Clotel - Wikipedia Clotel From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigation Jump to search Novel by William Wells Brown Clotel; or, the President's Daughter Title page, first edition Author William Wells Brown Country United Kingdom Language English Genre Novel Publisher Partridge & Oakey Publication date 1853 Media type Print OCLC 52765888 Dewey Decimal 813/.4 22 LC Class PS1139.B9 C53 2004 Text Clotel; or, the President's Daughter at Project Gutenberg Clotel; or, The President's Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States is an 1853 novel by United States author and playwright William Wells Brown about Clotel and her sister, fictional slave daughters of Thomas Jefferson. Brown, who escaped from slavery in 1834 at the age of 20, published the book in London. He was staying after a lecture tour to evade possible recapture due to the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. Set in the early nineteenth century, it is considered the first novel published by an African American[1][2] and is set in the United States. Three additional versions were published through 1867. The novel explores slavery's destructive effects on African-American families, the difficult lives of American mulattoes or mixed-race people, and the "degraded and immoral condition of the relation of master and slave in the United States of America."[3] Featuring an enslaved mixed-race woman named Currer and her daughters Althesa and Clotel, fathered by Thomas Jefferson, it is considered a tragic mulatto story. The women's relatively comfortable lives end after Jefferson's death. They confront many hardships, with the women taking heroic action to preserve their families. Contents 1 Background 2 Plot summary 3 Primary characters 4 Critical reception 5 Influence 6 Adaptations 7 Style 8 See also 9 References 10 Sources 11 External links Background[edit] Main article: Jefferson–Hemings controversy The novel played with known 19th-century reports that Thomas Jefferson had an intimate relationship with his slave Sally Hemings and fathered several children with her.[4] Of mixed race and described as nearly white, she was believed to be the half sister of Jefferson's wife, Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson, the youngest of six children by her father John Wayles with his slave Betty Hemings. Members of the large Hemings family were among more than 100 slaves inherited by Martha and Thomas Jefferson after her father's death. Martha died when Jefferson was 40 and he never remarried. Although Jefferson never responded to the rumors, some historians believe that his freeing of the four Hemings children as they came of age is significant: he may have let Beverly (a male) and certainly let his sister Harriet Hemings "escape" in 1822 from Monticello, and freed two by his will in 1826, although he was heavily in debt. His daughter gave Hemings "her time"(meaning that she freed her), so she may have been able to live freely in Charlottesville with her two youngest sons, Madison and Eston Hemings, for the rest of her life. Except for three other Hemings men whom Jefferson freed in his will, the rest of his 130 slaves were sold in 1827. A 1998 DNA study confirmed a match between the Jefferson male line and Eston Hemings' direct male descendant.[4] Based on this and the body of historic evidence, most Jeffersonian scholars have come to accept that Jefferson did father Hemings's children over an extended period of time. As an escaped slave, due to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, William Wells Brown was at risk in the United States. While in England on a lecture tour in 1849, he decided to stay there with his two daughters after the Fugitive Slave Act was passed in 1850, as he was at risk of being taken by slave catchers.[5] He published Clotel in 1853 in London; it was the first novel published by an African American.[1][2] In 1854 a British couple purchased freedom for Brown, and he returned with his daughters to the US. Plot summary[edit] This, reader, is an unvarnished narrative of one doomed by the laws of the Southern States to be a slave. It tells not only its own story of grief, but speaks of a thousand wrongs and woes beside, which never see the light; all the more bitter and dreadful, because no help can relieve, no sympathy can mitigate, and no hope can cheer. — —Narrator of Clotel, Page 199.