73 pages • 2 hours read
William Wells BrownClotel
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1853A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary: “The Poor Whites, South”
Carlton, the overseer Huckelby, and Snyder discuss slavery as they eat dinner in Huckelby’s house. Carlton asks Snyder whether he likes the South; Snyder replies that he prefers the North and that he has stayed in the South only for Mr. Peck’s sake. He says he speaks to “the poor whites during the week” (83) and to the slaves on Sundays.
Snyder describes the poor whites in the Sand Hill region, calling them “ignorant as horses” (83). He contrasts the Natchez area with New England, where school is free and nearly everyone is educated. He describes a family he visited in Sand Hill: the house, despite being “a low log-hut” (83), was “the best house in that locality” (83), and animals ran freely in the house among the nine children. The mother revealed that she and her family do not attend church. Snyder tells another story in which a woman was happy her son was bitten by a rattlesnake because, in his pain, he prayed to God. When Carlton asks why people live in this state of ignorance and squalor, Snyder names slavery as the cause, a statement Huckelby confirms.
When Carlton wonders why slaves don’t revolt, Snyder relates a story in which a slave stabbed his master and another white man, then attempted to escape, instigating a violent, chaotic altercation in which he ended up being shot and having his throat cut. Snyder says “[t]his chastisement was given because the Negro grumbled and found fault with his master for flogging his wife” (87).
Snyder tells Carlton that “no white man is respectable in these slave states who works for a living” (87) because “[n]o community can be prosperous, where honest labour is not honoured” (87). He believes that slavery “reflects discredit on industry” (87) and “is palpably hostile to individual rights” (87). Therefore, it “is the incubus that hangs over the Southern States” (87). Huckelby agrees that slavery should end “for the honour of our country” (87). He says he would not be an overseer but for the fact that he is “paid for it” (87).
Chapter 8 Summary: “The Separation”
Clotel is devastated to learn that Horatio and Gertrude are going to be married. She makes “a strong effort at composure” (88) but is unable to prevent sadness from overtaking her face. Despite her awareness of “his decreasing tenderness” (88), Clotel had never complained, and Horatio finds “the mute appeal of her heart-broken looks” (88) to be “more terrible than words” (88).
Horatio, “oppressed and ashamed” (88), speaks about “the necessity of circumstances” (88), and Clotel asks him not to apologize. He tells her he still loves her and that he hopes to see her frequently. As they stand by the gate, Clotel asks him for “a parting kiss” (89). When she tells him it would be a crime for them to meet again, Horatio breaks down in tears.
Clotel walks back toward the house, and Horatio wishes he could call off his engagement with Gertrude but fears his family’s reaction. As he looks at the cottage, he sees Clotel weeping by a magnolia tree, a vision that “haunted him for years” (90).
Though it was illegal in Virginia, Currer had enlisted the help of a freed slave to teach her daughters to read, and Clotel, after being separated from Currer and Althesa, turned to the comfort of Christianity. She worries that her telling Horatio they can’t see each other anymore will anger him and result in her being sold, but she would prefer to be “sold as a slave than to do wrong” (90).
A few months after they are married, Horatio and Gertrude drive past Clotel’s cottage, and Gertrude, on seeing Clotel and Mary, points out Mary’s beauty. She notices Horatio’s paleness and is suspicious when he does not want to drive by the house again. After inquiries in town, she learns the identities of Clotel and Mary and realizes their connection to Horatio. From this point, her manner toward Horatio becomes cold. Horatio sometimes contrasts this coldness with Clotel’s warmth.
Horatio sends financial support to Clotel for Mary and asks her if they can see each other; however, Clotel does not reply, reluctant to cause trouble in Gertrude’s household. She hopes Gertrude never knows of her existence.
The day Horatio and Gertrude had passed the house, Clotel had felt faint, and Mary had sprinkled water on her face to revive her. She was, as she was the night he had left, struck with thoughts of suicide, resisting only for her daughter’s sake.
Chapter 9 Summary: “The Man of Honour”
The man who bought Althesa, James Crawford, is from Vermont and is “opposed to the holding of slaves” (92); however, he purchased Althesa when his wife convinced him “it was no worse to own a slave than to hire one and pay the money to another” (92).
