Cheever's stories bear witness to a great transformation in the organization of American homes, workplaces, and leisure. Until the 1950s, workplaces were predominantly located in the same city as a worker’s home. Urban sprawl and suburban flight, along with investment in mass commuter transit systems, created a new suburban paradigm. Racial exclusion and racial formation were both central to this new paradigm.
Many scholars do not view Cheever's work as dealing explicitly with race. But his writing about whiteness bears witness to a period of American history active with the processes of racial formation. As Adrienne Brown writes in We Wear the White Mask: John Cheever Writes Race, Cheever's Shady Hill stories document the "specific iteration of [whiteness] emerging within midcentury suburbs," which was defined by "raced strategies used to encourage, finance and stabilize homeownership."
In "The Five-Forty-Eight," for example, Miss Dent is racialized. When Blake first meets her, his initial impression is that she is a "dark woman." He notices that "her hair [is] dark, her eyes [are] dark; she left with him a pleasant impression of darkness." Part of her physical charm seems to be this darkness, and although her racial identity is never directly named, it is this that forms the backbone of his power over her. Miss Dent is excluded from suburbs like Shady Hill, and instead rents a "closet" of a studio apartment. She represents the city as a distinct social sphere from Blake's suburban home life, where whiteness is protected and upheld.
