 | Evelyn's Husband Subjects: Triangles (Interpersonal relations) -- Fiction; Rejection (Psychology) -- Fiction; Caribbean Area -- Fiction; Married people -- Fiction; Boston (Mass.) -- Fiction; Older men -- Fiction; Islands -- Fiction; The critique of white male society that Charles W. Chesnutt launched in A Marrow of Tradition continues in Evelyn's Husband , one of six manuscripts left unpublished when this highly regarded African American innovator died. Set in Boston society, on a deserted Caribbean island, and in Brazil, Evelyn's Husband is the story of two men--one old, one young--in love with the same young woman. Late in his career Chesnutt embarked on a period of experimentation with eccentric forms, finishing this hybrid of a romance and adventure story just before publishing his last work, The Colonel's Dream . In Evelyn's Husband , Chesnutt crafts a parody examining white male roles in the early 1900s, a time when there was rampant anxiety over the subject. In Boston, the older man is left at the altar when his bride-to-be flees and marries a young architect. Later, trapped on an island together, the jilted lover and the young husband find a productive middle ground between the dilettante and the primitive. Along with A Business Career , this novel marks Chesnutt's achievement in being among the first African American authors to defy the color barrier and write fiction with a white cast of main characters. Charles W. Chesnutt (1858-1932) was an innovative and influential African American writer of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His novels published during his lifetime include The House Behind the Cedars , The Marrow of Tradition , and The Colonel's Dream. His work also includes the posthumously published novels Paul Marchand, F. M. C. , A Business Career , and Evelyn's Husband , all published by University Press of Mississippi. Matthew Wilson is associate professor of humanities and writing at Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg. Marjan van Schaik coedited (with Matthew Wilson) A Business Career and is a part-time instructor at Millersville University. |
