Clotel by William Wells Brown: Slavery, Race, and Identity

Introduction to William Wells Brown and Clotel

One of the most discussed and controversial topics during the 18th and early 19th centuries was slavery and the slave trade. The American continent was one of the major participants in that trade. As an American native, William Wells Brown was one of the African Americans who endured the bitter fruits of slavery. Born into slavery near Lexington, Kentucky, and having spent much of his youth in St. Louis, Brown physically witnessed slavery and its effects — an experience that motivated him to advocate for the freedom of enslaved people. Consequently, Brown wrote several historical works addressing the causes, events, and effects of slavery and the slave trade on African American family life. One of his most significant works, and the first novel he published, was Clotel; or, The President's Daughter, released in 1853 (Paula 197).

Most scholars acknowledge that Brown's novel was the first novel published by an African American. In this book, William Wells Brown explores the destructive effects of slavery on African American families, the hardships endured by American mulattoes (people of mixed race), and the immoral and degraded relationships between slaves and their masters — particularly between enslaved women and white men — in the United States (Alice 179). Brown uses female characters such as Currer, her daughters Clotel and Althesa, and Mary to illustrate the experiences female slaves underwent. He also uses male characters such as Thomas Jefferson, Horatio Green, and Reverend Peck to show the relationships that existed between slaves and their masters.

After its first publication in London in 1853, Clotel; or, The President's Daughter underwent substantial revisions and three title changes for later editions released during the 1860s. Most notably, Brown opens the novel with a condensed version of his own narrative, "The Narrative of Life and Escape of William Wells Brown," though he presents this narration in the third person. Using this distinctive style, Brown blends elements of his personal narrative with various anecdotes, folk songs, poetry, slave life vignettes, and newspaper accounts throughout the novel. Brown did not only promote an abolitionist agenda but also emphasized the destructive consequences of slavery on the family (Alice 231). Drawing on the conventions of sentimental fiction, Clotel emerges as one of the earliest novels of passing — that is, a novel in which a character of African American heritage passes as white in order to escape slavery and access opportunities otherwise denied to them (Hover 262).

Brief Biography of William Wells Brown

William Wells Brown was the son of a white man and an enslaved woman, born on a plantation near Lexington, Kentucky, in 1814, and lived principally in and around St. Louis, Missouri until he was about twenty years old. Brown involuntarily experienced slavery across a wide range of working and social conditions (Andrews 276). He worked as a field slave and house servant, and was later hired out as an assistant to a printer, a tavern keeper, and a slave trader named James Walker, who traveled repeatedly to and from the slave market in New Orleans on the Mississippi River. After two failed escape attempts, Brown successfully escaped on his third try in 1834, aided by a Quaker named Wells Brown, who helped him flee from Ohio to Canada (Andrews 243). It was at this time that William adopted the names Wells and Brown, out of admiration and gratitude. Over the following nine years, Brown worked aboard a Lake Erie steamboat and served as a conductor on the Underground Railroad in Buffalo, New York (Paula 227).

Brown became a prominent African American abolitionist, novelist, playwright, historian, and lecturer. After his escape to the North in 1834, he worked actively as an abolitionist and developed into a proficient writer. His 1853 novel Clotel emerged as the first novel authored by an African American; it was published in London, where Brown was residing at the time. As Andrews notes, Brown spent the majority of his youth in St. Louis (412). His enslaver had leased him to work on the Missouri River, which was a major thoroughfare for steamships. Brown was a pioneer in several literary genres, including fiction, travel writing, and drama (Glenda 152). He was among the earliest aspiring writers honored by the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame, and a school in Lexington, Kentucky, was named in his honor.

Brown delivered lectures supporting the abolition movement in cities across Massachusetts and New York, directing his efforts toward the anti-slavery cause (Paula 298). Many of his speeches attacked the presumed American ideals of democracy. These speeches expressed his belief in the moral power of persuasion and the importance of nonviolence. Similarly, Brown frequently challenged the American notion of black inferiority. In 1847, he published a memoir titled Narrative of William Wells Brown, a Fugitive Slave. This memoir became the second-best-selling slave narrative of its time, surpassed only by Frederick Douglass's narrative. In it, Brown evaluates his enslaver's lack of Christian values and critiques the brutal application of violence in slave-master relations.

While living in Britain, Brown wrote additional works, including plays and travel accounts, which defined the plight of mulattoes born into the households of slave masters and the broader experiences of African Americans. Following the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Brown's safety was endangered within the United States because he was an escaped slave, so he sought refuge in England, where he remained for years before publishing Clotel. This novel earned him considerable respect in England, where many scholars acknowledged Brown as the first African American novelist. Other notable literary and historical works include The Black Man: His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements (1863), The Negro in the American Rebellion (1867), The Rising Son (1873), and My Southern Home (1880) (Paula 153).

Owing to his reputation as an influential orator, Brown received an invitation to the National Convention of the Colored Citizens, where he interacted with other prominent abolitionists (Andrews 286). He chose to remain independent when the Liberty Party formed, holding firmly to the belief that abolitionist movements were obligated to avoid entanglement in partisan politics. Brown continued to support the Garrisonian approach to the abolition of slavery and shared his personal insights and experiences of enslavement, all with the aim of persuading others to support abolition movements. His fight against slavery and the slave trade remains a historical legacy for Americans, and his literary and historical works continue to earn him recognition as one of the African Americans who fought for the freedom of Black Americans.