READER’S GUIDE

by Cherise A. Pollard, Ph.D., Associate Professor of English,
West Chester University of Pennsylvania

Synopsis

A PROVOCATIVE MIXTURE of history and fiction, Barbara Chase-Riboud’s Sally Hemings offers readers a rich depiction of the political and cultural landscape of early America—its events, public figures, and social tensions—as seen from the point of view of the woman who was Thomas Jefferson’s slave mistress, Sally Hemings. Originally published in 1979, Sally Hemings encountered staunch criticism from traditional historians who were deeply invested in preserving Jefferson’s untarnished legacy. According to the official story of the Founding Father, Jefferson was a devoted widower who kept the deathbed promise that he made to his wife, Martha Wayles Jefferson, to never marry again. Instead of remarrying, he supposedly transferred his generative passions into intellectual curiosity and constant renovation of Monticello. To preserve this untainted image, historians had to deny his relationship with Sally Hemings, a young slave girl who was Martha Wayles Jefferson’s enslaved half-sister. Jefferson’s defenders have been doing so since 1802, when an enterprising reporter, James T. Callender, broke the news about the Jefferson-Hemings liaison.

Stretching the conventional bounds of genre and discipline, Chase-Riboud’s critical research and creative investigation of the historical record challenged scholars from a variety of fields to consider the possibility that the long-denied story was true. A controversial novel about a taboo subject, Sally Hemings was rejected by many historical critics as “faction,” a dubious mixture of fact and fiction, and criticized by some literary critics for its depiction of Sally Hemings as too compliant toward her master, Thomas Jefferson, yet it was loved by popular audiences. For many readers, it gave voice to deeply American anxieties about race, class, sex, and power. Almost twenty years later, in 1998, genetic research showed that Jefferson had been sexually involved with Sally Hemings. This finding further blurred the boundaries between history and fiction.

In the novel, Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson’s relationship begins in Paris, France, while Jefferson is serving the U.S. government as a diplomat in the turbulent years leading up to the French Revolution. After the couple returns to Monticello, their affair continues to develop for almost forty years. Once back in Virginia, however, Hemings faces the realities of life on a plantation as she witnesses Jefferson’s rise to power. She lives a sheltered life at Monticello, leaving the estate only once, to visit Jefferson in Washington, D.C., when he is serving as the third president of the United States. Even though she lives on the margins of society, Hemings faces down the threat of slave rebellion, the deaths of babies and young children, and the murder of local slave owners. Sitting by Jefferson’s side, she serves as his sounding board, listening to his ideas and providing him with feedback. The silent and supportive woman, if you will, standing behind the great man.

Chase-Riboud builds the story of Sally Hemings on the scaffolding of the official historical record, filling in the silence that surrounds those highly guarded facts of Jefferson’s biography with her story. To give readers a sense of each character’s point of view, Chase-Riboud shifts narration between Hemings’s first-person (or “I” voice) narration, and third-person (or omniscient) narration that gives readers insight into the motivations of characters like Jefferson and other well-known public figures. Chase-Riboud’s complex depiction of Hemings’s imagined life is enriched by the depiction of her interactions with many of those public figures—John Adams, John Trumbull, Dolley Madison—as well as many individuals who must have lived in the shadows of history: Sally Hemings’s mother, Elizabeth Hemings; her brother James Hemings; and her children Madison, Eston, Thomas, and Harriet. Each one of these characters has conflicting feelings about Sally Hemings and her relationship with Thomas Jefferson. But in light of the Jefferson-Hemings family ties that have bound black and white, slave and free, over several generations, it becomes clear that Sally Hemings feels that she is connected to Thomas Jefferson by the powerful forces of blood and slavery.

At the center of these two families, Sally Hemings must negotiate the blurred boundaries between enslavement and empowerment, complicity and rebellion, and trust and fear as she watches her master, her lover, and the father of her enslaved children become the third president of the United States. A deft balance of historical research and authorial imagination, Sally Hemings asks readers to suspend their belief in the historical record surrounding Thomas Jefferson so that they can clearly hear the voice of a slave woman who has been silenced for centuries. Chase-Riboud’s novel remains a crucial text in contemporary American literary history; it stands as an important corrective to those traditional forces of history that still attempt to marginalize Hemings and her descendants. By challenging readers to question official historical accounts, works like Sally Hemings open up possibilities for a more complex and inclusive version of our national history.

Reader’s Questions

1. Many of the chapters begin with quotations from texts written by Thomas Jefferson and his contemporaries. What is the significance of these quotations? What do they add to your understanding of the chapters?

2. Why is Nathan Langdon so fascinated with Sally Hemings and her history, particularly her relationship with Jefferson? What does Hemings seem to symbolize for this young lawyer?

3. In the third section of the novel, “The Census Taker,” Langdon tracks down several public figures who knew Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: John Quincy Adams, Aaron Burr, and John Trumbull. What does Langdon hope to learn from them? Why do they refuse to give him any information? Are you surprised that they all want to cover up this scandal? Why or why not?

4. Why is Sally Hemings angry that Langdon decided to record her and her two sons as white? How might Langdon’s actions have been influenced by his beliefs about the way Americans wanted to remember Jefferson?

5. Throughout the novel, we see Thomas Jefferson not just as a Founding Father, president, or elder statesman but also as father, master, and lover. What do you think of Chase-Riboud’s version of Jefferson? Why do you think historians and critics were angered by her representation of him?

6. The Sally Hemings whom we meet at the beginning of the novel is very different from the one who goes to Paris as a lady’s maid at age fourteen. How does her time in Paris affect her? How does her relationship with Jefferson change her life?