Crawford’s friend, Henry Morton, a doctor also from Vermont, visits the Crawfords and is taken by the “beautiful young white girl of fifteen in the degraded position of a chattel slave” (92). He is horrified to hear the story about how Crawford bought her. Henry falls in love with her and, when his feelings are reciprocated, he purchases her from the Crawfords and marries her within six months. Despite his building a successful practice, “with all his wealth he never would own a slave” (93).
Chapters 7-9 Analysis
Chapter 8 continues to establish Clotel as the ideal woman: she remains poised, deferential, and dignified even in the face of heartbreak. Brown writes that Clotel “had never complained” (88) at Horatio’s diminishing affections. She “begged him to spare apologies” (88), and she seeks “a parting kiss” (89)—showing that “she had the heart of a true woman” (89). She even seeks to protect Gertrude: she refrains from answering Horatio’s letters for fear of “bring[ing] sorrow into her household” (91). Clotel’s embodiment of the passive beautiful woman perfectly aligns with Victorian ideals of sentimental femininity and helps ensure sympathy from white readers.
Horatio’s leaving Clotel highlights the theme of sexual exploitation that runs throughout the novel. Horatio enjoys Clotel until a more favorable situation presents itself: citing “the necessity of circumstances” (88), Horatio leaves Clotel for a woman who can help him advance politically. Similarly, Currer, Clotel’s mother, bears Thomas Jefferson two children, only to be left behind when he goes to Washington. Brown himself is the son of a white man and his relation’s slave. Brown writes in Chapter 1 that slave owners’ having children with their slaves is “the best evidence of the degraded and immoral condition of the relation of master and slave” (44)—because slave women have no recourse, slave owners who have children with them take advantage of their own power. The suffering of slave women who are sexually exploited by their masters is noted as early as Brown’s narrative, in which he states that it would be better for his sister to “go down to the grave prematurely” (13) with “her honour untarnished” (13) than it would be “for her to be sold to sensual slaveholders” (13). Slave women, at the mercy of a power imbalance, are used as sexual objects and forgotten.
The weak-minded Horatio Green is contrasted in Chapter 9 with Henry Morton, “The Man of Honour” who not only makes good on his promise to marry Althesa but also vows that despite “all his wealth he never would own a slave” (93). Whereas Horatio had told Clotel he was “unable” to purchase Currer because “he had not come into possession of his share of property” (65), Henry enables Althesa “to seek out and redeem” (93) Currer. Henry is established as moral and forthright, uninfluenced by social dictates. He is also contrasted favorably with Althesa’s purchaser James Crawford, for while both men are from the free state of Vermont, Crawford relents to his wife’s desire for a slave despite the fact that “his feelings were opposed” (92) to slavery.
However, even in the character of Henry, Brown suggests white people are more likely to be sympathetic to slaves when the slaves appear more white than black. Henry, who “had seen very little of slavery” (92) and “had been taught that the slaves of the Southern states were Negroes” (92), is “unprepared to behold with composure a beautiful young white girl of fifteen in the degraded position of a chattel slave” (92). Modern readers might wonder whether Henry would have been so moved had the Crawfords’ slave had darker skin. Just as Clotel’s near whiteness earns her sympathy from 19th-century white readers, Althesa’s near whiteness makes Henry more likely to fall in love with her.
Similarly, Snyder and Huckelby denounce slavery not for its oppression of black people but for its degradation of white people. Snyder describes several poor, uneducated white families he knows, attributing the cause to “slavery,—and nothing else” (84). He tells Carlton that “no white man is respectable in these slave states who works for a living” (87) because “[n]o community can be prosperous, where honest labour is not honoured” (87). In his mind, slavery’s “discredit on industry” (87)—that people are not paid or respected for their work—negatively impacts the community as a whole. Huckelby adds that “for the honour of our country, this slavery business should stop” (87). If white Victorian readers are not moved by black people’s enslavement, perhaps, Brown poses, they will be moved when the slave looks white—and perhaps, if they are unlikely to be moved by slavery’s degradation of slaves, they will be moved by the destruction it causes to whites.
