The "Tragic Octoroon" in Pre-Civil War Fiction

JULES ZANGER SouthernIllinois University,Edwardsville Campus

The "Tragic Octoroon" In Pre-Civil War Fiction

ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT CHARACTERS OF PRE-CIVIL WAR ABOLITIONIST fictionwas the "tragicoctoroon." Presented first in the earliestantislavery novel, The Slave (1836), the characterappeared in more than a dozen other works.' By the time the most importantof these works-Uncle Tom's Cabin and The Octoroon-were written,the characterhad ac- quired certain stereotypicqualities and had come to appear in certain stereotypicsituations. Brieflysummarized, the "tragicoctoroon" is a beautifulyoung girl who possessesonly the slightestevidences of Negro blood, who speaks with no trace of dialect, who was raised and educated as a white child and as a lady in the household of her father,and who on her paternal side is descendedfrom "some of the best blood in the 'Old Dominion.'" In her sensibilityand her vulnerabilityshe resembles,of course, the conven- tional ingenue "victim" of sentimentalromance. Her condition is radi- callychanged when, at her father'sunexpected death, it is revealed thathe has failed to free her properly.She discoversthat she is a slave; her person is attachedas propertyby her father'screditors. Sold into slavery, she is victimized,usually by a lower-class,dialect-speaking slave dealer or overseer-often,especially after the Fugitive Slave Act, a Yankee- who attemptsto violate her; she is loved by a high-bornyoung Northerner

1 Among the most readily available of these works are R. Hildreth, The Slave (1836); J. H. Ingraham, Quadroone (1840); H. W. Longfellow, The Quadroon Girl (1842); Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth, Retribution (1840); E.C. Pierson, Cousin Franck's Household (1842); H. B. Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852); W. W. Brown, Clotel, or the President's Daughter (1853); Mary Langdon, Ida May (1855); W. W. Smith, The Planter's Victim (1855); J. T. Trowbridge, Neighbor Jackwood (1856); H. B. Stowe, Dred, A Tale of the Dismal Swamp (1856); Mayne Reid, The Quadroon (1856); J. S. Peacocke, The Creole Orphans (1856); V. B. Denslow, Owned and Disowned (1857); D. Boucicault, The Octo- roon (1859); H. S. Hosmer, Adela the Octoroon (1860); M. V. Victor, Maum Guinea's Children (1861). 64 American Quarterly

or European who wishesto marryher. Occasionally she escapes with her lover; more often,she dies a suicide, or dies of shame,or dies protecting her younggentleman. Although the melodramaticand titillatingaspects of this plot are evi- dent, it is specificallythe implied or articulatedcriticism of the institution of slaverythat makes the "tragicoctoroon" situationso interesting. The octoroon,by her beauty,by her gentilityand by her particularvul- nerabilityto sexual outrage,offered to pre-CivilWar Northernaudiences, accustomedto idealized and sentimentalizedheroines, a perfectobject for tearfulsympathy combined with moral indignation. To twentieth-centuryliterary historians, the attack on slaverydirected by the creatorsof the "tragic octoroon" appears thin, unrealistic and irrelevant.Modern criticspoint out that the octoroon situation,while possible,was hardlygeneral and that,while enforcedconcubinage was a Southern reality,it was hardly the paramount evil of slavery.Further, the tendencyof antislaveryauthors to see the plightof the slave in terms of the octoroonrather than in termsof the full-bloodedblack has been seen as an indication of racial prejudice. Bone, for example, writes, "Such novels . . . contain mulatto characters for whom the reader's sympathiesare aroused less because theyare colored than because they are nearlywhite." Gloster describesthe antislaverywriters as "sympathetictoward the Negro-whitehybrid because of his possessionof Caucasian blood, which theyoften consider a factorthat automaticallymade this characterthe superiorof the darkerNegro and thereforea more pitiable individual." SterlingBrown describesthe octoroon as "a concession,unconscious perhaps, to race snobbishnesseven among abolitionists."2 Certainly,the strategyof the octoroon plot was to win sympathyfor the antislaverycause by displayinga cultivated,"white" sensibilitythreat- ened by, and respondingto, a "black" situation. It was the octoroon's "white" characteristicswhich made her pathetic to the white audience- and, consequently,the writersof "tragicoctoroon" storieshave generally been accused of makingtheir attack not on the institutionof Negro slavery,but only on certainparticular and incidental injusticesarising from the institutionof slavery. Southern apologists have interpretedthe "tragic octoroon" figureas corroboratingtheir own theoriesof white superiority,insisting that only slaves of mixed blood were ever unhappy and that the unhappiness of these was due solely to their white blood. Even such an indefatigable

