Raceless or Race-inflicted? Insecure and Anxious White Masculinities in Ann Petry’s Country Place

Abstract

Ann Petry’s second novel, Country Place (1947), is classifi ed as a “white life novel” and serves as a medium to reflect on her interest in going beyond the usual “negro problem” in the African American protest novels of the 1940s to tackle the white peoples’ problems with other whites. This paper underlines the ways Petry challenges assumptions about whiteness as a universal convention and aims at making race visible by representing destabilized white (male) characters. By excavating issues of masculine anxiety and insecurity in a number of white characters, Petry endorses the progressive politics of her works in exposing racial prejudice and widening the defi nitions of racism.