"'I wouldn't have believed it -- even of a white man'" : critiquing whiteness in Charles Chesnutt's "The house behind the cedars" and Nella Larsen's "Passing"

Abstract

In their respective novels, The House Behind the Cedars (1900) and Passing (1929), both Charles Chesnutt and Nella Larsen utilize racial passing, the process of a mixed-race individual living as "white," to explore the relations between black and white people during early-twentieth century America. This thesis specifically argues that Chesnutt and Larsen use passing to critique "whiteness." In other words, passing allows Chesnutt and Larsen to investigate, through their light-skinned female characters, the racial biases of the white worlds into which these near-white passers enter. Within this discussion of racial passing and whiteness, I also place the near-white female historically as a figure in American literature, tracing her beginnings as the "tragic mulatta" to her evolution as a strong and no longer "tragic" type. In short, this thesis provides a definition of whiteness and racial passing, offering an inter-related analysis of the changes and revisions of literature's tragic mulatta. This work, then, pulls together how racial passing and the ever-evolving tragic mulatta figure actually serve to critique the demands and bigotries of whiteness.