Clotel

Currer is the mother of Clotel and Althesa. She is one of the “class of slaves who are permitted to hire their time of their owners” (46). Brown writes that “[t]hese are mulatto women, or quadroons, as they are familiarly known, and are distinguished for their fascinating beauty” (46). Currer, the slave of John Graves of Richmond, hires her time as a housekeeper for Thomas Jefferson, until he leaves for Washington, at which time she becomes a laundress. Currer brings “her daughters up as ladies” (47), giving them little work, and is able to raise them in “comparative luxury” (47). She defies Virginia law by hiring a freed slave to teach Clotel and Althesa to read and write. She also brings her daughter to balls in order to “to attract attention” (47) for them. When Clotel attracts Horatio’s attention, Currer is delighted, and she looks forward “to the time when she should see her daughter emancipated and free” (48).

After Clotel is sold to Horatio, Currer and Althesa are sent to the New Orleans market. However, Currer does not make it to New Orleans: while they port at Natchez, she is sold to a pastor named Mr. Peck. Currer pleads with Mr. Peck to purchase Althesa, too, but Mr. Peck refuses. Clotel’s husband Horatio insists he cannot afford to purchase her because he is not yet in possession of his inheritance. Althesa’s husband Henry attempts to purchase her, but Mr. Peck refuses on the grounds that he cannot bare to lose his housekeeper. After Mr. Peck’s death, Georgiana frees her slaves; she is saddened when Currer dies of yellow fever, “for she had not only become much attached to her, but had heard with painful interest the story of her wrongs” (138) and had intended to send her to be with Althesa in New Orleans.

Throughout Clotel, Brown offers several examples of mothers being separated from their children. Currer, Clotel, and Althesa’s loss is made more devastating to readers in that we follow all three of their stories, though none know what happens to the others. Currer’s daughters are distraught at their separation from her and desperately attempt to be reunited with her. In her story, Brown depicts the suffering families endure when they are torn from each other, never to see each other again.

Althesa, Currer’s younger daughter and Clotel’s sister, is 14 when the novel begins. After Horatio purchases Clotel, Althesa and Currer are brought by the slave trader Walker to a steamboat headed to New Orleans. However, before they reach New Orleans, Currer is purchased by Mr. Peck in Natchez. Althesa is devastated by the loss of her mother.

Althesa is bought by a man named Mr. Crawford, who, originally from Vermont, is against slavery but concedes to his wife’s request for a maid. Once living with the Crawfords in New Orleans, Althesa draws the attention of Mr. Crawford’s friend Henry, who is captivated by her beauty and soon falls in love with her. Althesa, a “friendless and injured child of sorrow” (92), begins to love him, too. Henry buys her from the Crawfords and marries her, vowing never to own any slaves. Althesa, with Henry’s help, obtains information about her mother’s whereabouts but is unable to purchase her because Mr. Peck refuses to sell her.

Althesa is upset to learn that her servant, Salome, is a free white woman who was kidnapped into slavery, and she pleads with Henry to help free her. Althesa contributes to the $1,000 fee required for Salome to obtain her freedom. Later, she expresses pride in Henry for his passionate criticisms of slavery.

Henry and Althesa Morton die during a yellow fever epidemic, leaving their two daughters in the care of Henry’s brother James, who is unaware that Althesa had been a slave. It is revealed that Henry and Althesa also kept from their daughters that Althesa was a slave, for they “knew nothing of the danger hanging over their heads” (174). After being brought to the New Orleans market, the two girls are each purchased by different men who intend to use them to fulfill their sexual desires, and each dies shortly after.

In his narrative, Brown writes of his feelings when he is separated from his mother and sister: “If he could only be assured of their being dead, he would have been comparatively happy; but he saw in imagination […] his sister in the hands of the slave-driver, compelled to submit to his cruelty, or, what was unutterably worse, his lust” (17-18). Readers who have followed Althesa’s story are asked to feel similarly devastated by her daughters’ fates after her death. Althesa has suffered the loss of her mother and sister; her daughters now suffer as she once did. Althesa and her family are further examples of the tragedy of family separations in the institution of slavery.

Reverend John Peck, a widow, is originally from Connecticut; at the time the novel takes place, he lives in Natchez, Mississippi, and has his own congregation and plantation of seventy slaves. Mr. Peck purchases Currer for a housekeeper when her steamboat docks in Natchez on the way to New Orleans. Currer asks him to also purchase Althesa, but Mr. Peck refuses, saying he has use only for one.