2 Robert A. Bone, The Negro Novel in America (New Haven, 1958), pp. 22-23; Hugh M. Gloster, Negro Voices in American Fiction (Chapel Hill, N. C., 1948), pp. 12, 17; Sterling Brown, The Negro in American Fiction (Washington,D. C., 1937), p. 45. The "Tragic Octoroon" 65 romanticizerof slaveryas Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworthwas able to present the pathos of the "tragicoctoroon" in Henny of Retribution.The tactic of the Southernapologists has been to concede the possibilityof the octo- room situation,but to dismiss the octoroon figure,whether female and tragic or male and heroic, as being unrepresentativeof "the happy-go- lucky,ignorant, coon-hunting, fun-loving field hand who, more than any other class of slave, typifiedthe great mass of black men throughoutthe South." 3 The tendencyof modern pro-Negrocommentators has been to judge the writersof "tragicoctoroon" storieson the groundsof the validityor comprehensivenessof the picture they painted of the Negro in slavery; on thesegrounds, naturally, the octoroon plot has been found wanting. This judgment,though a just one as far as it goes, has had one unfortu- nate result: the effectivenessof the conventionaloctoroon as part of the antislaveryarsenal has been belittled.In reactionto the Southernreading of the "tragic octoroon" as a corroborationof Southern race theories, Northerncritics have dismissedher and have accused her creatorsof being racist snobs. It is interestingthat when SterlingBrown, a Negro critic, attacksthe tragicoctoroon as evidence of racial snobbery,he writes: "As one critic says: 'This was an indirect admission that a white man in chainswas morepitiful to behold than the Africansimilarly placed. Their most impassionedplea was in behalf of a person little resemblingtheir swarthyproteges....' " 4The "one critic"he is quoting is J. H. Nelson, an extremeSouthern apologist, and the quotation comes fromthe same book as does the "fun-loving,coon-hunting" passage quoted above. The charge-that the abolitionistauthor's motive amounts to no more than a concession to racism-fails to take into account the overriding and avowed purpose of the abolitionist author, the propagandisticin- tention.What is particularlyinteresting about the "tragicoctoroon" plot is that it revealed the point at which the imaginationand sympathyof the pre-CivilWar Northernpublic could be won forthe antislaverycause; this is preciselywhat has been obscuredby the oversimplifiedand unfair view that the octoroon'sappeal was based purely upon racial hypocrisy in author and audience. Specifically,it should be recognized that the appeal of the "tragic octoroon" situation was not based primarilyupon a racially snobbish feelingthat a white person in chains was more patheticthan a black one. Rather,the plight of the octoroonevoked a number of widely differing, though related,responses from Northern audiences.

3 J. H. Nelson, The Negro Character in American Fiction (Lawrence, Kans., 1926), pp. 83-84. 4 Brown, P. 45. 66 American Quarterly

First,the "tragicoctoroon" situation flattered the Northernaudience in its sense of self-righteousness,confirming its belief in the moral inferi- orityof the South. The octoroon,to the North,represented not merely the product of the incidental sin of the individual sinner,but rather what mightbe called the resultof cumulativeinstitutional sin, since the octoroon was the product of four generationsof illicit, enforcedmisce- genation made possible by the slaverysystem. The veryexistence of the octoroon convictedthe slaveholderof prostitutinghis slaves and of sell- ing his own childrenfor profit.Thus, the choice of the octoroon rather than of the full-bloodedblack to dramatizethe sufferingof the slave not onlyemphasized the pathosof the slave's conditionbut, more importantly, emphasized the repeated pattern of guilt of the Southern slaveholder. The whiterthe slave, the more undeniablywas the slaveholderguilty of violating the terms of the stewardshipwhich apologists postulated in justifyingslavery. The octoroonbecame the visible signof an incremental sin,the rootsof whichcould be seen by Northernaudiences as particularly and pervasivelySouthern. If the "tragic octoroon" plot passed lightly over the sufferingof the black fieldhand, it neverthelessmade up forthis deficiencyby the intensityof its condemnationof his white master.Seen in this light, it might be said that the pre-CivilWar popularityof the "tragic octoroon" foreshadowedthe North's post-CivilWar eagernessto punish the formerslaveholder and its relative reluctance to help the formerslave. The accusationsagainst the Southernslaveholder implicit in the plot of the "tragic octoroon" were of major significancein the propaganda war carried on between abolitionist and proslaverywriters. Proslavery writers,finding the Yankee assumptionof moral superiorityunbearable, replied to abolitionistpictures of the horrorsof life in the field hands' quarters with pictures of the horrorsof life in Northern mill towns. While such "you're anotherl"arguments are hardlyacceptable as defenses of slaveryon the rational level, they might have been a more valuable counter-propagandadevice if it were not for the availabilityto the abo- litionistsof the purely Southern"tragic octoroon" situation. Certainly,one of the strongmotives to which the abolitionistsappealed in theirattempt to win convertswas the motive of self-righteousness.In the octoroon,the antislaverypropagandists had an appeal to thisNorthern sense of superiormorality that could not so easily be met by an admoni- tion to "put thine own house in order." While little childrenup in the Northern cotton mills might slave themselvesinto pathetically early graves,the Northernmill owner never sold his own daughtersinto a life of shame, as was clearly the custom down in the Southern cotton fields. The chargeof sexual loosenesswas a seriousone in that period; not only The "Tragic Octoroon" 67 in fiction,but in their pamphlets and exhortations,the abolitionists broughtthat charge again and again-and everylight-skinned slave was tangible evidence for the prosecution.Wendell Phillips, for example, called the South "One great brothel,where half a million women are floggedto prostitution,"and George Bourne spoke of the South as a "vast haremwhere men-stealers may prowl,corrupt, and destroy." Anotherparticular appeal, apart fromthe moral, made by the "tragic octoroon"results from the way in which the octoroonsituation imagina- tivelyinvolves the audience in the tragedyof the heroine. Central to the stereotypedplot is the element of reversalwhereby the heroine is suddenly reduced, by a legalism, against all evidence of the senses, from aristocratic,pampered white heiress to Negro slave-from richesto worse than rags.This, of course,is the stuffof nightmare,but a nightmarewith particular significancefor the nineteenth-centuryAmerican whose own familyhistory might very likely be so obscuredby immigrationand migra- tion, by settlementand resettlement,that any detailed knowledgeof the blood lines of great-grandparentscould well be unavailable. The presentationof the perils faced by the octorooncan be seen, then, on the verysimplest and mostnaive level, as a sortof scare tactic: how do you know theywon't be comingafter you next? Even in those storieswhich cannot be said to make this simple appeal, storiesin which the octoroon is already aware of her mixed blood, the elementof reversalserved to involve the audience in the tragedyof the heroine.On the imaginativelevel, at least, each witnessto the octoroon's tragedywas threatenedby a similarfate, by the sudden reversalof fortune thatwas so much a part of theAmerican experience, and the ironicunder- side of the Americandream. The particulardiscovery which precipitates the fall of the helpless young female,with her fine and tastefulclothes, her culturedspeech, her garden full of flowers,was still the same sort of discoverywhich threatenedto destroythe middle-classyoung white lady of the audience: her fatheris suddenly bankrupt; her fatherhas died, leaving mountainous debts. In an age when women of the middle class were nearly as dependent upon the head of the household as the poor octoroonwas upon her master-father,the antislaverypropagandist could draw upon the audience's own dread of the life theywould face if the bank failed,the tariffwere defeated,the speculationfizzled. Expressed this way, it becomes clear that the octoroon permits the audience to identifywith her, not merelyon the superficiallevel of her color, but more profoundlyin termsof the radical reversal of fortune she has suffered-bothmodes of identificationdenied, in any case, to the more representative,but less imaginativelyavailable figureof the black slave. 68 American Quarterly

