Evelyn's Husband

Evelyn's Husband by Charles W. Chesnutt edited by Matthew Wilson and Marjan A. van Schaik.Introduction by Matthew Wilson.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that Charles W. Chesnutt launched in A Marrow of Tradition continues in Evelyn's Husband one of six manuscripts left unpublished when this highly regarded African American innovator died.Set in Boston society on a deserted Caribbean island and in Brazil Evelyn's Husband is the story of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 include The House Behind the Cedars The Marrow of Tradition The Colonel's Dream as well as the posthumously published novel Paul Marchand F. M. C. from University Press of Mississippi.Matthew Wilson is a professor of humanities and writing at Penn State University Harrisburg.Marjan A. van Schaik is an instructor at Millersville University.