広島女学院大学　博士乙第5号

■氏　名（本籍）	石田　依子（山口県）いしだ　よりこ
■学位の種類	博士（文学）
■学位記の番号	乙第5号
■学位授与年月日	平成20年3月14日
■学位授与の要件	学位規則第4条第1項該当
■学位論文の題目	The Sally Hemings Story in African American　Literature: Race,Gender,and Identity of Sally Hemings and Her Descendants
■論文審査委員	主査　森あおい　　副査　吉田幸子　・　Ronald Klein　・　風呂本惇子（城西国際大学）論文審査結果の要旨（ＰＤＦ）　クリックしてご覧ください

●論文内容の要旨

　　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.