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William Wells Brown and the Tragic Mulatto
Erica Prosser
[1] William Wells Brown is often credited as the first to introduce the infamous figure of the "tragic mulatto" into American literature. In the first African American novel, Clotel; or the President's Daughter (1853), Brown tells the tale of Currer, alleged slave mistress to Thomas Jefferson, and her two mulatto daughters, Althesa and Clotel. As we follow each of the mulatto women through their lives within the confines of the slave system, we are exposed to a number of different hardships that biracial people experience. Aside from Brown's influence on the larger Jefferson-Hemings rumors, his novel made serious implications about the status of race mixing in the United States. The archetype of the "tragic mulatto" is an important one, for it offers us a lens through which we can study race as the defining aspect of our national identity.
[2] Race, more specifically the black-white divide, is an inseparable part of identity formation in the United States. Since its conception, the country has boasted equality among men and tolerance for differences; however, our history reveals an alternative reality. The U.S. was built on the backs of African American slaves, augmented by the white supremacist opinions of the founding fathers. The color line has defined the existence of all American inhabitants, and identifying with one race or another is essential to survival. To be biracial is to be an outcast, and this marginalization is embodied in the figure of the "tragic mulatto" that Brown introduces in the 19th century.
[3] The "tragic mulatto" is defined by a number of characteristics. First, having mixed heritage, the mulatto represents one who is outside the realm of American citizenship. The "one-drop rule" outlawed any persons with black blood from obtaining citizenship and, therefore, equal rights within the eyes of the law. Brown's commentary on Clotel as the daughter of Jefferson brings race to the forefront. As Eve Raimon writes, "contrary to prevailing notions of American national mythology held by his white majority audience, ‘Americanness,' or U.S. national identity, Brown thus insists, is interracial--and tragic--from its founding onward" (85). Essentially, racial heritage was the authority upon which acceptance as a citizen was based. However, contrary to what most believe, skin color was not an indicating factor. In the case of the mulatto, most often they could pass as white. Arguably, then, they should have gained citizenship. Yet, white skin was not enough to grant citizen status. Black blood was viewed as impure, tainted, and though it may have not exposed itself by way of physical attributes, its existence made one inferior to whites. This philosophy explains how, then, Jefferson's mulatto daughters could be sold on the auction block. Again, Raimon says,
Brown's overriding purpose in deploying the "tragic mulatta" emblem is to imprint indelibly in readers' minds the inescapable alliance between American selfhood and racial perfidy, the pernicious mendacity of the nation's founding ideals. (87)
Her words explicitly describe the hypocrisy of the American system. The selling of Clotel represents one aspect of the tragic existence of mulattos.
[4] Clotel is at once a representation of all mulattos, as well as one specific woman, Sally Hemings. As Sharon Monteith explains:
It is clear that Sally Hemings is an audacious and controversial figure as deployed across a range of cultural productions, not least when her presence serves to point up the glaring contradictions that made this "First Lady" an alien in America--a non-citizen in the Republic. (33)
Hemings is a perfect example of how blood status is critical in young America. She was the mistress of one of the most powerful men in the nation, mother to his children, yet citizenship was withheld from her, and she remained in bondage for the duration of her life. Monteith compares Hemings to the legendary Pocahontas and her interracial relationship with John Smith. She says:
Focusing on interracial foundational relationships such as that between Captain John Smith--the white Jamestown colonist--and Pocahontas, as well as the particular relationship under discussion here, helps us to reassess the ways in which sex and race have been submerged with the civic discourse of American national identity. The women remain alien presences, even the Native American Pocahontas. They have been annexed away from the abstract ideals inscribed in two monumental heroes--Smith and Jefferson--who are axiomatic to the "invention" of America. (37-38)
The binary relationship she describes between white and black, citizen and non-citizen is indicative of the experience of the "tragic mulatto" especially in the case of Hemings (and Clotel), since they were denied rights even though they were directly related to the president of the United States.
[5] In creating Clotel, Brown employs the figure of the "tragic mulatto," a personification of the evils of slavery, particularly on the destruction of the African American family. The mixed heritage and questionable legal status of mulattos adds another dimension of tragedy to their and their families' lives. Because, as we see with the sale of Clotel, biracial children can be sold without hesitation, mothers of mulatto children are faced with the constant threat of losing them. Joyce Carol Oates writes, "for the ‘tragic mulatta' the erotic attractions of a light skin and Caucasian features don't confer power but constitute a fairy-tale curse of the sort suffered by Cinderella and Snow White" (251). That is, having white blood, even if it is powerful white blood, is not enough to protect them from enslavement. Implicit in the "tragic mulatto's" experience is a doomed fate, either in the form of untimely death or human bondage. In the case of Clotel, her sale represents the tragic destruction of her mulatto family, but her story is representative of thousands of African American families of the 19th century. Verner Mitchell explains Brown's objective in writing Clotel in this way:
His [Brown's] objective, prevalent throughout this propaganda novel, situates him as a moral propagandist. Any device that would damage the "peculiar institution" of slavery--sentimentality, melodrama, contrived plots, or newspaper articles--was employed. In light of this purpose, the sexual licentiousness of the slave owner and the control he and his family wielded over Black women receive particular attention. For Brown, illegitimacy, the result of the ravaging of Black women and the inevitable destruction of the family structure, is a corrupt principle upon which slavery is founded. (11)
[6] American slavery, by definition, maintained that African Americans were sub-human, and therefore, nuclear families were not a right or privilege allowed to them. A White slave master had complete control over his property and, thus, could "ravage" slave women at his leisure. The results of such relations are tragic mulattos, destined to lives caught between the color line. Neither white nor black, mulattos are the symbol of torn black families. Their white fathers disowned them, often repulsed by the mixed descendants that they had created through their sexual deviance. Conversely, slave mothers, desperate to hold their families together, are powerless to do so as a result of their enslavement. Oates does well to articulate this perspective:
Capitalist slaveholders to whom an entire class of individuals is less than human, brutal white overseers who enforce the will of the slaveholders, auction sales, the breakup of families, the degradation of young female slaves by white males with money: these are still with us in transmogrified, euphemistic forms. (249)
Oates makes a significant claim, stating that the tenets of white supremacy that violated the humanity of African Americans are still alive in the U.S. today. As such, it is imperative that we understand how the figure of the "tragic mulatto" works in literature to convey lessons about racial and national identity.
[7] The figure of the "tragic mulatto" in Brown's Clotel and other literary creations works to explicate the complexities of race relations in past and present-day America. Miscegenation and the resulting population has long been a point of contention in both public and private lives in the U.S. "Tragic mulatto" implies that the unfortunate existence of interracial people is inherent because of their biological make up. Here is the place the archetype can be disputed. Granted, the history of race mixing has given us countless examples of unenviable mulatto experiences. However, we must recognize that such experiences are not the innate result of miscegenation. Rather, they are the result of blatant racism. Whites and blacks alike are apprehensive of those who can "pass," for they are enigmas as far as identity is concerned. It is an American reality that race is the most definitive part of one's identity and status, and therefore those who are ambiguous are perplexing and even intimidating. Thus, the tragedy of the "tragic mulatto" is not that they are intrinsically doomed but that society has had the opportunity to eradicate the negativity surrounding their mixed heritage -- yet we cling to the color line as if it is our only lifeline.
