40 pages • 1 hour read
Charles W. ChesnuttThe House Behind the Cedars
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1900A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary: “Down the River”
The day after John’s visit, Rena and her mother prepare for Rena’s departure. Molly arranges for Frank Fowler, the young cooper across the street, to bring Rena’s luggage to the steamboat. Frank is smitten with Rena and, despite her protests that she will return, believes that she will leave for good. The next day, at the steamboat, Rena says her goodbyes to Frank and her mother.
Rena takes a private cabin and remains out of view for the journey. Meanwhile, John makes an impression with the other passengers who praise him as a fine southern gentleman. When the steamer arrives at Wilmington, John sends Rena to boarding school in Charleston for a year so that she may learn how to behave in high society.
Back in Patesville, Molly calls on Judge Straight for business, and he mentions John’s success. After she leaves, the judge wonders if John has made a mistake by returning to his old town.
Chapter 5 Summary: “The Tournament”
A facsimile of a chivalric tournament is held at the Clarence Social Club. Young men dress in costume armor and attack targets on horseback. The anachronistic pageantry is explained as part of the South’s love of chivalric tales due to its feudal political and economic structure. John is there with Rena, who has just arrived from boarding school.
The horsemen ride by the spectators. An accident with one horse causes a broken lance to fly into the crowd, striking a young black man heavily upon the face. The man wraps a red handkerchief around his head to staunch the bleeding. Rena accidentally drops her handkerchief. A horseman catches the handkerchief upon his lance point and motions to return it to Rena. Rena demurs, and he ties the handkerchief around his lance.
The injured man moves through the stands until he can get a good look at Rena and identifies her. Other nights envy the knight with the handkerchief, who is a friend of John’s named George Tryon. The knights make their runs at the target, and Tryon is the champion. He names Rena the Queen of Love and Beauty, to be crowned at that night’s banquet.
George has heard much about Rena. He prepares to call on her in the evening. No one notices a young, black man with a bandaged head following John’s carriage as he and Rena return home.
Chapter 6 Summary: “The Queen of Love and Beauty”
After lunch, Mrs. Newberry advises Rena about that night’s ball and takes her to get a gown, and then Tryon escorts her to the ball. Rena manages to make a good social showing despite her inexperience but is relieved when the ball ends. When they arrive home, John glows at her successful entry into high society. Rena, however, still half believes her new life to be a dream.
Chapters 4-6 Analysis
In these chapters, Frank Fowler appears, Rena makes her debut into elite white society, and the reader gets a glimpse of how John has managed to pass among whites. Frank’s introduction in Patesville and presence in Clarence establishes his undying devotion to Rena and his willingness to suffer any indignity on her behalf, a trait upon which the plot of the story will frequently depend.
Social camouflage is an important element to passing as white, as shown by the siblings’ passage on the riverboat. Rena has not yet been acculturated to pass as a well-to-do white woman, and there may be passengers from Patesville who know her. Since it is too dangerous for her to attempt to socialize with whites, she must remain in her cabin for the journey. Further, she will need to learn how to act according to her new social station at boarding school before she can join John.
John, on the other hand, mingles easily with the captain and other passengers in the dining-cabin. John readily agrees with his dining mates on the inferiority of black people, the perfidy of Northerners, and the moral correctness of the Confederacy’s rebellion. His true feelings on these topics are never made explicit, but it is unlikely he holds all these views. Since John speaks about these matters in a “lofty and impersonal manner” (31), he is asked if his family lost any slaves due to the war. John’s answer, that his father “owned a hundred,” is a stunning example of the verbal gymnastics he must engage in to avoid giving himself away.
The tournament and the ball following it introduce the reader to the self-conception of wealthy white southerners. Chivalric romances such as those written by Sir Walter Scott were very popular in the South at this time. Despite having much of the economic underpinning of their status stripped by the war, these people intend to maintain their sense of themselves as a heroic elite benevolently ruling over their economic and racial inferiors.
The black man who is injured at the tournament and then follows John and Rena for a while is in fact Frank Fowler, though the narrator does not reveal this until later.
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By Charles W. Chesnutt
