Charles Waddell Chesnutt

In both of these pieces by Chesnutt, literacy plays an important role for the author in the way that he establishes his characters and ultimately his plot. For instance, in The Passing of Grandison, Colonel Owens makes some interesting observations about the slave Tom’s interest in reading. He says that he doesn’t think that Dick should take Tom with him on his journey to New York because “I strongly suspect him of having learned to read, though I can’t imagine how. I saw him with a newspaper the other day, and while he pretended to be looking at a woodcut, I’m almost sure he was reading the paper.” It seems that Chesnutt is making a connection between literacy and freedom in this passage that was most likely based on prevalent ideas throughout the South at this time. Frederick Douglass famously learned to read from his mistress, but when found out by the master, he was forbidden to ever pick up a piece of print again. I thought it was interesting that Chesnutt included this piece of information in a story that was about passing because it is true that often slaves who were able to learn to read were capable of forging passes that helped them to escape to freedom. Chesnutt also presents black literacy to the reader in The Wife of His Youth. In this story, Mr. Ryder, who is widely regarded as an intelligent and upstanding mulatto is an extremely avid reader, who collects Tennyson’s poetry and other famous American works. In this situation, literacy seems to highlight that Mr. Ryder is a class above the normal ex-slave, which is evidenced by the Society of the Blue Veins. This society comes across as somewhat haughty in the eyes of some blacks, and Mr. Ryder is well-respected by those within the society for his voracious literary appetite. Overall, it seems that Chesnutt’s own background in literacy has carried over into the themes of his writing, particularly his views on literacy as a motive for freedom and as a distinguished trait within the black community.