Journal Article

Lawful Entitlements: Chesnutt's Fictions of Ownership

Moddelmog, William E.

1999

Overview

[...] much of his fiction not only registers his disagreement with Washington's panacea of property ownership, but also questions the efficacy of pursuing formally equal rights within a legal system that associates the black self only with absence and dispossession. When we read the novel along with the short fiction that Chesnutt published at the turn of the century, however, its emphasis on blood and genealogy begins to look less like a capitulation to biological definitions of race and more like an exploration of the connection between race and property. Appealing to \"the court of public opinion\" - a concept charged with both legal and extralegal implications - Chesnutt hopes to build narratives more durable than Solomon's sway-backed house; narratives that move toward establishing the terms of a legal regime that valorizes the boundary lines of property and rights but, in recognizing the \"value\" of blackness as well as of whiteness, effectively erases those of race.

• Publisher: University of Texas Press,University of Texas at Austin (University of Texas Press)
• Subject: 20th century AD / African American culture / African Americans / American literature / Blackness studies / Chesnutt, Charles / Chesnutt, Charles Waddell (1858-1932) / Equal rights / Fiction / Influence / Management / Narratives / Novels / Portrayals / Property law / Property ownership / Property rights / Property titles / Race / Slavery / White people / Whiteness studies