7. The relationship between Jefferson and Hemings begins in prerevolutionary Paris. What influence does the setting have on them? Do you think that their relationship would have begun on the same terms if they were in Virginia? How does plantation life at Monticello change their interactions?

8. How does living in Paris change Sally Hemings’s brother James Hemings? What differences do you see between them as siblings? What is the significance of Jefferson freeing James?

9. What does Adrien Petit think of Jefferson’s relationship with Sally Hemings? What does he think about the relationship between the Hemings and Jefferson families once he arrives at Monticello? Petit refers to them as Jefferson’s “American family.” What makes them particularly American?

10. Most Jeffersonian historians wanted to deny that Jefferson ever had a long-term sexual relationship with Sally Hemings. When this novel was originally published, many historians rejected Chase-Riboud’s claims of a relationship outright. Which version of Jefferson do you prefer, Chase-Riboud’s or the Jeffersonian historians’? Why? What does your choice say about how you feel about race, sexuality, and the American presidency?

11. Describe the relationship between Jefferson’s daughters and Sally Hemings. How does their relationship with Sally Hemings change as they become women? What experiences do they share as women and mothers? How do the dynamics of life at Monticello and the neighboring plantations affect their interactions?

12. Both Sally Hemings and her mother, Elizabeth Hemings, had long-term sexual relationships with powerful white men who were also their masters. Instead of creating a bond between the women, it seems to have fostered tension between them. Does this surprise you? Why or why not?

13. One of the earliest laws of slavery in the American colonies stated that “the child follows the condition of the mother.” This means that if the mother is a slave the child will be a slave, regardless of whether or not the father is free. Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, could have circumvented this law and freed his slave children as well as Sally Hemings. What does his respect for this law say about his character and about the power of the institution of slavery?

14. Thomas Jefferson explains to Sally Hemings the reasons why he had to remove sections from the Declaration of Independence that condemned slavery. What do you think about their conversation? Does he make a convincing enough case for Sally Hemings to believe? For you? Do you think that he fought hard enough against slavery?

15. Do you think that it is possible to claim that Jefferson let his personal interests cloud his decisions during one of our nation’s most important formative moments? What do you think would have happened if Jefferson had resisted the pressure to remove those statements that condemned slavery from the Declaration of Independence?

16. How does Sally Hemings react once she learns that the news of her illicit affair with Thomas Jefferson has hit the local and national newspapers? What do you think about Jefferson’s reaction? What does the Hemings story mean to you as a contemporary reader, especially after the publication of the DNA test results that showed it to be true?

17. Why does the news of the murder of Lydia Broadnax’s master and lover George Wythe and their mulatto son, Michael Brown, upset Elizabeth Hemings? Why does it send ripples through Monticello? What does Sally Hemings learn from Lydia Broadnax’s tragedy?

18. Throughout the novel, Sally Hemings refers to Thomas Jefferson as both her master and her lover. Why does she choose to do this? What does her word choice say about the dynamics of their passionate relationship?

19. Although the novel is titled Sally Hemings, we hear a variety of voices in the novel as the narrative shifts between Sally Hemings’s first-person accounts and the third-person accounts of other historical figures. What are the benefits of seeing Sally Hemings’s life from all of these different points of view? What do you learn about Sally Hemings’s impact on history?

20. How does news of Gabriel Prosser’s thwarted slave revolt and Nat Turner’s rebellion affect Sally Hemings? Compare her reactions to each of these historical events. What do they reveal about her changing attitude toward slavery?

21. In the novel, Sally Hemings meets two of her white, female contemporaries who are wives of important American statesmen, Dolley Madison and Abigail Adams. How do these women treat her? What is her opinion of them?

22. Throughout the novel, there is a significant amount of time in which Thomas Jefferson is not living or working at Monticello. He leaves Elizabeth Hemings and Sally Hemings in charge. What is life on the plantation like in his absence?

23. Why is it important to Sally Hemings and her mother that Jefferson promised her that there would never be another white mistress at Monticello? Why is she angered when he cannot keep that promise? Do you think her response is correct? Why or why not?

24. Does Chase-Riboud’s depiction of slave life at Monticello match your expectations or assumptions about plantation life? How is it similar or different?

25. Discuss the importance of Monticello. How is it described? What kind of opinion do the slaves have about the plantation? How does Jefferson feel about it? Why is Monticello such an important element of the story surrounding Jefferson?

26. How does Sally Hemings feel about Thomas Jefferson’s relationship with their children? What factors affect her opinion? Why does she decide to help her oldest children leave Monticello once they reach the age of twenty-one?

27. How does Thomas Jefferson treat his enslaved children? What do Thomas, Beverly, Harriet, and Madison think of their father? Why do the oldest three choose to leave their mother? Do you agree or disagree with their decision to leave? Why or why not?

28. Describe the impact of the auction of Jefferson’s slaves that was organized by Thomas Jefferson Randolph. What is Sally Hemings’s opinion about it? What does she think about the estate sale held at Monticello? What does it say about the value of Jefferson’s life?

29. As she looks back on her life, does Sally Hemings arrive at any conclusions about the meaning of her experiences? What do you think about the choices that she made? What is Chase-Riboud saying about Thomas Jefferson, American history, and slavery? Does this novel influence the way that you think about these issues?

30. In the afterword to Sally Hemings, Chase-Riboud gives us insight into the tireless efforts that she put into researching, writing, and defending the novel. After reading her essay and the novel, what is your impression of Chase-Riboud’s investment in this project?