[6] Frontispiece to the 1853 publication, engraving entitled: THE DEATH OF CLOTEL.[7] The narrative of Clotel plays with history by relating the "perilous antebellum adventures" of a young mixed-race slave Currer and her two light-skinned daughters fathered by Thomas Jefferson. Because the mother is a slave, according to partus sequitur ventrem, which Virginia adopted into law in 1662, her daughters are born into slavery. The book includes "several sub-plots" related to other slaves, religion and anti-slavery.[8] Currer, described as "a bright mulatto" (meaning light-skinned) gives birth to two "near white" daughters: Clotel and Althesa.[9] After the death of Jefferson, Currer and her daughters are sold as slaves.[9] Horatio Green, a white man, purchases Clotel and takes her as a common-law wife. They cannot legally marry under state laws against miscegenation. Her mother Currer and sister Althesa remain "in a slave gang." Currer is eventually purchased by Mr. Peck, a preacher. She is enslaved until she dies from yellow fever,[9] shortly before Peck's daughter was preparing to emancipate her. Althesa marries her white master, Henry Morton, a Northerner, by passing as a white woman. They have daughters Jane and Ellen, who are educated. Although supporting abolition, Morton fails to manumit Althesa and their daughters. After Althesa and Morton both die, their daughters are enslaved.[9] Ellen commits suicide to escape sexual enslavement, and Jane dies in slavery from heartbreak.[10] Green and Clotel have a daughter Mary, also mixed race of course, and majority white. When Green becomes ambitious and involved in local politics, he abandons his relationship with Clotel and Mary. He marries "a white woman who forces him to sell Clotel and enslave his child."[10] Clotel is sold to a planter in Vicksburg, Mississippi. There she meets William, another slave, and they plan a bold escape. Dressing as a white man, Clotel is accompanied by William acting as her slave; they travel and gain freedom by reaching the free state of Ohio. (This is based on the tactics of the 1849 escape by Ellen Craft and William Craft). William continues his flight to Canada (an estimated 30,000 fugitive slaves reached there by 1852).[11] Clotel returns to Virginia to try to free her daughter Mary. After being captured in Richmond, Clotel is taken to Washington, DC for sale at its slave market. She escapes and is pursued through the city by slave catchers. Surrounded by them on the Long Bridge, she commits suicide by jumping to her death in the Potomac River.[12] Thus died Clotel, the daughter of Thomas Jefferson, a president of the United States. — —Narrator of Clotel, Page 182[13] Mary is forced to work as a domestic slave for her father Horatio Green and his white wife. She arranges to trade places in prison with her lover, the slave George. He escapes to Canada. Sold to a slave trader, Mary is purchased by a French man who takes her to Europe.[12][14] Ten years later, after the Frenchman's death, George and Mary reunite by chance in Dunkirk, France. The novel ends with their marriage.[12] Primary characters[edit] Part of a series on Slavery Contemporary Child labour Child soldiers Conscription Debt Forced marriage Bride buying Wife selling Forced prostitution Human trafficking Peonage Penal labour Contemporary Africa 21st-century Islamism Sexual slavery Wage slavery Historical Antiquity Ancient Rome Ancient Greece Ancillae Babylonia Slavery in the Muslim world Ottoman Empire Barbary slave trade Barbary corsairs The Barbary Coast Turkish Abductions Sexual slavery in Islam Harem Ma malakat aymanukum Circassian beauties Ottoman Imperial Harem Cariye Jarya Odalisque Qiyan Slavery in medieval Europe Byzantine Empire Kholop Serfs History In Russia Emancipation Thrall Atlantic slave trade Bristol Brazil Database Dutch Middle Passage Nantes New France Panyarring Plaçage Spanish Empire Slave Coast Thirteen colonies Topics and practice Conscription Ghilman Mamluk Devshirme Blackbirding Coolie Corvée labor Field slaves in the United States