Chapter 13 - Moonlight and Magnolias No More

Summary

This essay exams southern literature from the end of Reconstruction through the first decade of the twentieth century. Specifically, this essay seeks to contextualize authors like Thomas Dixon, Jr. and Thomas Nelson Page and their nostalgic revisions of the idea of the plantation in southern literature. In their works, Dixon and Page seek to present the South as emblematic of a great Lost Cause, one that was rooted in (to them) a magnificent past, where hierarchical race relations were made abundantly clear. To this end, this essay also examines contemporaneous black authors like Charles Chesnutt and Sutton Griggs (whose novel The Hindered Hand is a direct response to Dixon). Ultimately, by re-centering our focus of this era of southern literature to also encompass the black writers whose mission was to combat white supremacy, we gain a broader and clearer understanding of southern literature in the wake of Reconstruction.