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A shocking conjecture
in American history may have been proven to be a fact by means of DNA
analysis on November in 1998, conducted by Dr. Eugene A. Foster, a former
professor of pathology at the University
of Virginia. The
alleged affair between Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States,
and his slave, Sally Hemings, may have been a historical fact. The fact that
a female slave named Sally Hemings spent her life in Thomas Jefferson’s
plantation and gave birth to his children has been deleted from the official
history of the United
States, which has injured the dignity of
members of the Hemings family. The 1998 DNA results corrected this historical
omission.
However, the dignity and identity of the Hemings family were restored not
only by science, but also by literature. While the disciplines of history and
science are required to clarify facts with evidence or through
experimentation, the role of literature is to describe complex human
emotions. African American literature restores the dignity and identity of
the Hemings family, who have been historically marginalized, through ethnic
consciousness and pride and by listening to ancestral black voices that are
unrecorded in the official history.
The
aim of this dissertation is to examine how the Sally Hemings story has been
depicted in African American literature and how African American writers have
depicted race, gender, and identity of Sally Hemings and her descendants in
their novels.
The
first chapter of this dissertation will trace the historical context of the
Jefferson-Hemings scandal. For roughly 200 years, from the expose of James T.
Callender to the 1998 DNA results, the depiction of this scandal were founded
on racism, which resulted in the marginalization of the Hemings family. I
discuss why African American writers engaged themselves in resurrections of
the Hemings family’s identity in their novels.
Chapter
Two of my study analyzes Barbara Chase-Riboud’s Sally Hemings as “a
romantic novel,” and shows its gothic use of the elements of race and gender.
I first investigate the gothic elements created by American racial regulation
by diagnosing the hybrid protagonist’s body in the novel, which has relevance
to miscegenation. Then, considering the rhetoric of patriarchy, I examine how
the oppression of white women under patriarchy is similar to that of black
women under slavery. I do this through an examination of representations of
the white women’s bodies, and demonstrate the existence of “another gothic
element” in the novel.
In
Chapter Three, reading Sally Hemings as “a neo-slave narrative,” I
examine how the identity of Sally Hemings as a black woman is described. Sally
Hemings is both a neo-slave narrative and a romantic novel. Although “a
romantic novel” and “a neo-slave narrative” follow very different literary
conventions, Barbara Chase-Riboud combines them excellently. Insofar as this
novel has these two natures, there must be an ambivalence
in the novel. The ambivalence is apparent in the depiction of the
protagonist. Through observation of this ambivalence, I explore how Barbara
Chase-Riboud restores the identity of Sally Hemings as a black woman.
Chapter
Four is devoted to William Wells Brown’s Clotel; or, The President’s
Daughter. Clotel, published in England in 1853, was the first
work where the Sally Hemings story was used as the theme of a novel. It was
also the first published novel by an African American. Brown paid more
attention to “the Jefferson scandal” than to
“the Sally Hemings story.” The reason for this may be obvious: “the Jefferson scandal” could serve the abolitionist cause.
In this chapter, I discuss the novel’s synthesis of the tragic mulatta
tradition with the Jefferson scandal.
Chapter
Five investigates Barbara Chase-Riboud’s 1994 novel, The President
Daughter from the perspective of racial politics. This novel was written
as a sequel to Sally Hemings. The protagonist is Harriet Hemings, Sally’s
daughter, who passed for white after leaving Monticello. In this novel, she begins her
life as a white woman in Philadelphia.
I believe that the tragic mulatta depicted here is dissimilar to Clotel’s
character. Reading Harriet Hemings as “a tragic mulatta” in the passing
novel, I consider what kind of tragedy we can discover in The President’s
Daughter.
Chapter
Six explores the representation of gender in The President’s Daughter.
In Chapter Two, I have argued that Barbara Chase-Riboud took a feminist
position in Sally Hemings by foregrounding the female body as
imprisoned by patriarchal culture. Put another way, the author gave attention
to the issue of gender beyond color and miscegenation. Therefore,
Chase-Riboud’s feminist position is likely to be reflected in The
President’s Daughter. Thus, I investigate Harriet Hemings’s sexuality
through the depiction of her body and soul in the novel.
In
Chapter Seven, I discuss Minnie Shumate Woodson’s The Sable Curtain,
published in 1987. The protagonist is Tom (Hemings) Woodson, the eldest son
of Sally Hemings, who was sent away from Monticello to the Woodson plantation
around 1803. Despite the claims of the Woodson oral history, no genetic link
was found between the male descendants of Tom Woodson and Thomas Jefferson.
Tom Woodson is the most mysterious character in the Sally Hemings story. The Sable
Curtain could not be commercially published, but the author undoubtedly
intended to restore the identity of Tom Woodson, as did Chase-Riboud. In this
sense, I assume that the novel should be read as one of African American
fictions founded upon the ancestral oral tradition. In this chapter, I trace
the life of Tom Woodson described in the novel, and explore how his identity
is depicted.
Although
literature, unlike history and science, does not have a direct connection to
reality, it represents the essence of human
emotions. In this respect, a historical fiction can complement history and
science. When there are vast class differences between lovers, it is not
unusual to tell the story only from the viewpoint of the lover of higher
birth. The Jefferson-Hemings scandal is the perfect example. Reconstructing
the story with the members of the Hemings family as central figures
revivifies Sally Hemings and her descendants; that is, deconstructs
discourses that have depicted Thomas Jefferson as the central figure. The
main objective of this dissertation is to examine the Sally Hemings story as
represented in African American literature with a focus on the depiction of
race, gender, and identity of Sally Hemings and her descendants. These
African American literary works have written Sally Hemings and her
descendants back into history as flesh-and-blood people.
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