In his article “A Living Death”: Gothic Signification and the Nadir in The Marrow of Tradition“, Gerald Ianovici provides us with the psychological insight onto conceptual essence of Charles Chestnutt’s novel, by suggesting that in it, Chesnutt strived for nothing less of exposing White racism as a metaphysically evil worldview, strongly opposed to the notion of rationality. In its turn, this provides intellectual soundness to the article’s main thesis – given the fact that, during the course Reconstruction period in American South, Blacks continued to suffer from institutionalized social inequality, even despite that by this time, Blacks had proven themselves capable of leading a productive mode of existence (Dr. Miller), it is namely the gothic evilness of White racism, which used to prevent many White Southerners from adopting a rational approach towards the issue of race relations: “My intent is not to argue that The Marrow of Tradition is a gothic text, but rather to examine the role that gothic figuration plays in this novel” (Ianovici 36).
Even though 19th-century ideologues of White racism claimed that the White race’s existential superiority was deriving out of Whites’ ability to operate with highly abstract categories and out of their tendency to remain rational while facing life’s challenges, Chestnutt’s novel points out to the “gothic” subtleties of White racism – racists that consider Blacks being inferior can try justifying such their attitude by the “voice of reason”, but it is namely their irrational hatred towards the people of color that lays at the core of such their worldview: “The Marrow of Tradition powerfully reconstructs the naked aggression behind the White supremacist campaign to disfranchise Blacks” (Ianovici 36). This is the reason why Blacks, during the years of Reconstruction, never felt safe. They did not have to indulge in acts of violence against Whites to be lynched. They were upstanding and educated Black people who used to inspire hatred among Whites the most. Ianovici points out at grotesque and “darkly gothic” properties of such a situation: “Personal success provided no help in enabling Blacks to transcend their degradation highlights the Jim Crow South’s brutal absolutism. The irrelevancy of personal success to the construction of Southern Black mentality demonstrates how to color line maintains strict racial hierarchy” (Ianovici 41). This explains why the Reconstruction era in the South, is now being often considered as the nadir (lowest point) of America’s Black history, even though this period followed the abolition of slavery. Whereas, before the Civil War, South’s Blacks were simply utilized as slave labor-force, without White slave owners bothering to ideologically substantiate their existential supremacy, after the abolition of slavery, many Whites had not only made a point in treating Blacks as slaves de facto, but they were deriving sadistic pleasure out of doing it, even though that legally speaking, Blacks were equal to Whites by that time. Ianovici illustrates this thesis by mentioning the episode in Chestnut’s novel where Delamere performs a “cakewalk”, after having applied a shoe polish onto his face: “In addition to dramatizing post-Reconstruction politics, Delamere’s cakewalk signifies on the racist notion of Black degeneracy as White supremacist fiction. Specifically, Chestnutt highlights that the White burlesque of Black inferiority cannot occur without the gothic exposure of White degeneracy” (Ianovici 45). Just like a devil, Delamere is capable of adopting the identity of those he hates with an utter passion, and there is something very emotionally disturbing about it, as this scene portrays the notion of White racial superiority is maybe not being quite fictional, after all: “Delamere’s ability to perform blackness enacts the theory of White universality, a discursive effect of White supremacy… Delamere can thus perform various types of Black degeneracy because Whiteness supposedly imparts the privileged capacity to inhabit any identity” (Ianovici 49). Ianovici suggests that the characters of White racists, in Chestnut’s novel, were not being simply driven by their rationalistic desire to remain in charge, in the political sense of this word, but also by their dark gothic longing towards dehumanizing other beings as “thing in itself” – literally, by their lust for blood: “Chestnutt nonetheless portrays it as monstrous for what it (lynching) does to Whites: in whetting their “thirst for black blood,” lynching induces a group hysteria that figuratively makes vampires of the White mob” (Ianovici 51). There is something inheritably wicked about “blond, blue-eyed devils”, especially when their eyes begin to glow – it does not get more “gothic” than this. And, just as in any twisted gothic novel, the main perpetrator of racial violence in “The Marrow of Tradition” appears to have a little dirty secret of its own – black blood runs in the veins of the very member of his family. Major Carteret’s wife’s sister is a half-breed. Ianovici refers to this particularity of Chestnutt’s novel as another indication of its innate “Gothicism”: “The prospect of public disclosure so upsets the major that his desire to repress the truth takes the form of genocidal rage: in a perversion of the gothic imagination, he contemplates the burial of damning evidence using annihilating Blacks” (Ianovici 52). Ianovici ends his article by suggesting that, despite the diabolic evilness of the concept of racism, at the end of Chestnutt’s novel, this notion is being defeated by Black people’s compassion towards those that deserve it the least: “Resisting the temptation to punish the Carterets for the death of her child, killed in a race riot, Janet refuses to enact the doctrine of fiat Justitia” (Ianovici 55). According to Ianovici, this serves as another proof of “The Marrow of Tradition” close affiliation with the gothic genre, despite the novel’s apparent realism. The author implies that by promoting the idea of racial tolerance, Chestnutt’s did not simply strive to enlighten his contemporaries on the subject of race relations, but that he pointed at the practical means to defeating dark gothic sense of biological determinism, which even today continues to serve as White racism’s ideological foundation.