Clotel, or the President's Daughter

Clotel, or the President's Daughter

William Wells Brown’s first novel, Clotel, published in 1853, is considered by most scholars to be the first novel published by an African American. The novel is based on the belief, current at the time, that Thomas Jefferson had fathered an illegitimate mulatto daughter with Sally Hemings. In Brown’s novel, the supposed mistress of the President is a woman named Currer. The novel follows the lives of Currer and her two daughters: Althesa and Clotel. Currer and Althesa are sold to the notorious slave trader Dick Walker, and Clotel is rescued by her “white” savior, Horatio Green, but the lives of all three women end in tragedy. So on a basic level, the novel is a powerful reminder of the horrifying injustices experienced by African-Americans during slavery. But the novel is also a searing indictment of American society and the American ideal writ large. Brown begins with the implicit idea that Thomas Jefferson himself, the author of the Declaration of American Independence, was also a slave owner and quite indifferent to the humiliations his slaves surely experienced; but Brown makes sure that we as the reader experience these humiliations first-hand through the lives of Currer, Althesa and Clotel. In addition, Brown masterfully weaves together various anecdotes, poetry, folk songs and ditties, vignettes of slave life, and even newspaper accounts into the novel, in order to promote an abolitionist agenda. By the novel’s end, we can no longer ignore the debasement and recurring victimization of these three black women under slavery. The pain of these women has become our pain. We are now ready to join with all those who are fighting for the rights of African-Americans.