Clotel does not understand Horatio’s life outside the home, as she is not allowed there. The abyss between Clotel and Horatio is increasing every day. Gradually, “the edicts of society had built up a wall of separation between the quadroon and them (Brown, 40).įamily should be founded on understanding. Horatio spends his day away from “home” and away from Clotel, in a world, to which she is not allowed. Due to the fact that a non-white woman may not live in the mansion of the white slave owner, Clotel lives in a separate cottage. The home of the family couple is a relative home. She is married to Horatio, a young slave owner in “a marriage sanctioned by heaven, although unrecognized on earth (Brown, 39). The protagonist of the novel is the quadroon girl that gave her name for the book – Clotel. Moreover, in fact it means that the black people are not allowed to build up families, especially with white Americans.

On the other hand, it delivers black women of the social guarantees that the matrimony provides. On the one hand, it destroys the white families, for adultery has never been a family-strengthening factor, even if it is committed with an “inferior” slave woman, who may not even hope for marriage. Conversely, it implies that as black people are considered inferior, white men are allowed to engage into a connection with their female African slaves without any of the obligations that the marriage presupposes. “A fearful increase of half-whites” does not mean the acceptance of the African race into the American society. This status quo contradicts the very essence of family, which is supposed to unite people into a harmonious whole. Society does not frown upon the man who sits with his mulatto child upon his knee, whilst its mother stands a slave behind his chair” (Brown, 44). As the writer uneasily notes, “there is a fearful increase of half whites, most of whose fathers are slave-owners and their mother’s slaves. family and has a pernicious impact on the next generations of mixed blood. Brown’s novel vividly shows that racial discrimination destroys the foundation of the U.

However, the latter factors have a multi-faceted influence on family.

It exists regardless of political collisions and economic breakdowns. Family is the smallest indivisible unit of any society.

The female personages Isabella and Clotel, as the literary critics claim, embody the popular “tragic octoroon” stereotype (Brown, 6). The protagonists of the novel represent three generations of African American women. To be more specific, Brown explores the effect of slavery on the American family, especially in mixed marriage, which produces mulattos and quadroons.