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ornamental line

This Silent Grief

"She was in what might be called the chip-on-the-shoulder stage,
through which races as well as individuals must pass
in climbing the ladder of life” (29).
Charles Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradition (1901)

 

Points for Reflection

C. Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradition (1901), chps. 1-6

  1. Does the state of the weather outdoors in chapter one mirror the events inside the house, or provide a tonal counterpoint?
  2. Does Chesnutt’s employment of dialect and regional colloquialisms to capture Mammy Jane’s distinctive voice complicate your absorption of the intersecting family histories of the Merkells, Carterets, and Millers, or enrich your understanding?
  3. Does Jane’s superstition disqualify her as an agent of truth?
  4. Does Jane resist her subservient position in the Carteret family?
  5. Does romance between Sam Merkell and Julia develop before or after his wife’ s death?
  6. Is Major Carteret an admirable family man?
  7. Which has the deeper roots, Major Carteret’s racism or his classism?
  8. The narrator tells us that Mrs. Ochiltree has, with age, “lost in some measure the faculty of nice discrimination” and has begun to throw figurative barbs at virtually everyone, convinced that even friends “were sometimes the better for being told the truth” (17).  Is she a reliable truth-teller?
  9. Who seems more dangerous, Belmont or McBane?
  10. Does “Captain” McBane have any virtuous qualities?
  11. Does the racism of Belmont, McBane, and Carteret spring from shared motivational factors?
  12. Does each character’s physiognomy reliably signal their personality?  Do outward appearances, that is, positively correlate with internal traits?
  13. Does Chesnutt’s introduction of doctors Burns and Miller differ from his initial descriptions of other characters?
  14. In what ways has the abolition of slavery impacted the white working class?
  15. At what points does the narrator willfully betray his own opinions about character or ideology?  Does he tend to interrogate or perpetuate the prejudices of the time?
  16. The narrator observes that the young nurse working at the Carteret household deserves one paragraph in this novel about Southern life (29).  Are her social status and mindset representative of her generation alone, or does her liminality reflect that of an older black generation as well?
  17. After relocating on the train, Dr. Miller settles down to read an editorial about what subject?
  18. What shape does Dr. Miller’s “philosophy” take, and do you think Chesnutt wishes us to affirm Dr. Miller’s philosophical musings?
  19. Is Dr. Miller as classist as General Carteret?
  20. Does our author, Charles Chesnutt, share Dr. Miller’s optimism, his belief “that the race antagonism which hampered his progress and that of his people was a mere temporary thing, the outcome of former conditions, and bound to disappear in time” (43)?
  21. Does Janet’s desire for an unattainable family connection make her weak?
  22. Chesnutt’s narrator and Dr. William Miller both deploy the word “nature” to denote the internal character of individuals and groups.  Do they appear to believe that “nature” can empower, as well as weaken, individuals?


a two-tone painting of a castle-like structure to the right side in all black with a tall tower and wall surrounding it near a body of water. the water and sky are golds and ambers.
Woman from the West Indies (1891)
Henry Osawa Tanner


Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu