Journal Entry for Chesnutt gets me
I thought I would just use this short response to evoke the problematic tone John takes in “David’s Neckliss” both to display the way in which Chesnutt succeeded in writing with the dual purpose that Gabi spoke about in her post, while displaying what could be imagined as a typical response from a “well-meaning” “progressive” Northern white man, who would likely be the audience of Chesnutt’s work at the time. I also have enjoyed playing on John as this know-it-all, affluent character, and this that him misinterpreting Chesnutt’s work creates an amusing sort of meta-irony.
I used the quote from Howells referencing the race of Chesnutt’s characters and Chesnutt’s own racial background (the “one sixteenth” seems to reference to Chesnutt’s Article “What is a White Man?” where he uses the example of being 15/16 white to demonstrate the absurdity of that metric) both to show someone like John’s attempt to put Chesnutt on closer to equal footing as himself because of racial conceptions (in this post) while showing his ignorance to whether or not Chesnutt’s characters are true or “feigned.” Furthermore, I wanted to play more on Chesnutt’s questioning of white manhood in “What is a White Man?” by presenting John as this character who obviously blindly subscribes to the arbitrary measurements of race despite thinking well of himself, and by presenting John as less intellectual, or rather less thorough in his examination of Plantation fiction and the characters within it that Chesnutt or even Howell, despite John’s evident confidence in his views.
Howells, William Dean. “Mr. Charles W. Chesnutt’s Stories.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 1 May 1900
Chesnutt, Charles W. “What Is a White Man?” The Independent, 41 (30 May 1889): 5-6