Another relativelyconstant element in the octoroon situation is the relationshipof the octoroon to the major villain of the plot, her lustful pursuer.Though occasionallyidentified as a gentleman,most oftenhe is an overseer,a slave traderor a parvenu plantation owner. Typically,he is coarse, ill-bred and crudely-spoken.Most interesting,he is often a Yankee. This characterfirst appeared as Jonathan Snapdragon in Hil- dreth'sThe Slave (1836), the novel in which the "tragicoctoroon" made her firstappearance. A particularlypopular versionof the characterwas McCloskeyin Dion Boucicault's verysuccessful play, The Octoroon,but he achieved his apotheosis,of course, as Simon Legree in Uncle Tom's Cabin. This characterhas been criticallyperceived as a sop to Southernaudi- ences, intended to mitigatethe severityof the indictmentmade of the Southernslave ownerby the octoroonsituation. The Yankee becomesthe sadisticand lecherousagent of evil, while the aristocratis oftenpresented as entirelyinnocent of the grossacts perpetratedin his name by the brutal New Englander. Certainly,there is truth in this interpretationof the Yankee overseer,since many of the antislaverywriters were, as late as the 1850s, still hoping for a reconciliationbetween North and South, and to make the overseerexplicitly a Yankee is to acknowledgethat the guilt of exploitingslaves was not exclusivelySouthern. However,while the use of the Yankee overseermay have been intended, in part, to soothe the Southernreader, it cannot be dismissedmerely as a detail which had no propaganda effecton the Northernaudience. On the verysimplest level, to identifythe meanest,most immoral, most black- hearted sinner in the whole book as a Yankee is to say that the moral superiorityof Northernersis shared only by antislaveryNortherners: a Yankee who condones and collaborates with Southern slaveryis even worse than a slave owner; he is a regular Simon Legree. On another level, the conventionaloverseer, Yankee or not, functions to presentthe evils of slaveryas resultingfrom the excesses of an individual, unlike the octoroon herself,who functionsto representthe sins of slavery as particularlyinstitutional. To understand this apparent contradictionin motivesbetween the functionof the overseerand that of the octoroon,we must firstrecognize that popular audiences in the 1840s and 1850s enjoyed and were accustomedto aristocraticand senti- mentalizedheroes and heroines,and the conventionalSouthern Gentle- man and his Lady of popular fictionwere probably the closest native approximationswe had to that ideal. Further,many of the writersof antislaveryfiction were themselvessentimentally wedded to the romantic image of the old South by emotionsnot verydifferent from those which promptedtheir sympathy for the Negro slave. The "Tragic Octoroon" 69

