Chapter 18 - A Civil Rights–Era Novel of the American Civil War

Summary

Robert Penn Warren produced in the early 1950s a classic portrait of New Orleans during the 1860s, particularly during its occupation by Union troops. The novel is subtly preoccupied by the events of its own time, as Warren addressed them explicitly in other texts composed while this novel was in process. The novel engages the long-established tradition of the tragic mulatress through a main character who had grown up in Kentucky with the assumption that she was white but discovered, upon her father’s death, that she is black and will be sold at auction in New Orleans; the novel then follows her experiences through the Federal occupation of the city and into Reconstruction and The Gilded Age, each step of the way conjuring in vivid detail its historical setting and the complex persistence of racism even in those who wouldpresume to fight hard against it.