Racialized Space in Charles W. Chesnutt’s The Colonel’s Dream
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In this paper, I explore whiteness in Charles W. Chesnutt’s The Colonel's Dream. I demonstrate that the novel portrays how whiteness and white privilege are sustained by racializing space in the New South. To this end, I employ space theories such as Cresswell's, Delaney's, and Mills's. In Colonel's Dream, the colonel Henry French, a former Southern aristocrat and ex-Confederate officer, visits his hometown, Clarendon, in North Carolina after spending twenty-five years in New York City. Shocked at the severe racism and retarded economical situation in Clarendon, he attempts to ameliorate racism through economic progress. Nevertheless, his dream fails at the end of the novel. One of the reasons for his failure is that the Old South is continuous in the New South by way of racializing the space. For instance, through the vagrancy laws, whiteness racializes the Southern space to limit black mobility and exploit blacks. In addition, Chesnutt portrays the racialized space through the colonel's conflict with poor laborers in his construction of a cotton mill. When the colonel hires a black man as a foreman of white laborers, the whites quit. Since whites’ assumed role is a master and blacks’ is a servant in the racialized space, the whites reject to work under a “nigger.” Failing to understand the norm in the racialized space, the colonel has conflict with the whites. Another reason is the colonel’s ambivalent attitude toward race relations in the South. Though the colonel seems to be liberal and humanistic, unconsciously he wants to sustain the racial hierarchy in the South. For example, he cannot endure the fact that a black barber lives in his old house. Since racialized space is the very means to sustain whiteness, the colonel needs to buy his old house back from the black barber to sustain his whiteness, which leads to the maintenance of the racialized space.
Abstract
In this paper, I explore whiteness in Charles W. Chesnutt’s The Colonel's Dream. I demonstrate that the novel portrays how whiteness and white privilege are sustained by racializing space in the New South. To this end, I employ space theories such as Cresswell's, Delaney's, and Mills's. In Colonel's Dream, the colonel Henry French, a former Southern aristocrat and ex-Confederate officer, visits his hometown, Clarendon, in North Carolina after spending twenty-five years in New York City. Shocked at the severe racism and retarded economical situation in Clarendon, he attempts to ameliorate racism through economic progress. Nevertheless, his dream fails at the end of the novel. One of the reasons for his failure is that the Old South is continuous in the New South by way of racializing the space. For instance, through the vagrancy laws, whiteness racializes the Southern space to limit black mobility and exploit blacks. In addition, Chesnutt portrays the racialized space through the colonel's conflict with poor laborers in his construction of a cotton mill. When the colonel hires a black man as a foreman of white laborers, the whites quit. Since whites’ assumed role is a master and blacks’ is a servant in the racialized space, the whites reject to work under a “nigger.” Failing to understand the norm in the racialized space, the colonel has conflict with the whites. Another reason is the colonel’s ambivalent attitude toward race relations in the South. Though the colonel seems to be liberal and humanistic, unconsciously he wants to sustain the racial hierarchy in the South. For example, he cannot endure the fact that a black barber lives in his old house. Since racialized space is the very means to sustain whiteness, the colonel needs to buy his old house back from the black barber to sustain his whiteness, which leads to the maintenance of the racialized space.
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