Stirring ‘Jefferson’s Daughters’ is a story of us
The most poignant literature gives a voice to the voiceless. And in Jefferson’s Daughters: Three Sisters, White and
Black, in a Young America (Ballantine, 448 pp., eeeE), Catherine Kerrison tells us the stories of three of Thomas Jefferson’s children, who, because of their gender or race, lived lives whose most intimate details are lost to time. More scholarly than lyrical, Jeffer
son’s Daughters pieces together letters, oral accounts and biographies to craft a portrait of Martha and Maria, Jefferson’s children with his wife, Martha Wayles Jefferson, and Harriet, whose mother was the slave Sally Hemings. Their stories are shaped as much by the laws and social mores of Colonial-era America as they are by their father, a man of infuriating contradictions.
Jefferson doted on Martha and Ma- ria, affording them an education at the top girls’ schools in Paris as well as in the U.S. Martha in particular was exposed to an intellectual ferment in Europe that encouraged men and women alike to engage in political discourse.
But to be an outspoken woman back home was frowned upon. So Martha and Maria found more subtle ways to push against patriarchy. Martha ensured that her daughters got an educa- tion on par with that of her sons. Maria, meanwhile, asserted her own feelings about where she wanted to live, both as a child who had lost her mother and later as a young newlywed.
Harriet’s voice is far fainter. As an enslaved black woman, it was often felt her experience and perspective were not worth noting. But what Kerrison discerns is intriguing, from Harriet apparently being named by Jefferson for one of his favorite relatives to her brother’s account that when she was finally freed from plantation life, Harriet decided it would be in her best interest to go to Washington “to assume the role of a white woman.” (Harriet was one of seven children Hemings had by Jefferson, although some died very young.)
A highlight of Kerrison’s work is that while noting the gender constraints that hemmed in white women, she does not sugarcoat their privileged status nor deny their racism. “It did not matter who her father was,” Kerrison writes of Harriet’s treatment by Martha Jefferson Randolph’s daughters, who also happened to be her biological nieces. “All the Randolphs had to do was to look past her and, in their willful blindness, deprive her even of her name to ensure she understood her place.”
Ultimately, Jefferson did not give Harriet an education, an inheritance or even manumission papers declaring her freed. But a historical account does say he had his overseer, Edmund Bacon, give her $50 and the fare for a coach to carry her to Philadelphia — and away from Virginia and slavery, forever.
A historical narrative that allows us to reflect on the thoughts, fears and motivations of three women coming of age in a turbulent time, Jefferson’s Daughters offers a fascinating glimpse of where we have been as a nation. It is a vivid reminder of both the ties that bind and the artificial boundaries that divide us.