William Wells Brown - Clotel, or the Presidents Daughter

American History Through Literature

Paul Finkelman

Series Editor

FREEDOM ROAD

Howard Fast

Introduction by Eric Foner

JOHN RANDOLPH

Henry Adams

Introduction by Robert McColley

THE LIFE OF WASHINGTON

Mason L. Weems

Introduction by Peter S. Onuf

GETTYSBURG

Edited by Earl Schenk Miers and Richard A. Brown

Foreword by James I. Robertson, Jr.

CLOTEL; OR, THE PRESIDENTS DAUGHTER

William Wells Brown

Introduction by Joan E. Cashin

William Wells Brown published this book, the first novel by an African-American writer, in 1853. The title character is a mulatto woman, one of two illegitimate daughters of President Thomas Jefferson. Abandoned by her father, Clotel is raised in Virginia by her slave mother. As a young woman, she becomes the lover of a white man; when he too abandons her, she is sold into slavery in the Old Southwest. Later she manages to escape, but when slave-hunters close in on her, she takes her own life rather than go back to bondage. The novel was greeted with considerable acclaim, and within a decade it went through four editions. Scholars have praised the work for its realistic depiction of the daily horrors of slavery and racism, and for its frank condemnation of the slaveholding founders of a democratic republic. Other critics have admired Browns further achievements as an author, for he published many books in his long life.1

But historians have yet to explore fully the fact that this novel is about women of color. This work is the first in American literature to concentrate on slave women. William Wells Brown focuses on the experiences of Currer; her mulatto daughters with Jefferson, Clotel and Althesa; and her quadroon granddaughters, Mary, Ellen, and Jane. Their destinies occupy center stage, and the complicated, mostly unhappy fates of these six women provide the foundation for the narrative. (The concentration on women distinguishes this book from Harriet Beecher Stowes Uncle Toms Cabin, with which it is often compared.) The novel resembles other mid-nineteenth-century works in that it is populated with many other characters whose lives are intertwined through implausible, melodramatic encounters. Like other books of its time, the narrative is interleaved with poems, newspaper articles, and autobiographical asides. Yet Brown never loses his focus on women of color and their distinctive suffering under slavery. He offers some bold assertions about gender, especially regarding the nature of black, mulatto, and quadroon women, and he also makes some extraordinary observations about race relations and identity.2

The authors life yields a number of clues about how he came to be preoccupied with gender, race, and identity. Brown was the offspring of an interracial relationship, and he was so light-skinned that he was sometimes mistaken for Caucasian. Born in 1814 or 1815 on the Kentucky plantation of Dr. John Young, his mother was a slave named Elizabeth, and his father, George Higgins, was either Youngs half-brother or his cousin. So William was a blood relation of the man who owned him. His own father he scarcely knew, but Brown learned something about his other ancestors. His maternal grandfather, a mulatto slave named Simon Lee, had served with the Patriot army in Virginia during the Revolution. He also heard the rumor, probably from his mother, that his other grandfather was none other than Daniel Boone. (Even though the famous frontiersman lived in Kentucky for the last quarter of the eighteenth century, there is no evidence that Brown was his descendant.) Browns mother remained the center of his emotional life, and as a boy William could hardly bear to see her punished. As a teenager he once tried to help her escape, but they were both soon recaptured.3