To Pass or Not to Pass

By Alexandra Neumann

[1] The concept of passing as a different person is not an unfamiliar idea to most of us. We have all attempted to pull off the appearance or characteristic traits of a different type of person at some point in time. However, what happens when your personal future is determined by how well you are able to pass as someone else? Sally’s daughter Harriet reaches an age at which she is able to differentiate between how colored and white individuals are treated. Having inherited her father’s skin pigmentation, Harriet is basically given the option of living as a free woman rather than a colored slave like her mother. The difference in lifestyles does not seem to be of a concern of Harriet’s until the introduction of her love interest, William Alexander.

[2] Harriet and William are immediately attracted to each other when they first meet, and this only occurs because William mistakes Harriet as a Randolph instead of a Hemings. This places Harriet in a position in which she must either deny her mother’s blood or the man who promises her everything. Harriet’s first opposition towards her mother is after Sally asks her to come help serve dinner. She responds by saying, “I will not go down there and serve . . . I should be sitting at the table with everyone else.” This statement comes off as harsh and almost cruel. Sally and Harriet are in extremely similar situations, and we almost expect Harriet to recognize this and perhaps have more sympathy for her mother. Sally will never have a place at the table next to the man she loves because of her skin color, while Harriet is able to because she has the ability to pass as a white lady. Perhaps this scene seemed most shocking because it was the first time that viewers were able to understand Harriet’s character. We would expect a more grateful daughter for having been raised by such an endearing and smart mother. However, we can also not deny Harriet’s desire for a better life.

[3] In direct defiance of her mother, Harriet dresses herself in Sally’s purple gown from Paris. Harriet enters the room looking similar to how her mother did when she was in Paris -- her hair is elegantly arranged off of her neck, her dress is a soft, feminine purple that draws in the viewer’s attention, and she paces herself with grace and a slight anxiousness. After Harriet has her encounter with William, she looks her mother straight in the face as if to make a point that they are different. She keeps this same glare as she continues to twirl in the darkness. She whimsically waltzes in the hallway and we begin to notice the haunting music as well as the dim lighting. Harriet continues to dance by herself in a slow and dream-like manner as Sally imagines herself in the same purple dress and dancing with Jefferson. It was perhaps her first moment of intimacy with him, and she now witnesses her daughter undergoing the same process. The scene flashes back to Harriet dancing softly away from her mother as Sally watches. This moment between mother and daughter seems to signify the inevitable -- that Harriet will chose a different lifestyle and therefore leave her mother in the past to move forward into her own future.

[4] The scene ends with Sally’s eyes watching her daughter leave and therefore rejecting her role as servant in the house. Sally identifies with her daughter’s predicament -- she too has had to fight for her freedom. After she visits Jefferson at the White House for the first time, she makes an argument for the way she has been treated. She says, “I have given you four children, Thomas, and yet I am not the one sitting next to you at dinner. I want to be by your side.” Perhaps Sally thought of this moment in retrospect as she was watching Harriet. She empathizes with her daughter’s desire to be included and feels that they both have the right to at least eat dinner with the men they love.

[5] This moment between the two characters symbolizes the fracture of their mother-daughter bond. By the time that Harriet leaves Monticello with her brother, Sally has seemed to accept that her children will never return back home or accept her heritage. Harriet is no longer naïve enough to believe that she can have the lifestyle that she wants while also claiming to have a black mother. William cruelly rejected her after learning that she was not Harriet Randolph, a white woman from a wealthy family. Harriet does not want to make the same mistake again in regards to her future and therefore is determined to pass herself off as white. However, in order to do this, she must reject Sally’s existence and the abomination of slavery as a whole.

[6] Although Harriet does not recognize this moment as an act of separation, we are able to see that Sally does. This same purple dress came to represent the rift between Sally and her own mother. Sally’s mother claims that she is just a “fancy slave” and that she is delusional to think that she means anything more to Jefferson than property. Her mother attempts to make Sally realize her family’s background, including their ancestors’ travels from Africa and how their family was sold into slavery. Her mother places great emphasis on the significance of strong women in their family. She ends her tale by saying that Sally must ensure her children’s slavery.