The Known World

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2003

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-12

Character Analysis

Themes

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Themes

The Poisonous Legacy of Slavery

The Known World explores the little-known world of black slaveowners and the effects of slavery on both them and their slaves. While Augustus believes that purchasing his freedom and that of his wife and child will free him from the pernicious effects of slavery, he cannot see the invisible chains that still bind his son. While Henry no longer works as a slave, he cannot resist the allure of becoming a slave master, and with the encouragement of the powerful William Robbins, who has served as a father figure for longer than his own father, he is able to carve out success for himself off the backs of slaves.

After Henry’s death, Moses crafts heroic stories for Caldonia that portray Henry as a benevolent slave master, and telling these stories allows Moses to gain intimacy with Caldonia. But the tales are clearly fictional. Henry, though he did say he wanted to be a different kind of master, retained absolute power over his slaves. When Henry hires Oden Peoples to cut off a part of Elias’s ear as punishment for running away, Henry acts no differently from William Robbins. When Henry’s father beats him with a walking stick, telling him that is how a slave feels, Henry grabs the stick and breaks it over his knee, claiming that is how a master feels. The intoxicating desire to have mastery over others, trumping any desire to recognize kinship or humanity, shows the devastating reach of slavery, a poison that was only eradicated with massive bloodshed during the Civil War.

When Caldonia, who has been free all her life, takes over the plantation, she continues the slave legacy, to Augustus’s deep disappointment. Caldonia’s mother’s actions display the true, poisonous grip of slavery. Maude is keen to keep her slaves, labeling her actions as protecting the family “legacy.” This desire to hold on to her slaves leads her to kill her husband; she literally uses poison to kill him, believing that she is doing what is right for her children. This is an explicit example of the poisonous grip of slavery on all who come in contact with it. Slaveowners use whatever power and rationales they can to retain their grip on slaves.

As for slavery’s effects on the slaves themselves, it is not too surprising to see how slavery rips husband from wife and parents from children. And yet the stories of Alice Night and Stamford Crow Blueberry show that, for a lucky few, escape from slavery’s poisonous grip is possible.

Human Bonds Alive in Bondage

The narrative poses the question: Can love exist in a world where husband and wife, parent and child, lover and lover can be ripped from one another with exchange of money? After Moses is torn from his partner Bessie, he never finds love again but instead searches for power so he will no longer be vulnerable. He cannot truly love his wife, Priscilla, and his desire for Caldonia is really a desire for freedom and power. Despite such harsh reality, love is to be found in the book’s pages. Elias and Celeste have a loving and lasting relationship that will carry on through their many descendants, including their daughter, Tessie, who, at 97, holds on to the doll that her father lovingly carved for her. And yet, even this grand love story is tainted by slavery: Through the eyes of the slaveowner, Elias and Celeste’s love is reason to rejoice because it means that Elias, now tied to Celeste, will not try to run away again.

The narrative also explores the love and desire many slaveowners feel for their slaves. William Robbins is disturbed by the intensity of his passion for Philomena, for whom he buys a house and with whom he has two children he loves. William also loves Henry, whom he has trusted since Henry was a boy. But these loves are complicated. While William gets down from his majestic horse to cuddle with his daughter riding in the coach next to him, he knows that he cannot protect his two black children due to the color of their skin. In addition, his love for Henry is tied to financial value: The more William grows attached to his slave, the higher Henry’s price, making it more and more difficult for Henry’s parents to purchase and free him.

Many of the minor characters also have complex desires for their slaves. Clara confuses her attraction to her slave Ralph with her fears and suspicions about stories of slave revenge. Maude’s choice of a slave for a lover seems tied to her need for absolute control. Even John Skiffington, a God-fearing man who always wants to follow the righteous way, comes to have sexual feelings for Minerva. And Winifred, who agreed with her husband to treat Minerva as more of a daughter than a slave, resists allowing Minerva to gain independence as she gets older. Instead, Winifred wants to keep Minerva as her constant companion, in a role similar to that of Loretta, who is both a companion and a slave to Caldonia.

Ultimately, the very idea of ownership creates relationships that can never be mutual, complicating the bonds that can develop when one is bound to another.

The Trap of Myth Versus the Freedom of Art

Moses spins fictional narratives that seduce Caldonia with their descriptive detail and flattering characterizations of Henry and herself. But when Moses attempts to insert himself into a new narrative where he becomes husband to Caldonia and master of the land, the story quickly falls apart. Alice also creates a fictional narrative. To explain her nighttime wanderings, she makes up a story about having been kicked in the head by a mule when she was a child. But unlike Moses, she does not doom herself when she asserts control over her narrative. She has patiently studied her world to know every part of it, and this knowledge gives her the ability to escape. She sees the world as a whole, unlike Moses, who is so focused on recreating the myth of Henry that he has failed to enact his own mythmaking. Alice has no need to reify the myths of power. Her desire is to escape the myth of master entirely and to imagine an alternate narrative that offers a new type of life, not only for her, but for Moses’s wife and child, and for all who view her art in Washington, DC. Alice’s art moves beyond the seduction of myth, becoming a permanent witness to their lives and to the power of freedom.