While reading the book, the character I found most interesting would be Rhine Fontaine because of the extreme risk he was willing to take. The time period where the book was taken place discriminated blacks in many ways. It was very hard for any black man to become successful during that time, which was why Rhine choose the path he did. He decided to pass as a white man because his dad was white, while his mother was black. By passing he created a new world for himself, creating opportunities which wouldn’t be there for him if he was black.
Rhine challenges the norm of his race in many ways, first he is wealthy. Black’s during that time period were treated horribly which was a reason why they weren’t as successful. Being on the city council was also very rare for his race. Rhine challenged those norm without any problems due to his appearances as a white male, but when the people of Virginia City found out about how he mislead them, that caused a lot of hatred towards him. People gather to destroy his life, they destroyed his saloon, tried to kill Eddy, his wife, they called him the N word on top of all everything else.
I felt that a way that Rhine gender affected the love and romance in this book would be because of his “handsomeness”. His gender performance did affect the love and romance because people thought of him as a wealthy white and handsome male. His personality of being nice and caring for any color of races made him more likeable.
I like how you brought up the risks that Rhine was willing to take. It's important to mention those because it really challenged the norms of society during that time period. He "out smarted" everyone else and made a big uproar in Virginia City. Literally the only reason people turned against him was because of his skin color. Which really forecasts a terrible shadow on the White women and men in this book.
ReplyDeleteYou raise an important point about how folks reacted to Rhine. Do you think his masculine status changes when folks find out that he is biracial?
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