Treatment of slaves House slaves Saqaliba Slave market Slave raiding Child soldiers White slave trade Naval Galley slave Impressment Pirates Shanghaiing Slave ship By country or region Sub-Saharan Africa Contemporary Africa Trans-Saharan slave trade Indian Ocean slave trade Angola Chad Ethiopia Mali Mauritania Niger Somalia South Africa Sudan Seychelles North and South America Americas indigenous U.S. Natives Aztec Brazil Lei Áurea Canada Caribbean Barbados Code Noir Cuba Haiti revolt Restavek Latin America (Encomienda) Puerto Rico Trinidad United States Field slaves female maps partus prison labor Slave codes Treatment of slaves interregional Human trafficking Virgin Islands East, Southeast, and South Asia Human trafficking in Southeast Asia Bhutan China Booi Aha Laogai penal system India Debt bondage Chukri System Japan comfort women Korea Kwalliso Yankee princess Vietnam Australia and Oceania Blackbirding Human trafficking in Australia Slave raiding in Easter Island Human trafficking in Papua New Guinea Blackbirding in Polynesia Europe and North Asia Sex trafficking in Europe Britain Denmark Dutch Republic Germany in World War II Malta Norway Poland Portugal Romania Russia Spain Sweden North Africa and West Asia Iran Libya Human trafficking in the Middle East Yemen Religion Slavery and religion Bible Christianity Catholicism Mormonism Islam 21st century Mukataba Ma malakat aymanukum Judaism Bahá'í Faith Opposition and resistance 1926 Slavery Convention Abolitionism U.K. U.S. Abolitionists Anti-Slavery International Blockade of Africa U.K. U.S. Colonization Liberia Sierra Leone Compensated emancipation Freedman manumission Freedom suit Slave Power Underground Railroad songs Slave rebellion Slave Trade Acts International law Third Servile War 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution Timeline of abolition of slavery and serfdom Related Common law Indentured servitude Unfree labour Fugitive slaves laws Great Dismal Swamp maroons List of slaves owners Slave narrative films songs Slave name Slave catcher Slave patrol Slave Route Project breeding court cases Washington Jefferson Adams Lincoln 40 acres Freedmen's Bureau bit Emancipation Day v t e Currer – Semi-autonomous slave of Thomas Jefferson; mother of Clotel and Althesa. Currer is "Sally Hemings fictional counterpart." Instead of serving Jefferson directly, she works as a laundress, giving him her pay. She exchanges her income for a "pseudo-freedom" for her and her daughters, and gets them educated.[15] She is purchased by Rev. Peck. Clotel – Daughter of Currer and Jefferson; sister to Althesa. At 16 years old, she is purchased by Horatio Green, with whom she has a daughter Mary. Later she is sold again, ending up in Vicksburg, Mississippi. She escapes from there with the slave William, while disguised and traveling as a white gentleman, Mr. Johnson. Althesa – Daughter of Currer and Jefferson; sister to Clotel. Purchased at 14 years old by James Crawford and resold to Dr. Morton. She passes as white so they can be married; they have two daughters, Jane and Ellen, and her life looks hopeful. Mary – Daughter of Clotel and Horatio Green. She becomes the lover of the slave George Green, jailed as an insurgent after Nat Turner's Rebellion in 1831. She switches places with him in prison, allowing him to escape dressed as a woman. She is eventually sold to a French man who takes her to Europe. After his death, she encounters George by chance, and they marry. George Green – Slave in the service of Horatio Green; becomes Mary's lover. After escaping prison with her help, he flees to the free states, evading recapture in Ohio with the help of a Quaker. He reaches Canada and migrates to Great Britain. Ten years after arriving in England, he travels to Dunkirk, France, where he re-encounters Mary, and they marry. Horatio Green – He is the first to buy Clotel after Jefferson's death, and takes her as a concubine. He is Mary's biological father. He sells Clotel and enslaves Mary after marrying a white woman. Georgiana Peck – Daughter of Reverend Peck. Reverend Peck – Father of Georgiana Peck. He buys Currer, assigning her to kitchen and household affairs. William – An enslaved mechanic who is hired out to work alongside Clotel in Vicksburg. While paying his master from his earnings, he saved $150 in secret. He and Clotel use this to support their bold escape. Critical reception[edit] The novel has been extensively studied in the late 20th and early 21st century. Kirkpatrick writes that Clotel demonstrates the "pervasive, recurring victimization of black women under slavery. Even individuals of mixed-race status who attempt to pass as white nevertheless suffer horrifically."