While Ernest J. Gaines has generally emphasized the importance of white writers rather than black ones in his career, he shares with Charles Chesnutt an interest in the role of mixed-race characters in narrative. Repeatedly in his brief fiction-writing career, Chesnutt engaged with both the passing tradition and the status of those who were marked as black though they clearly had white ancestry. Similarly, Gaines, in both novels and short stories, depicted the social and racial pressures on light-skinned characters.1 The focus of this essay will be on narratives of those who have been clearly labeled black regardless of ancestry. While Gaines shows little interest in stories of passing, he shares with Chesnutt a concern for Black Creoles and for those who choose or are compelled to identify as black. The texts I will be examining are Chesnutt's Paul Marchand, F. M. C. and "The Wife of His Youth" and Gainess Catherine Carmier and "Bloodline." The two novels treat Creole characters and their status within multiracial and multiethnic societies, while the two stories focus on light-skinned men and their relationships to other blacks as well as whites. Each of these works in one way or another signifies on the tradition of the tragic mulatto/a. For example, there is no deceit or confusion on the part of the central characters about their racial category, as there is in Chesnutts House Behind the Cedars. Nor is there the angst of white and mulatto romance such as we see between Robert and Mary Agnes in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. Instead, we find a free man of color who turns out to be white, a "black" man who has the arrogance and racial superiority of his white father, a family of Black Creoles who are the only members of the community who define themselves as different from blacks, and a light-skinned man who at the end of the story may or may not identify with his black past. Both authors, in effect, depict complex performances of race along the socially constructed boundary that constitutes the color line. Thus, each of them rejects straightforward ideas of essentialism, but does so in the context of his particular historical moment. For Chesnutt, this moment of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is the time of retrenchment in civil rights, white racial terrorism, and the development of a racial "science" that sought to give a biological, social, and anthropological basis for essentialist thinking and policies. Gaines's moment came at the high point of the civil right movement, with the emergence of black nationalism and a reversed claim of essentialism that asserted black moral superiority. Thus, it can be argued that each writer uses mixed-race characters to subvert fixed notions of race while acknowledging the power of such notions in shaping the lives of their characters. It is also worth noting that all four works involve some moral violation that extends beyond white supremacy (which both writers see as a fixed aspect of the societies they depict) and the violations of black women's bodies that produced the mixed-race characters that are their subjects. Thus, the texts create an implicit link between such figures and the moral failure that is the nation's racial ideology. In "The Wife of His Youth," Chesnutt can be seen as critiquing if not satirizing the pretensions of northern, middle-class, light-skinned blacks. (2) It is worth noting that this is Chesnutt's own social category, so the story may be read as self-criticism. The central character, Mr. Ryder, has become the leader of the Blue Vein Society, so called because its members are assumed to be light enough to have visibly blue veins. While the group denies such an exclusionary requirement, Ryder himself, though slightly darker than others, establishes a standard: "I have no race prejudice," he would say, "but we people of mixed blood are ground between the upper and the nether millstone. Our fate lies between absorption by the white race and extinction in the black. …

