For Rena, then, the past emerges both as more present than the present and as a source of a feminine “reticence” that aids her in acquiring the manners that will help her ascend through Clarence’s social ranks.
I think the idea of acquiring whiteness / blackness is really interesting here (and elsewhere). Thinking about Mrs. Auld in Douglass's narrative and how she acquires the qualities of a slaveowner / white person
Rena’s whiteness—the fact that she looks white while “being” black—encapsulates the disjunction between phenomenal appearance and racial definition that concerns Chesnutt throughout the novel.
isn't this a personal struggle for CC himself? he was considered to be a "light black" man?
a stenographer who conceptualized the art of phonography as an epochal technological development suggests that his writing is uniquely situated at the crossroads of the technological, literary, and racial discourses of mimesis, realism, and imitation.
This is a packed sentence
While the style and plot of The House behind the Cedars bares the markings of sentimental and gothic novels, its descriptions of the epistemological and discursive antinomies of race-thinking aligns it with the kind of realism that Chesnutt had admired for more than a decade.
I am trying to understand how CC could possibly write without the use of realism, especially in his discussion / relationship to/with race? Does this make sense? #help
verisimilitude
"the appearance of being true or real"... literary realism
orthographic
manipulating what is right in terms of writing words with proper letters or spelling according to a standard usage, that which is not yet specified or universally determined at this time
Isaac Pitman
Sir Isaac Pitman, was a teacher of the English language who developed the most widely used system of shorthand, known now as Pitman shorthand. He first proposed this in Stenographic Soundhand in 1837. -Wikipedia
it was a white face beaming with the most kindly emotions; it was the face of my new mistress, Sophia Auld
hmm...
preserved from the blighting and dehumanizing effects of slavery. I was utterly astonished at her goodness.
Very interesting...
Will not a righteous God visit for these things?
again, deflecting to God, who seems to be absent in Fredrick's life
The hearth is desolate
This is such an interesting line. What does the word "hearth" show or represent here in conversation with Lucretia
Providence
Providence -- Douglass has a tendency to always deflect to God
callous
The word "callous" is representative of the "tough skin" or "thick skin" people acquire after facing physical, mental, emotional abuse. The notion of having both literal and figural thick skin is a norm for black people (thinking again about systemic racism)
Their backs had been made familiar with the bloody lash
Black people are used to the treatment they face... the familiarity of the lash is parallel to other racist tendencies that black people are accustomed to.
I had now a new conception of my degraded condition.
An outside party claiming the value of a human -- another means of inscription.
to be valued with the other property
Placing value ON a human
profane swearer
language
sustains to his slaves the double relation of master and father
Double consciousness, identity crisis...
privilege
Thinking of origins as a privilege, rather than a right.
JAMES M’CUNE SMITH
Hmmm
By a principle essential to Christianity, a PERSON is eternally differenced from a THING; so that the idea of a HUMAN BEING, necessarily excludes the idea of PROPERTY IN THAT BEING. —COLERIDGE
"the idea of property"
Work, culture, liberty,—all these we need, not singly but together, not successively but together, each growing and aiding each, and all striving toward that vaster ideal that swims before the Negro people, the ideal of human brotherhood, gained through the unifying ideal of Race; the ideal of fostering and developing the traits and talents of the Negro, not in opposition to or contempt for other races, but rather in large conformity to the greater ideals of the American Republic, in order that some day on American soil two world-races may give each to each those characteristics both so sadly lack.
OK - hear me out: this sounds like the man's version of Lorde's "The Masters Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House"... EXCEPT du Bois only focuses on 'brotherhood'
he red stain of bastardy, which two centuries of systematic legal defilement of Negro women had stamped upon his race, meant not only the loss of ancient African chastity, but also the hereditary weight of a mass of corruption from white adulterers, threatening almost the obliteration of the Negro home.
Women
Freedom
Capital "F"
black man’s
Where are the women?
no desire
Why? Seeking comfort of being a problem? Submitting to the norm? Internalized racism?
hen it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil
What being a problem feels like... interested in the use of the word "veil"
The Traveler wanted to raise various questions, but after looking at the Condemned Man he merely asked, “Does he know his sentence?” “No,” said the Officer. He wished to get on with his explanation right away, but the Traveler interrupted him: “He doesn’t know his own sentence?” “No,” said the Officer once more. He then paused for a moment, as if he was asking the Traveler for a more detailed reason for his question, and said, “It would be useless to give him that information. He experiences it on his own body.”
At this point, Kakfa only mentions that the Officer [and perhaps the Commandant] knows the sentencing. I am trying to figure out the role of the Traveler here... this is the first moment in the text when we see his point of view. Until this moment, nothing of interest really strikes him. There is definitely a sense of judgement from the Traveler.
“come to nothing because of this Commandant and the women influencing him? Should people let that happen? Even if one is a foreigner and only on our island for a couple of days?
"...and the women..."
The fact that he had been invited to this execution even seemed to indicate that people were asking for his judgment of this trial.
Bingo
You’re a foreigner—keep quiet
Then, why is he there? Why the effort to keep him there? The Officer is very closely following the actions and emotions of the Traveler.
If the wheel had not squeaked, it would have been marvelous.
There is such a sense of perfectionism in this text. Even the narrator is making such judgements on the performance of the Officer
That gave rise to certain technical difficulties with fastening the needles securely, but after several attempts we were successful. We didn’t spare any efforts. And now, as the inscription is made on the body, everyone can see through the glass. Don’t you want to come closer and see the needles for yourself.”
Hmmm. I think the Officer is wildly self-conscious and nervous about the Traveler's understanding and opinion on the apparatus, and on the execution. With that said, I think glass may make the apparatus more aesthetically pleasing to the audience. Perhaps having glass rip into a body is more appealing to the eye than just needles? The glass may also show the worth of the apparatus...
as if he was talking to himself and wished not to embarrass the Traveler with an explanation of matters so self-evident to him.
The Officer has been very affected by the Traveler throughout the duration of the text. What is the relationship b.t. them? Why does the Officer care what the Traveler does or thinks?