The Marrow of Tradition

Charles W. Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition is a 1901 historical novel based on the events of an 1898 white supremacist riot in Wilmington, North Carolina. Chesnutt’s novel takes place in the fictional town of Wellington and focuses on the intertwined fates of two couples: Major and Mrs. Olivia Carteret, and Dr. William and Mrs. Janet Miller. Olivia and Janet are half sisters; while they share the same white father, Samuel Merkell, Janet’s mother was a Black servant, Julia Brown. Narrated in the third person with free indirect discourse, the novel delivers insight into both the Black and white characters’ frames of mind and explores themes of The “Poetry” of Racism Versus the Reality of Racism, Respectability Politics in the Face of Racism, and The Power of the Press.

Content Warning: The source material and guide contain discussions of enslavement, racism, and white supremacist violence that includes the murder of a child. The novel also uses outdated racial terminology as well as some racial slurs; this guide obscures the n-word and otherwise reproduces such terms only in quoted material.

Plot Summary

At the outset of the novel, a white woman named Olivia goes into early labor after seeing her biracial half sister Janet (whom Olivia does not acknowledge as family) and Janet’s son.