Mr. Peck serves as an example of a Christian slave owner who manipulates Scripture to ensure his slaves remain subservient. Brown describes him as “a man of some talent” (94) who “not only had a good education, but was a man of great eloquence” (94), Mr. Peck “quoted Scripture for almost everything he did” (94) and contributes money to “benevolent causes to which he took a fancy” (94). Though he treats his slaves “with a degree of kindness” (115), Mr. Peck is still “a most cruel master” (115). He believes slaves should be taught the Bible but does not believe the Bible offers any evidence of “man’s natural rights” (72); when Carlton asks how he reconciles slavery with the Declaration of Independence, Mr. Peck states that “[t]he Bible is older than the Declaration of Independence” (73). When his daughter Georgiana argues that slavery is inconsistent with the tenets of Christianity, Mr. Peck appears annoyed, telling her she is “an abolitionist” and that her “talk is fanaticism” (75). However, as he is “a most loving father” (94), he is “touched” (75) by her passion. Brown writes that despite their disagreement on the subject of slavery—Mr. Peck tells his daughter that he “understand[s] the Scriptures better” than she does (97) and that he “must be permitted to entertain my own views on this subject” (99)—Georgiana “exercised considerable influence over him” (94) and is actually “his superior and his teacher” (99).

Mr. Peck exhibits callousness toward the sufferings of his slaves. He refuses to purchase Althesa, forcing Currer to separate from her daughter. He also later refuses to sell Currer to Althesa, claiming “that she was such a good housekeeper that he could not spare her” (93). Georgiana tells Carlton that her father’s slave Harry was visiting his wife in town and returned too late; after being flogged by Huckelby, he escaped to the woods, and upon being captured by and escaping from the dogs, he was shot and killed by Mr. Peck, who said he intended to wound him. Mr. Peck seems aware of the vileness of this incident: when Carlton notes that he had seen bloodhounds at Jones’s plantation, Georgiana asks if they were like the dogs who hunted Harry. Peck offers a “short reply” and appears “anxious to change the conversation to something else” (114).

Mr. Peck’s teaching the slaves Christianity is not for the slaves’ own sake; Georgiana finds Snyder’s sermons to the slaves as “something intended to make them better satisfied with their condition, and more valuable as pieces of property” (133). Upon learning how Jones’s slaves are ignorant of Scripture, rather than feel sympathy, he is “amused” (113), for his point, that “Christians like himself should be slave-holders” (113), has been, in his eyes, proven true.

Mr. Peck demonstrates how even a slave owner who “fed and clothes his house servants well” (115) is still a slave owner. His slaves do not grieve upon his death: in fact, they gather to sing songs celebrating that their “blood will awhile cease to flow” (125) and that he will no longer “send our wives to Tennessee” (126).

Horatio Green is a wealthy young man who meets Clotel at a party when she is sixteen years old. Taken by her beauty, he visits Clotel at her home frequently and ultimately purchases her for $1500 with the evident intention of marrying her and making her free. He moves with Clotel to a house near Richmond. The house is the epitome of “rural beauty” (64), boasting lush trees and flowers that outshine “[t]he tasteful hand of art” (64).

When Clotel expresses the desire to purchase her mother, Horatio tells her he is “unable, owing to the fact that he had to come into possession of his share of property” (65); he promises to do so when he can. This never occurs, however, for Horatio, who begins to spend more time with friends, develops political aspirations and soon becomes romantically involved with the daughter of a political connection. Horatio is lured by the “great worldly advantages” (66) possible from this relationship; Brown writes that his “vanity” is “excited” (66). Though the woman, Gertrude, is not as beautiful as Clotel, he is tempted by “variety in love” (66), which finds him “weakened in moral principle” (66). He is also “unfettered by the laws of the land” (66), which do not recognize his marriage to Clotel.

Horatio and Gertrude become engaged, and Horatio attempts to explain to Clotel that he is marrying her out of “necessity of circumstances” (88). Horatio is genuinely sorrowful upon leaving Clotel, who has “never spoken to him but in love and blessing” (89); upon hearing she will not see him again, he “wept like a child” (89), telling her “he still loved her better than all the world” (89) and that “she would ever be his real wife” (89). He regrets leaving her for Gertrude but fears “that blame, disgrace, and duels with angry relatives” (89) will follow him if he changes his mind. He manages to keep Clotel and his daughter Mary a secret from Gertrude until they happen to drive by Clotel’s cottage one day, and Gertrude makes a comment on Mary’s beauty. When he doesn’t want to return that way, Gertrude makes inquiries and learns of his past with Clotel. Horatio sends child support to Clotel, with “earnest pleadings that she would consent to see him again” (91), but she does not reply.

