| Episodes |
The Black Slut vs. The Jealous Bitch: Sally and Martha
Kristina Gonzalez
[1] Barbara Chase-Riboud transforms the public view of Sally Hemings from a lost and naïve slave girl to a strong and empowered independent woman. One way she accomplishes this transformation is by placing Hemings in precarious situations with other characters of great importance. For instance, the relationship between Hemings and Thomas Jefferson's daughter, Martha, provides potential for some of Sally's personal growth. Throughout the novel, tension arises between the two because of the intimacy Jefferson shares with Sally but lacks with Martha. There are several cases throughout Chase-Riboud's novel in which the power struggle is almost brought forth, but it is not until Chapter forty-two that the true "battle" reveals itself (320-30).
[2] For thirty-eight years, Martha and Sally treat each other like itches beneath each other's skin. Throughout their childhood, they grow up as two entirely different women: Sally is beautiful and provoking, while Martha is plain and childish. Martha resents Sally for maturing better than she and for grabbing the attention of those who would never notice her, especially Thomas Jefferson, her own father. Martha starves for affection she would never receive and, as a result, lashes out in fits of rage. Often they are aimed at Sally out of jealousy because Martha subconsciously knows she is insignificant compared to her. However, she also knows that regardless of how well Sally speaks French or how much her master adores her, Sally would always be beneath Martha in social status. Sally Hemings did and always would have African blood running through her veins. To her advantage, Martha was not afraid to slap this reality in Sally's face in an attempt to feel dominant. For example, in chapter sixteen Martha confronts Sally about using the same hairdresser (117-18). Although it is no inconvenience to the employee, Martha threatens to complain to her father because she does not see it fit that the same person who fixes the slave's hair should do her own. It defies the laws of social hierarchy.
[3] Ironically, however, Sally Hemings holds the highest order of power over Martha--one that cannot be attained by the color of one's skin or by being born into a family of prestige. Sally Hemings possesses love--the same love deprived from Martha by her father throughout her entire life. How Sally pities her for not knowing what it was like to taste the fruits of real womanhood. Is Martha so much higher than she? No, she is not, and Sally is well aware of this:
And Martha? Was she worth any more than I? The domain we had struggled for in an undeclared war that had lasted thirty-eight years was no more to be fought over. It lay under our feet and hung over our heads, a decaying, awful parody of its master and builder. . . . If the power had been hers, I thought, the endurance was mine. (327)
With their history clearly defined and their hearts laden with the death of Jefferson, Sally and Martha are finally able to release all the anger, jealousy, and resentment that had built up between them over the past thirty-eight years.
[4] Sally catalyzes the "final battle" by failing to respond once Martha claims she has freed Sally by her father's will (328). Shocked by her silence, Martha demands appreciation and comment. At this moment, the growth of Sally from lost and unsure to strong and independent is most evident. Chase-Riboud writes, "I thought of my mother and her mother. It would have been slavish to have said anything. And I was not her slave" (328). Sally thus recognizes herself as unresponsive to any more orders of the white race. She demands, instead, for Martha to explain herself to Sally. When this shift in power occurs, Martha snaps. What she has denied all along, that Sally possesses some type of control over her, Martha now realizes as the truth. The truth is now rubbed in her face that her father loves a slave girl more than he loves his own daughter, and the only reaction she can muster is to degrade Sally with the brutality of her words: "Black slut," "Slave whore," "Chattel," "Convenient slave paramour," and "Receptacle" (329).
[5] Martha's choice of words proves her immaturity and inability to act as an adult. Chase-Riboud uses this scene as a way to contrast Martha's weakness with the strength of Sally. "We were like two bitches worrying over a rotting and long-dead carcass," she writes, "Didn't she understand that it was over?" (330) Sally finally recognizes the end to their long-endured feud and sees this as the point for moving on. Now that Jefferson is dead and Martha is left aside, Sally detaches herself from love and all that it entails. At last when Martha asks the question, "Didn't you ever love me," Sally ensures her independence and power by remaining silent. The psychological damage incurred to Martha is overwhelmingly evident, and it only enhances the creation of Sally as an emerging autonomous character.
I knew that only the one who stopped loving, who stopped needing love, would survive. And hate seemed to drop over me like a veil. . . . I didn't anything need anymore. I didn't need Martha. Martha needed me to free, but I didn't need Martha to free me. I, like my mother and her mother before her, had survived love. (330)
