 1975

4.朱刚. 二十世纪西方文论[M]. 北京: 北京大学出版社, 2006,8