[16] It exposes "the insidious intersection of economic gain and political ambition—represented by founding fathers such as Jefferson and Horatio Green." It is a "scathing, sarcastic, comprehensive critique of slavery in the American South, race prejudice in the American North, and religious hypocrisy in the American notion as a whole."[5] The novel and the title "walk a precarious line between oral history, written history, and artistic license."[8] Mitchell said that Brown emphasized romantic conventions, dramatic incident and a political view in his novel.[17] Recent scholars have also analyzed Clotel for its representations of gender and race. Sherrard-Johnson notes that Brown portrayed both the "tragic central characters " and the "heroic figures" as mulattoes with Angloid features, similar to his own appearance.[18] She thinks he uses the cases of "nearly white" slaves to gain sympathy for his characters. She notes that he borrowed elements from the abolitionist Lydia Maria Child's plot in her short story, "The Quadroons" (1842). He also incorporated notable elements of recent events, such as the escape of the Crafts, and the freedom suit court case of Salome, an enslaved woman in Louisiana who claimed to be an immigrant born in Germany. Martha Cutter notes that Brown portrayed his women characters generally as passive victims of slavery and as representations of True Women and the cult of domesticity, which were emphasized at the time for women. They are not portrayed as wanting or seeking freedom, but as existing through love and suffering. Cutter asks, if Mary could free George, why did she not free herself?[14] Although Brown published three later versions of Clotel, he did not seriously change this characterization of the African-American women. Slave women such as Ellen Craft were known to have escaped slavery, but Brown did not portray such women fully achieving freedom.[14] Mitchell, in contrast, believes that Brown portrays his women as acting heroically: she notes that Clotel escapes and goes back to Virginia to rescue her daughter, and more than one escape is described. She thinks he emphasizes adventure for the sake of character development. Even after heroic action, Brown's women are subject to the suffering of slavery. He emphasizes its evil of illegitimacy, and the arbitrary breakup of families.[19] Influence[edit] In addition to being the first novel published by an African American, Clotel became a model that influenced many other nineteenth-century African-American writers.[2] It is the first instance of an African-American writer "to dramatize the underlying hypocrisy of democratic principles in the face of African American slavery."[7] Through Clotel, Brown introduces into African-American literature the "tragic mulatto" character.[20][21] Such characters, representing the historical reality of hundreds of thousands of mixed-race people, many of them slaves, were further developed by "Webb, Wilson, Chesnutt, Johnson, and other novelists", writing primarily after the American Civil War.[20] Adaptations[edit] Brown published three variations of Clotel in the 1860s, but did not markedly change his portrayal of the African-American women characters. Style[edit] According to Brown in its preface, he wrote Clotel as a polemic narrative[21] against slavery, written for a British audience: If the incidents set forth in the following pages should add anything new to the information already given to the Public through similar publications, and should thereby aid in bringing British influence to bear upon American slavery, the main object for which this work was written will have been accomplished. — —Preface, Page 47[22] It is also considered a propagandistic narrative, in that Brown leveraged "sentimentality, melodrama, contrived plots, [and] newspaper articles" as devices "to damage the 'peculiar institution'[23] of slavery."