Horatio is “[d]efeated in politics” (120) and “forsaken in love by his wife” (120); he loses “all principle of honour” (120) and turns to alcohol to ease his troubles. When his wife and father-in-law demand that Clotel be sold out of state, he at first refuses. However, when she threatens to leave him, he relents. His wife, to humiliate him, brings Mary to work in their home, and Horatio does not intervene when she forces Mary to “perform labour, which […] would have been thought too hard for one much older” (120). Suffering “deepest humiliation” (130) as Mary is tormented, he suggests they send her away, “for every time he beheld her countenance it reminded him of the happy days he had spent with Clotel” (130). Mrs. Green ceases her harsh treatment of Mary when she sees “that Horatio Green had lost all feeling for his child” (188).

Horatio’s incompetence and moral weakness lead not only to his own unhappiness but to the unhappiness of those he loves. Though he does, while visiting Mary in prison, confess to her that he hopes George finds freedom and that he worries she will “suffer in his stead” (202), once again, he fails to intervene, leaving the fate of his daughter in the hands of the law that subordinates her. His inability to stand up to social convention and remain with Clotel, as well as his inability to stand up to his wife, results in his perpetuating a cruel and unjust system.

Georgiana is Mr. Peck’s nineteen-year-old daughter. Educated in Connecticut, she has “had the opportunity of contrasting the spirit of Christianity and liberty in New England with that of slavery in her native state” (74), and she feels sympathy for the slaves. Upon readers’ first meeting her, she contradicts her father’s defense of slavery, explaining, “[A]lthough I am a native of the South, I am by education and sympathy a Northerner” (74).

Georgiana contrasts with Mr. Peck in that she embodies “Christianity in its true light” (75) and desires to “set the example” (135) for other Christian slaveholders. Throughout Clotel, she condemns Christians who support slavery, asking, “Can that then be right, be well doing—can that obey God’s behest, which makes man a slave?” (75). She succeeds in converting Carlton to Christianity, after which she is careful to instruct him that “[t]he Christian religion is opposed to slaveholding in its spirit and its principles” (95). She believes Christians should be moved by “the wail of the mother as she surrenders her only child to the grasp of the ruthless kidnapper” (96). She asserts to her father that Christ’s “whole life was a living testimony against slavery and all that it inculcates” (99). She draws attention not only to the cruelty of slavery but also the hypocrisy: after Carlton returns from Jones’s with tales of the slaves’ religious ignorance, she recites a poem about how Christians “[s]end Bibles to the heathen” (113) but keep it from their slaves, whom they flog for learning to read.

Georgiana is “[m]odest and self-possessed, with a voice of great sweetness, and a most winning manner” (100). After Carlton’s conversion, Georgiana begs her father to cease telling him that the Bible condones slavery, for “[t]he infidel watches the religious world” (98) and is disillusioned to find that religious leaders “are engaged in this awful business” (98). When her father responds that he “must be permitted to entertain my own views on this subject” (99), Georgiana clarifies that she does not want “to teach” or “dictate” to her father (99); rather, she simply asks that not “allude to the Bible as sanctioning slavery, when speaking with Mr. Carlton” (99). In this way, Georgiana shows herself to be perceptive and shrewd: despite her powerlessness as a young, unmarried woman in the 19th-century South, she is outspoken and able to hold her own in political conversations. However, by humbling herself and minimizing her request, she stops short of appearing impertinent. Her ability to navigate 19th-century feminine ideals helps her win her father’s sympathy.

Georgiana’s awareness of the limits of her power is evident when Mr. Peck dies. Realizing that “both law and public opinion in the state were against any measure of emancipation that she might think of adopting” (132), she overcomes her nervousness—despite having attended women’s rights meetings, she still harbors reservations—and tells Carlton she wants to marry him. Together, Georgiana and Carlton prepare to emancipate the slaves by paying them for their labor so they can work toward freedom. Sensing that the Colonization Society, which sends freed slaves to Liberia, operates not with real concern for the slaves but with “hatred of the free coloured people” (158), she plans to send them to Ohio. Upon her death of consumption, she frees the slaves outright, inspiring many of the slaves to kneel “at the feet of their benefactress” (158).

Unlike her father, Georgiana recognizes the slaves’ humanity. For example, when Carlton worries that she is offended by the slaves’ celebrating her father’s death, Georgiana acknowledges that the slave, like any other person, yearns to be free: the desire for freedom “is the ethereal part of his nature, which oppression cannot reach; it is a torch lit up in his soul by the hand of Deity, and never meant to be extinguished by the hand of man” (127). She is also patient with Carlton, answering his questions about the purpose of the bloodhounds at Jones’s farm, the reason Sam can celebrate Mr. Pecks’ death one minute and behave solemnly and respectfully the next, and the argument against sending the freed slaves to Liberia. Georgiana is presented as a heroine, someone of staunch beliefs who stands up for the weak and the vulnerable. She leaves a powerful legacy, having not only bucked convention by freeing her father’s slaves but also influenced Carlton to walk in her footsteps after her death.

