1.	Toni Morrison - Song of Solomon (Review)

2.	Seamus Deane - Reading in the Dark (Review)

3.	Charles Waddell Chesnutt, Paul Marchand F.M.C. (Review)

4.	Graham Swift - Out of this World (Review)

5.	Nathaniel Hawthorne - Scarlet Letter (Characteristics of Hester Prynne)

6.	ČR Faces Problem of Redundant Foreign Workforce (Essay)

7.	Beware of Merchants (Essay, a fictive magazine article)

8.	Spreading of Weld Roots (Essay)

"CHARLES WADDELL CHESNUTT
PAUL MARCHAND F.M.C.
(Review)

A breathtaking novel written in 1921 leads us to New Orleans of 1820s, into the city of rich and racist Creoles and exploited slaves. Paul Marchand, a “Free Man of Color”, symbolizes an exemplary honest and proud hero of the highest morals and noble manners. Despite being judged as a quadroon, he behaves himself as an honest man without any shade of the secret past. On the contrary, the richest clan of the city seems to hide some of its history… In addition, the members of the family greedily await obtaining of its heritage, fawn on their dear uncle and conceal their debts and egoistic interests.
The two entirely different worlds both of reputable white people and dishonoured “black ones” are interconnected at the moment of dying of the richest Creole in New Orleans. Pierre Beaurepas left his relatives with the promise of inheritance by will. Surprisingly, he had not appointed any of his till-that-time-known relatives to become the heir of his possession, but had assigned all his goods to a revealed son of his. That moment had changed the whole future of Paul Marchand, respectively Paul Baurepas.
Paul Marchand, an ostracised inhabitant of New Orleans, longs for reputation. As a well-educated man, he had studied in France where he would love to return in the future. Consequently, Marchand poses the question of the meaning of race, when he doubts about his staying in Louisiana instead of leaving for broadminded France, where Negros are not punished for the colour of their skin. In this point, we can feel the influence of author’s own background.
During his passage to America, Paul met a beautiful and intelligent girl and married her. After that, he and an illegitimate quadroon daughter of a wealthy Creole return to the South where the troubles begin. Paul and later also his young family suffer from oppression and insult. The only thing Marchand can do against his humbleness represents registering it into his notebook. Full of hate, he makes a remark:
“My time will come – I feel it! I am free born – I am rich – I am as white as they; and I have been better educated. Yet they treat me like a Negro, and when I am struck I cannot return the blow, under pain of losing my liberty or my life. Ah, could I but face them as a man to man! … But we shall see! We shall see!”
The will of Pierre gives Paul the chance to stand up to Raoul Baurepas who hit him into his face. However, it also forced him finally to recount the pros and cons of his actual existence. In fact, the inextricable dilemma of a married man and father opens the whole topic of personal interests and desires. On one hand, the vision of living comfortably and honourably on the top of the society promises a life without fear of suffering. On the other hand, Paul does not want to lose his wife and two little daughters, and – last but not least – soul as well. He can continue to live as a free man of colour, or he can abandon everything to assume a new identity as a respected Creole who he hated all the time. He is expected to deny his wife Julie or demote her to his mistress, disinherit his children, and marry a socially prominent heiress Josephine, who loves one of Paul’s cousins, Philippe."

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