[24] Chapters predominantly open "with an epigraph underscoring the romance’s urgent message: 'chattel slavery in America undermines the entire social condition of man.'[25]"[26] Clotel is told through the use of a "third-person limited omniscient narrator." The narrator is "morally didactic and consistently ironic." The narrative is fragmented, in that it "combines fact, fiction, and external literary sources."[7] It presents the reader with a structure that is episodic and is informed by "legends, myths, music, and concrete eye-witness accounts of the fugitive slaves themselves." It also "draws on antislavery lectures and techniques," such as "abolitionist verse and fiction, newspaper stories and ads, legislative reports, public addresses, private letters, and personal anecdotes."[27] See also[edit] Novels portal List of African American firsts The Black Vampyre References[edit] ^ a b duCille p. 443 ^ a b c Gabler-Hover p. 248 ^ Brown p. 82 ^ a b Castronovo p. 442 ^ a b Fabi p. 11 ^ Brown p. 199 ^ a b c Gabler-Hover p. 249 ^ a b Sherrard-Johnson p. 206 ^ a b c d Cutter p. 149 ^ a b Cutter p. 149-150 ^ Drew, "Preface" ^ a b c duCille p. 444 ^ Brown p. 182 ^ a b c Cutter p. 150 ^ Mitchell p. 8 ^ Kirkpatrick ^ Mitchell p. 7 ^ Sherrard-Johnson p. 207 ^ Mitchell pp. 10–11 ^ a b Bell p. 42 ^ a b Mitchell p. 9 ^ Brown p. 47 ^ Brown p. 176 ^ Mitchell p. 11 ^ Brown p. 84 ^ Bell p. 39 ^ Bell p. 40 Sources[edit] Bell, Bernard. The Afro-American Novel and Its Tradition. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1987. Brown, William Wells. Clotel; or, The President's Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States. 1853. Ed. Robert Levine. Boston: Bedford, 2000. Castronovo, Russ. "National Narrative and National History." A Companion to American Fiction, 1780–1865. Ed. by Shirley Samuels. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. 434–444. Cutter, Martha. Unruly Tongue: Identity and Voice in American Women's Writing, 1850–1930. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1999. Drew, Benjamin. "Preface", A North-Side View of Slavery. The Refugee: or the Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada, Boston: Jon P. Jewett and Company, 1856 duCille, Ann. "Where in the World Is William Wells Brown? Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, and the DNA of African-American Literary History", American Literary History 12.3 (Autumn, 2000). 443–462. JSTOR. Fabi, M. Giulia. Passing and the Rise of the African American Novel. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001. Gabler-Hover, Janet. "'Clotel'," American History Through Literature, 1820–1870. New York: Charles Scribners & Sons, 2005. 248–253. Kirkpatrick, Mary Alice. "William Wells Brown and Summary of 'Clotel'," 2004, Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina, accessed 7 May 2011. Mitchell, Angelyn. "Her Side of His Story: A Feminist Analysis of Two Nineteenth-Century Antebellum Novels—William Wells Brown’s Clotel and Harriet E. Wilson’s Our Nig", American Literary Realism 24.3 (April 1992). 7–21, at JSTOR. Sherrard-Johnson, Cherene. "Delicate Boundaries: Passing and Other 'Crossings' in Fictionalized Slave Narratives." A Companion to American Fiction, 1780–1865. Edited by Shirley Samuels, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. 204–215. External links[edit] Clotel at Project Gutenberg Clotel: An Electronic Scholarly Edition, University of Virginia Press. Clotel, Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina Clotel public domain audiobook at LibriVox v t e Slave narratives Slave Narrative Collection Individuals by continent of enslavement Africa Robert Adams (c. 1790–?) Francis Bok (b. 1979) James Leander Cathcart (1767–1843) Ólafur Egilsson (1564–1639) Hark Olufs (1708–1754) Mende Nazer (b. 1982) Thomas Pellow (1705–?) Joseph Pitts (1663 – c. 1735) Guðríður Símonardóttir (1598–1682) Petro Kilekwa (late 19th c.) Europe Lovisa von Burghausen (1698–1733) Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745 Nigeria – 31 March 1797 Eng) Ukawsaw Gronniosaw (c. 1705 Bornu – 1775 