The point of the introductionof the villainous overseerwas to show that even the happy slave of the kindly master,or worse, the idealized octoroon daughter of an honorable (if sinful) father,can overnightbe betrayedinto the clutches of a McCloskey. The popular image of the SouthernGentleman as a sentimentalized,aristocratic figure was used by the proslaveryside in its defenseagainst abolitionistcharges; the docu- mented charges of ill-usage of slaves brought by abolitionistswere dis- missed as wholly unrepresentativeexcesses of a few uncouth individu- als. The effectof the overseerfigure in the octoroonplot, then,is to point out that so long as slaves are propertywhich can be sold or attached for debt,even the stereotypicnoble, kindlymaster of pro-Southernliterature would be powerlessto protecthis slaves-even his slave daughters-from suddenlyfalling into the hands of the worst slave-driver.The image of the overseerserves to permitthe Americanpublic to retainits beau ideal, while at the same time it demonstratesthat this beau ideal is irrelevant to the moral question of the institutionof slavery. Anotheraspect of the overseer-octoroonrelationship not criticallycom- mentedupon is that in addition to representinga racial conflict,it rep- resentsin certainworks a conflictof class and regional attitudes.The conflict,of course,is not merelybetween the overseerand the octoroon,but between parvenu and aristocrat,between commonerand landed gentleman, betweenefficiency expert and dreamer.The octoroon is merelythe prize for which they struggle.That she was prized, it is suggested,was because of her seven-eighthswhite aristocratic blood which had made her unattainableuntil she became a slave at the death of her father.It was the single drop of black blood that made the tragic octoroon available; it was the sevendrops of blue blood thatmade her desirable.Thus, in the fictionof the tragicoctoroon, the Yankee figuregloats over the possession of his intended victim as a victoryover her father.By possessingthe aristocrat'sdaughter, the Yankee achievesa triumphto which her beauty and his lust seem almost irrelevant. Seen as an expressionof regional conflict,the Legree-McCloskeyfigure is much more complicatedand contradictorythan is suggestedby the con- ventionalreading of him as a concessionto the South. On one hand, it must have seemed to Northernaudiences that the Yankee overseerem- bodied many of the characteristicsthat such audiences valued. He was keen, assertive,a go-getter.He was in the South to put on a sound basis an economic establishmentthe Southernerhimself was unable to make pay. E. J. Stearns,himself a transplantedYankee and violent defenderof slavery,says in Notes on Uncle Tom's Cabin: 70 American Quarterly

Mrs. Stowe has no good opinion of this class of persons[Yankee Over- seers], for she tells us . . . that they are "proverbially, the hardest mastersof slaves." This is, no doubt, true; but it does not follow that theyare, therefore,"renegade sons". . . of New England. On the con- trary,it is because they are genuine Yankees, that they are so hard masters:they have been accustomedto see men do a day's work,-they have done it themselves-and they cannot understandhow the negro can do only a half or a thirdof one.5 In comparisonwith the Southernplantation lord, the Yankee stood for democratic,that is to say native, institutions,while the Southernerrep- resented an aristocraticand European ideal. Further,the Yankee, in his efficiency,stood for the nineteenthcentury and progress,while the Southernerrepresented some feudal, Sir Walter Scott past. On the otherhand, the Yankee overseermust have uncomfortablysug- gestedthe hard-handed,pushy, shrewd-dealing Yankee entrepreneurwho by the mid-centurywas breaking down many of the old barriersof the genteelpast and establishingin the North an illiberal,vulgar and power- ful commercialclass. Regarded in this light, the Yankee in the South appears as a sinisterprecursor of Mark Twain's ConnecticutYankee at King Arthur'sCourt. This double vision of the Yankee reveals itselfmost fully in Bouci- cault's Octoroon,where we have the evil Yankee, McCloskey,opposed by the heroic Yankee, Salem Scudder, who loves Zoe and wishes to marry her and who, in the best literarytradition, tinkers with new-fangled gadgets,one of which,the camera,providentially proves McCloskey guilty of murder. It may be said that the issue that divides the villainous Yankee fromthe heroic and benevolentone is the fate each proposes for the tragicoctoroon. To sum up, then, the popularityof the tragic octoroon characterin pre-CivilWar antislaveryfiction cannot be explained by suggestingshe was simplythe nearestthing to a Negro that Northernauthors and audiences could wax sentimentalabout. The attack on the slaverysystem mounted by the creatorsof the tragic octoroon was specificallydirected toward certain sins implicit in that institution,was particularlyappro- priate to the audience which it was intended to move and was firmly based on the regional attitudesand moral values of that audience.

5 E.J. Stearns, Notes on Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853), pp. 141-42.