Clotel: or, The President's Daughter

by William Wells Brown

Book Overview

The first novel published by an African American, Clotel takes up the story, in circulation at the time, that Thomas Jefferson fathered an illegitimate mulatto daughter who was sold into slavery. Powerfully reimagining this story, and weaving together a variety of contemporary source materials, Brown fills the novel with daring escapes and encounters, as well as searing depictions of the American slave trade. An innovative and challenging work of...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679783237
• ISBN13: 9780679783237
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: Penguin Random House LLC (No Starch)
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.52 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.2" x 8.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Great Novel

This is an excellent novel and one that would sure to have your mind pondering about the basis of the book ..."Or the Presidents Daughter" a must read to everyone... Truth is crucial.

Essential Reading

This book is essential reading for any student of African American literature. The birth of real African American literary tradition dates from 1863 when Wm. Wells Brown wrote "Clotel," the story of the hardships of a mulatto family. The book is available free in e-text form from Project Gutenberg. http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/2046

The Reality Hits Us ALL

This is a exemplary novel that also deals with the harsh realities of slavery. This novel distinctly tells a true story, which is relevant to ALL Americans (believe it or not. This is a must reader for ALL.

An exquisite piece of literature!

The genre of African-American fiction began in 1853 with the publication of this historical novel in England. Even though William Wells Brown, a fugitive slave from America, wrote four versions of this story, the first version was not published in the United States until 1969. The reason this novel was not introduced into American society until this time was because of its reference to the relationship Thomas Jefferson had with his slave, Sally Hemmings. The idea that Sally bore him children, which he sold as slaves, was enough to keep this novel out of the American public's eye forever! Still, this novel found its way here and in later versions, Jefferson's connection to Sally vanished all together. This novel centers on three main characters: Currer, a slave who was once Thomas Jefferson's housekeeper and mistress, and their two daughters, Clotel and Althesa.The separation of Currer and her two daughters in the beginning of the story provides the actual framework of this novel. Through this separation, Brown is able to create three separate story lines united by the institution of slavery.The first story line involves Currer's life as a concubine of Thomas Jefferson and later a slave to a Reverend John Peck. Through her life, Brown presents the hypocrisy of the slave owner owning another human being as well as some Christians' biblical approval of it. Brown uses the second story line of Clotel and her relationship with Horatio Green, to depict how vulnerable and hopeless life was for black women under slavery. Horatio adores Clotel so much that he provides her with a home of her own to raise their daughter, Mary. But Horatio desperately wants to further his political career and does so by marrying a white woman by the name of Gertrude. Feeling jealous and threatened by Clotel's presence, Gertrude sells Mary into slavery. The final story line involves the fate of Althesa. Like her sister, Althesa is a concubine to her master Henry Morton. But Morton later marries her and is a loving father to their two children. Even though Althesa experiences true love through marriage and was able to raise her children, the actual tragedy of her situation lies in what happens to her children. Through Althesa's story, Brown proves how her free rank in marriage did not grant freedom for her daughters, which continually shows slavery's disruption of the black family unit.CLOTEL, though considered melodramatic by some, is an exquisite piece of literature. Its importance is not only tied to the fact that it is the first published work of its kind in this genre, but gives readers a glimpse into the English language used by black people at that time. I think this novel was an excellent start for the genre of African American literature.

rediscovered classic, gets the treatment it deserves

This, reader, is an unvarnished narrative of one doomed by the laws of the Southern States to be a slave. It tells not only its own story of grief, but speaks of a thousand wrongs and woes beside, which never see the light; all the more bitter and dreadful, because no help can relieve, no sympathy can mitigate, and no hope can cheer. -William Wells Brown, Clotel, or The President's DaughterClotel would have historic interest simply by virtue of the fact that William Wells Brown appears to have been the first African American to write a novel. But it's not merely a literary curiosity; it is also an eminently readable and emotionally powerful, if forgivably melodramatic, portrait of the dehumanizing horrors of slave life in the Ante-bellum South. Brown, himself an escaped slave, tells the story of the slave Currer and her daughters, Clotel and Althesa, and of their attempts to escape from slavery. The central conceit of the story is that the unacknowledged father of the girls is Thomas Jefferson himself.There is an immediacy to the stories here--of slave auctions, of families being torn apart, of card games where humans are wagered and lost, of sickly slaves being purchased for the express purpose of resale for medical experimentation upon their imminent deaths, of suicides and of many more indignities and brutalities--which no textbook can adequately convey. Though the characters tend too much to the archetypal, Brown does put a human face on this most repellent of American tragedies. He also makes extensive use (so extensive that he has been accused, it seems unfairly, of plagiarism) of actual sermons, lectures, political pamphlets, newspaper advertisements, and the like, to give the book something of a docudrama effect.The Bedford Cultural Edition of the book, edited by Robert S. Levine, has extensive footnotes and a number of helpful essays on Brown and on the sources, even reproducing some of them verbatim. Overall, it gives the novel the kind of serious presentation and treatment which it deserves, but for obvious reasons has not received in the past. Brown's style is naturally a little bit dated and his passions are too distant for us to feel them immediately, but as you read the horrifying scenes of blacks being treated like chattel, you quickly come to share his moral outrage at this most shameful chapter in our history. GRADE : B