中文翻译：

---

没有出口：查尔斯·切斯纳特和欧内斯特·盖恩斯的混血人物和种族二元

欧内斯特·J·盖恩斯（Ernest J. Gaines）在职业生涯中通常强调白人作家而不是黑人作家的重要性，但他与查尔斯·切斯纳特（Charles Chesnutt）一样对混合种族角色在叙事中的作用感兴趣。切斯纳特（Chesnutt）在其短暂的小说创作生涯中反复经历过传承的传统和那些虽然明显有白人血统但被标记为黑人的人的身份。同样，盖恩斯（Gaines）在小说和短篇小说中都描绘了浅肤色人物的社会和种族压力。1本文的重点将放在那些被清楚标记为黑人而不论其血统如何的人的叙述上。尽管盖恩斯对传球的故事几乎没有兴趣，但他与切斯纳特分享了对黑克里奥尔人以及那些选择或被迫认定为黑人的人的关注。我要检查的文字是Chesnutt' 保罗·马坎德（Paul Marchand），FMC和“青年时期的妻子”以及盖西·凯瑟琳·卡米尔（Gainess Catherine Carmier）和“血统”。这两部小说论述了克里奥尔人的性格及其在多种族和多种族社会中的地位，而这两个小说则着重于浅肤色的男人及其与其他黑人和白人的关系。这些作品中的每一个都以一种或另一种方式象征着悲剧的混血儿/ a的传统。例如，没有像雪松后面的Chesnutts之家那样，中心人物对其种族类别有任何欺骗或困惑。就像在《简·皮特曼小姐自传》中罗伯特和玛丽·艾格尼丝之间看到的那样，也没有白人和黑白混血恋人的焦虑。取而代之的是，我们找到了一个有色人种，竟然是白色，一个“黑色”。拥有白人父亲的傲慢和种族优势的人，黑人克里奥尔人的家庭，是社区中唯一自称与黑人不同的成员，以及一个肤色白皙的人，故事结束时可能会不认同他的黑人过去。两位作者实际上都描绘了沿着构成色线的社会建构边界的种族的复杂表现。因此，他们每个人都拒绝本质主义的直截了当的想法，但是在他特定的历史时刻的背景下却拒绝了。对于Chesnutt而言，十九世纪末和二十世纪初的这一时刻是民权紧缩，白人种族恐怖主义和种族“科学”发展的时期，该时期旨在为本质主义思维提供生物学，社会和人类学基础和政策。盖恩斯的时刻是在民权运动的高峰期，黑人民族主义的出现和对本质主义的颠倒主张，声称黑人具有道德上的优越性。因此，可以说每个作家都使用混血人物来颠覆固定的种族观念，同时承认这种观念在塑造其人物生活中的作用。还值得注意的是，所有四部作品都涉及某种道德超越，超越了白人至上（两位作家都将其视为他们所描绘的社会的固定方面），以及侵犯黑人女性身体的行为，这些黑人女性产生了混合种族特征。科目。因此，这些文本在这些人物与作为国家种族意识形态的道德失败之间建立了隐式的联系。在“青年时期的妻子”中 如果不满足北部，中产阶级，肤色浅黑的自欺欺人的话，Chesnutt可以被看作是一种折磨。（2）值得注意的是，这是Chesnutt自己的社会类别，因此该故事可以被解读为自我批评。中心人物莱德先生已成为蓝静脉协会的领导人，之所以这么称呼，是因为其成员被认为足够轻巧，具有明显的蓝色脉络。尽管该团体否认有这样的排他性要求，但莱德本人虽然比其他人稍暗一些，但他建立了一个标准：“我没有种族偏见，”他会说，“但我们混血的人被磨碎在上层和下层磨石之间我们的命运介于白人种族的吸收与黑人种族的灭绝之间。（2）值得注意的是，这是Chesnutt自己的社会类别，因此该故事可以被解读为自我批评。中心人物莱德先生已成为蓝静脉协会的领导人，之所以这么称呼，是因为其成员被认为足够轻巧，具有明显的蓝色脉络。尽管该团体否认有这样的排他性要求，但莱德本人虽然比其他人稍暗一些，但他建立了一个标准：“我没有种族偏见，”他会说，“但我们混血的人被磨碎在上层和下层磨石之间我们的命运介于白人种族的吸收与黑人种族的灭绝之间。（2）值得注意的是，这是Chesnutt自己的社会类别，因此该故事可以被解读为自我批评。中心人物莱德先生已成为蓝静脉协会的领导人，之所以这么称呼，是因为其成员被认为足够轻巧，具有明显的蓝色脉络。尽管该团体否认有这样的排他性要求，但莱德本人虽然比其他人稍暗一些，但他建立了一个标准：“我没有种族偏见，”他会说，“但我们混血的人被磨碎在上层和下层磨石之间我们的命运介于白人种族的吸收与黑人种族的灭绝之间。之所以这么称呼是因为它的成员被认为足够轻，具有明显的蓝色脉络。尽管该团体否认有这样的排他性要求，但莱德本人虽然比其他人稍暗一些，但他建立了一个标准：“我没有种族偏见，”他会说，“但我们混血的人被磨碎在上层和下层磨石之间我们的命运介于白人种族的吸收与黑人种族的灭绝之间。之所以这么称呼是因为它的成员被认为足够轻，具有明显的蓝色脉络。尽管该团体否认有这样的排他性要求，但莱德本人虽然比其他人稍暗一些，但他建立了一个标准：“我没有种族偏见，”他会说，“但我们混血的人被磨碎在上层和下层磨石之间我们的命运介于白人种族的吸收与黑人种族的灭绝之间。