The tragic mulatto is a fictional character type that frequently appeared in American literature during the 19th and 20th centuries, starting in 1837. [1] The "tragic mulatto" is a stereotypical mixed-race person (a "mulatto"), who is depressed, or even suicidal, because they fail to completely fit into the "white world" or the "black world". [1] As such, the "tragic mulatto" is depicted as the victim of a society that is divided by race, where there is no place for one who is neither completely "black" nor "white".
The female "tragic octoroon" was a stock character of abolitionist literature: a light-skinned woman raised in her father's household as though she were white, until his bankruptcy or death reduces her to a menial position and she is eventually sold. [2] She may even be unaware of her status before being so reduced. [3] This character allowed abolitionists to draw attention to the sexual exploitation in slavery; and unlike the suffering of the field hands, did not allow slaveholders to retort that the sufferings of Northern mill hands were no easier, since the Northern mill owner would not sell his own children into slavery. [4]
The "tragic mulatta" figure is a woman of biracial heritage who endures the hardships of Africans in the Antebellum South, even though she may look white enough that her ethnicity is not immediately obvious. As the name implies, tragic mulattas almost always meet a bad end. [5] Writer Eva Allegra Raimon notes that the writings of Lydia Maria Child that introduced the character type "allowed white readers to identify with the victim by gender while distancing themselves by race and thus to avoid confronting a racial ideology that denies the full humanity of nonwhite women." The passing character, Clare Kendry, in Nella Larsen's Passing has been deemed a "tragic mulatta". [1]
The tragic mulatto, not knowing their place in the racial hierarchy, embodies the opposite of the mammy stereotype. As of 1959 and earlier, it was popularly understood that to be born mulatto meant you were "born to hurt". [5] The extent of the pervasiveness of abuse toward enslaved people of mixed race is unknown, though some evidence suggests they were treated as black, but singled out for sexual abuse as they appealed to more eurocentric beauty standards. [5]
In 1842 abolitionist Lydia Maria Child introduced the stock character for the first time in her short story "The Quadroons", using it again the following year in the short story "Slavery's Pleasant Homes". In these stories, the light-skinned character is the daughter of a white slaveowner father and a enslaved, African American mother, although believing herself to be simply white. She lives comfortably and according to the Southern white ideals of social manners until her ancestry is revealed and she is abandoned by her white partner, enslaved and eventually dies a violent death. A similar depiction was seen in the 1853 novel Clotel by African American abolitionist William Wells Brown. [5]
During the 20th century, the character's "personal pathologies" were emphasized in cinematic and literary depictions. These were centered on her unhappiness, although whether this was due to a loathing of her African heritage or due to a temperament split between "white" and "black" characteristics were the focus of different authors, with the latter favored by white writers. In the former, in descriptions of the character her loathing increased as African American became a smaller part of her ancestry, and also loathing white people while at the same time seeking their approval. They will give up anything, including their family for such approval, as depicted in the character Peola in Imitation of Life (1934), whose name until the 70s served as a racial slur for women seen as fitting such a description. In these stories, these stressors ultimately lead to the figure committing suicide or otherwise dying (seen for example in The White Girl (1929) and Dark Lustre (1932)). [5]
A rare example of a male who fits the tragic mulatto profile is seen in A Soldier's Story (1984) in the character of Sergeant Waters. [5]
source material for D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation ).
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