The ensuing drama emphasizes themes of interracial relations and depicted the intricacies of racial identity in the American south.

According to Hollis Robbins, the two major influences on The House Behind the Cedars are Chesnutt's life and Walter Scott's novel Ivanhoe.

[1] Well read in nineteenth century British literature and being of predominantly European ancestry, Chesnutt was light skinned enough to pass as a white man, although he openly identified with his African-American roots.

John joyfully reunites with his mother, Molly, and his sister Rena, and tells them what his life has been like since leaving home.

Upon their arrival, John and Rena attend a tournament where men dressed as knights participate in a jousting competition.

John and George are called away on legal business, and while they're gone, Rena is haunted by three dreams that her mother is sick and dying.

Molly's friend visits and asks if Rena would be interested in accompanying her cousin, Jeff Wain, a widower, in teaching at his school for colored children.

For example, Plato, one of Rena's students who used to belong to Tryon, continues to call George "master" despite the fact that he is now free.

'"[8] Similarly, Frank feels obliged to continue to serve the Waldens (Rena in particular) as he always did: "A smile, which Peter would have regarded as condescending to a free man, who since the war, was as good as anybody else; a kind word, which Peter would have considered offensively patronizing... were ample rewards for the thousand and one small services Frank had rendered the two women who lived in the house behind the cedars".

[9] The events that transpire in The House Behind the Cedars emphasize the extent to which race relations are strained in the South despite any progress that has been made since the war.

Upon discovering that Rena is not of pure white blood he decides that she "was worse than dead to him; for if he had seen her lying in her shroud before him, he could at least have cherished her memory; now, even this consolation was denied him".

When Frank offers to drive across the world for Rena, Molly laughs and thinks, ""Her daughter was going to live in a fine house, and marry a rich man, and ride in her carriage.

Drawing on Ivanhoe's dramatization of racial politics (Jewish, Norman, Saxon) Chesnutt examines passing as white and how outsiders' perspectives of a person who does so are affected.

The House Behind the Cedars was originally a short story called "Rena", and only after several revisions and converting the manuscript into a novel was it accepted by Houghton Mifflin in 1900.

[3] Furthermore, Chesnutt was one of the only writers who encouraged the idea that people of mixed race had "a morally and socially defensible argument, if not a natural right, to be accepted as white.

Some critics felt that The House Behind the Cedars was not as well written as his previous short stories,[3] while others considered it to be successful in addressing a prevalent social phenomenon.

[16] The Detroit Free Press described it as "a story of sustained strength and interest, wrought out to an artistic finale", and "easily the most notable novel of the month".