Miles Carlton, though a school friend of Mr. Peck, is significantly younger than he is, just over thirty years old at the start of the narrative. Carlton, described as “a disciple of Rousseau” (73) and “a free-thinker” (94), is theoretically against slavery, having studied “the rights of man” (73) and finding “no difference between white men and black men as it regards liberty” (73). Explaining to Mr. Peck, “[M]y conscience is my Bible” (74), he is “no great admirer of either the Bible or slavery” (74). A “sceptic” (75), Carlton’s first positive observation of Christianity is of Georgiana’s passionate insistence that “[t]rue Christian love” (75) includes people of all colors: at these words, Carlton “for the first time” (75) views “Christianity in its true light” (75). Growing more enamored of Georgiana, Carlton eventually embraces Christianity. Though he had treated Christianity “with perfect indifference” (95), he is vulnerable to Georgiana’s “innocent and persuasive manner” (95) and to her heartfelt denunciations of slavery on Christian grounds.

Carlton is against slavery but often relies on Georgiana to explain the nuances of its injustice. When he wonders why he saw bloodhounds at Jones’s farm, Georgiana explains to him that their purpose is to capture escaped slaves. When Carlton suggests the slaves are “ungrateful” for not showing grief at Mr. Peck’s death, Georgiana tells him that “the kindness meted out to blacks would be unkindness if given to whites” (124). At his suggestion that they send Mr. Peck’s freed slaves to Liberia, Georgiana explains that America is “their native land” (134) and that the slave has “cleared up the lands, built towns, and enriched the soil with his blood and tears” (134).

Carlton’s naiveté appears not only in his lack of understanding of slavery but also in matters of love. He admires Georgiana’s beauty and respects her for being “his religious teacher” (123); soon he finds that in her presence he feels “a shortness of breath, a palpitating of the heart, a kind of dizziness of the head; but he knew not its cause” (123). After Mr. Peck’s death, Carlton hesitates to express his love for Georgiana; when Georgiana expresses her desire to marry him, he sheds “grateful tears” (133).

Carlton’s marrying Georgiana enables Georgiana to free her father’s slaves. They also teach them true Scripture. At Georgiana’s death, Carlton grieves the loss of the “lamp to his feet” (159) and the “light to his path” (159). Georgiana had been the person who had “converted him from infidelity to Christianity” (159); before her lessons, he “had looked upon the Negro as an ill-treated distant link of the human family” (159). Brown depicts Carlton as a decent and thoughtful man who is well meaning and open-minded, who is willing to accept his weaknesses and to become a better person. In Carlton, Brown creates a character who offers hope that love and reason may improve society’s ills.

Henry Morton is a doctor from Vermont who meets Althesa when he moves to New Orleans. Boarding with his friend Mr. Crawford, who is her master, he is “unprepared to behold with composure a beautiful young white girl of fifteen in the degraded position of a chattel slave” (92). He is horrified to hear the story of how Crawford bargained with the trader to buy her for a lower price. He soon falls in love with her, after which he purchases and marries her. Though he grows a lucrative practice, he never owns a slave. He also helps Althesa find Currer with the intent to purchase her, though Mr. Peck refuses to sell her. When his and Althesa’s daughters are 12, he sends them to the North to be educated and to gain “that refinement that young ladies cannot obtain in the Slave States” (151).

Henry not only keeps his promise never to own a slave: he also speaks out against slavery, and he “often made himself obnoxious at parties” (151). On one such occasion, he delivers a long speech against slavery in which he warns that slavery “would be the ruin of the Union” (151). He believes that it is not enough for America to profess to stand for freedom, for “our acts will be scrutinized by the people of other countries” (151). He states that America, whose “subject has no rights, social, political, or personal” (152), is “despotic” (151) and “losing is character” (152). He also helps Althesa regain Salome’s freedom, making inquiries into her situation and confronting her master with her case.

When Henry and Althesa die in a yellow fever epidemic, their daughters Ellen and Jane are considered slaves, for “the children follow the condition of the mother” (173). Brown writes that Henry would have been horrified to learn that “she whom he thought to be his wife was, in fact, nothing more than his slave” (173).

Henry fights sincerely for the abolitionist cause. He marries Althesa and remains with her until their deaths, treating her as an equal. Believing every man endowed with “right[s] which God and nature gave him” (152), he could not imagine that his daughters would end up enslaved. Henry is principled and strong, refusing to bow to convention or to be quiet about his beliefs. In this way, he serves as a contrast to Horatio Green.