Eng) Jean Marteilhe (1684-1777) Roustam Raza (1783–1845) Brigitta Scherzenfeldt (1684–1736) North America: Canada Marie-Joseph Angélique (c. 1710 Portugal – 1734 Montreal) John R. Jewitt (1783 England – 1821 United States) North America: Caribbean Juan Francisco Manzano (1797–1854, Cuba) Esteban Montejo (1860–1965, Cuba) Mary Prince Venerable Pierre Toussaint (1766 Saint-Dominque – June 30, 1853 NY) Marcos Xiorro (c. 1819 – ???, Puerto Rico) North America: United States Sam Aleckson Jordan Anderson William J. Anderson Jared Maurice Arter Solomon Bayley Polly Berry Henry Bibb Leonard Black James Bradley (1834) Henry "Box" Brown John Brown William Wells Brown Peter Bruner (1845 KY – 1938 OH) Ellen and William Craft Hannah Crafts Lucinda Davis Noah Davis Lucy Delaney Ayuba Suleiman Diallo Frederick Douglass Kate Drumgoold Jordan Winston Early (1814 – after 1894) Sarah Jane Woodson Early Peter Fossett (1815 Monticello–1901} David George Moses Grandy William Green (19th century MD) William Grimes Josiah Henson Fountain Hughes (1848/1854 VA – 1957) John Andrew Jackson Harriet Ann Jacobs John Jea Thomas James (minister) Paul Jennings (1799–1874) Elizabeth Keckley Boston King Lunsford Lane J. Vance Lewis Jermain Wesley Loguen Solomon Northup John Parker (1827 VA – 1900) William Parker James Robert Moses Roper Omar ibn Said William Henry Singleton Venture Smith Austin Steward (1793 VA – 1860) Venerable Pierre Toussaint (1766 Saint-Dominque – 1853 NY) Harriet Tubman Wallace Turnage Bethany Veney Booker T. Washington Wallace Willis (19th century Indian Territory) Harriet E. Wilson Zamba Zembola (b. c. 1780 Congo) South America Osifekunde (c. 1795 Nigeria – ? Brazil) Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua (1845–1847, Brazil) Miguel de Buría (? Puerto Rico – 1555 Venezuela) Non-fiction books The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789) The Narrative of Robert Adams (1816) American Slavery as It Is (1839) Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845) The Life of Josiah Henson (1849) Twelve Years a Slave (1853) My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) The Underground Railroad Records (1872) Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881) Up from Slavery (1901) Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States (1936–38) The Peculiar Institution (1956) The Slave Community (1972) Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" (2018) Fiction/novels Oroonoko (1688) Sab (1841) Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) The Heroic Slave (1852) Clotel (1853) Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (1856) The Bondwoman's Narrative (c. 1853 – c. 1861) Our Nig (1859) Jubilee (1966) The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967) Roots: The Saga of an American Family (1976) Underground to Canada (1977) Kindred (1979) Dessa Rose (1986) Beloved (1987) Middle Passage (1990) Queen: The Story of an American Family (1993) Hang a Thousand Trees with Ribbons (1996) Ama: A Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade (2001) Walk Through Darkness (2002) The Known World (2003) Unburnable (2006) Copper Sun (2006) The Book of Negroes (2007) The Underground Railroad (2016) Young adult books Amos Fortune, Free Man (1951) I, Juan de Pareja (1965) Essay To a Southern Slaveholder (1848) A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853) Plays The Escape; or, A Leap for Freedom (1858) The Octoroon (1859) Related African-American literature Atlantic slave trade Caribbean literature Films featuring slavery Songs of the Underground Railroad Book of Negroes (1783) Cotton Plantation Record and Account Book (1847) Slave Songs of the United States (1867) Amazing Grace: An Anthology of Poems about Slavery (2002) The Hemingses of Monticello (2008) Documentaries Unchained Memories (2003) Frederick Douglass and the White Negro (2008) Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Clotel&oldid=1000893729" Categories: 1853 American novels African-American novels Novels by William Wells Brown Novels about American slavery Pre-emancipation African-American history Novels set in Virginia Novels set in Ohio Novels set in Washington, D.C. 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