FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF FINE ARTS

MELODRAMATIC MELANIN:

A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE MAMMY, MULATTA,

AND MISTRESS IN BLACK FEMALE REPRESENTATION

ON STAGE AND FILM

By

DEVAIR O. JEFFRIES

A Dissertation submitted to the

School of Theatre
in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

2018




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Devair O. Jeffries defended this dissertation on August 9, 2018.
The members of the supervisory committee were:

Elizabeth Osborne
Professor Directing Dissertation

Tamara Bertrand Jones

University Representative

Jerrilyn McGregory
Committee Member

Kris Salata
Committee Member

The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies
that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements.

ii
I dedicate this project to my mother, who was my constant encouragement throughout the process

and who has inspired me to embrace my Black femininity throughout my life.

iii
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I gratefully acknowledge my advisor, Dr. Beth Osborne, for going above and beyond her

contractual obligation to ensure my success on the completion of this project. I am forever indebted

to her for the genuine enthusiasm shown toward my research as well as her overall concern and

support of my well-being throughout this process.

I am also extremely appreciative of Dr. Kris Salata for his contributions toward my scholarly

development throughout this program and on my project. Together with the guidance from Dr.

Tamara Bertrand Jones and Dr. Jerrilyn McGregory, your collective and invaluable feedback

positively impacted this dissertation as well as its future iterations.

iv
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures.................................................................................................................................................... vi

Abstract ............................................................................................................................................................. vii

1. Melon Mine? An Examination of Derogatory Black Female Stereotypes: Mammy, Mulatta, and
Mistress .......................................................................................................................................................... 1

2. Ghosts of Dramas Past: The Historical Origin of Black Female Stereotypes ................................. 33

3. Judge Ya Mammy: A Respect Check for Black Female Motherhood ............................................... 61

4. “Get In Where You Fit In”: Every Mixed Chick’s Mystery ................................................................ 97

5. The Evolution of Promiscuity: From Traditional Jezebel to New-Age Mistress .......................... 131

6. The End Credits: An Overview & Expectations for Research on Black Female
Representation ......................................................................................................................................... 154

References ....................................................................................................................................................... 159

Biographical Sketch ....................................................................................................................................... 180

v
 LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Photo by Roberto Schmidt, AFP/ Getty Images, Source: USA Today (reprint) .................... 6

Figure 2: The New Yorker cover, July 21, 2008, Illustrated by Barry Blitt; Source: Huffington Post
(reprint) ................................................................................................................................................................ 6

Figure 3: Outline of project .............................................................................................................................. 9

Figure 4: Similarities and differences between the mammy, mulatta, and mistress types ..................... 14

Figure 5: By the Way, Meet Vera Stark productions with Black Veras and White Glorias ...................... 69

vi
 ABSTRACT

Black feminist scholars such as Lisa Anderson describe the most common stereotypes as that of the

mammy, the mulatta, and the mistress. My research analyzes how each of these negative stereotypes

are articulated or challenged in contemporary plays and films by bringing together scholarship that

critiques dramatic representation, mass media that disseminates those representations, and social

media that reveals popular perceptions of race. I utilize Black feminism to critique the stereotypical

representation of Black women in dramatic works, and critical race theory to consider the social and

political environment that allows these representations to proliferate. After setting up the historical

context of stereotypes from the slavery era to the present day in chapter two, each of the following

chapters explore one specific stereotype, beginning with the mammy in chapter three, moving to the

mulatta in chapter four, and ending with the mistress in chapter five. Each of these chapters focuses

on two case studies include one successful play and one film with a nation-wide release that features

Black female characters and plays on mainstream networks. With theatrical case studies ranging

from Lydia Diamond’s Voyeurs de Venus (2006) to Lynn Nottage’s By the Way, Meet Vera Stark (2013),

films from The Help (2011) to Dear White People (2014), my work questions how these stereotypes

persist and create meaning in popular culture. The work addresses the following questions: How

have the mammy, mulatto, and mistress stereotypes functioned and persisted in dramatic works and

popular culture in the contemporary era? How do contemporary works adapt, challenge, reinterpret,

and reimagine these stereotypes? What does this suggest about shifts in representations of Black

women in the contemporary United States?

vii
 CHAPTER ONE

MELON MINE? AN EXAMINATION OF DEROGATORY BLACK

FEMALE STEREOTYPES: MAMMY, MULATTA, AND MISTRESS

It was a cartoon drawing of me with a huge afro and machine gun... Now, yeah, it was satire, but if I’m really

being honest, it knocked me back a bit. It made me wonder, just how are people seeing me?

~Michelle Obama, First Lady of the United States 1

Introduction: Black Female Representation through the Distorted Societal Mirror

National news and social media consistently evaluated and documented Michelle Obama’s

every move during her time as First Lady of the United States. Her many accomplishments,

including a Harvard law degree as well as positions as an associate marketing and property

lawyer at the Sidney Austin firm, Associate Dean of Student Services at the University of

Chicago, and Vice President of Community and External Affairs for the university’s medical

center, provide ample evidence of her abilities. While First Lady, she enjoyed sustained public

approval, even when President Obama’s approval ratings reached their low point. Yet, as a

Black woman in the public eye, Michelle Obama never escaped the many ways in which public

representations reduced her to a Black female stereotype.

My assessment of the term stereotype is based on two definitions courtesy of Oxford

Dictionary and critical race scholars Richard Delgado & Jean Stefancic respectively; “a widely

held and oversimplified idea of a particular type of person or thing,” and a “Fixed, usually

negative, image of members of a group.” 2 Black feminist pioneer Patricia Hill Collins

1 Collier Meyerson, “Michelle Obama Isn’t Holding Back on Racism Anymore,” Fusion, May 12, 2015. Michelle Obama in response
to New Yorker magazine cover, July 21, 2008.
2 Oxford Dictionary, s.v., “Stereotype,” Accessed April 2017; Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction,
(NYU Press, 2012), 173.

1
recognizes stereotypes of contemporary popular culture including “mammies, jezebels, and

welfare mothers” as controlling images Black feminism challenges. 3 These representations

manifest in figures from nineteenth century minstrel show figure and pancake brand character

Aunt Jemima to Cookie of television series Empire (2015). Though audiences might interpret

characters in plays, films, and scripted television series as fictional, these figures undoubtedly

inform people’s real-life perceptions. Despite attributes of these popular figures having shifted

over time, they largely remain one-dimensional perceptions of Black women.

In her discussion of Basketball Wives and the cultural impact of reality television, literary

scholar Sharon Lynette Ward identifies how stereotypical deceptions typically associate Black

women with inferior qualities including “being unaffected by hardships, lacking womanly

attributes, engaging with unlawful activities, and [being] libidinous.” 4 The danger of reality

television is the overt implication that the material being viewed is real though ironically, the

situations and events the cast encounter are usually constructed for dramatic effect. Though

Basketball Wives had the potential to promote positive representation of Black women who

dominate the cast, the show upholds traditionally damaging images with several scenes of

arguing, fighting, and oversexualized women. Communications scholar Tia Tyree explains that

“when taking into account the impact of stereotypes in the United States and the power of

television to reproduce them… television and reality television programming can be an

informational tool for audiences to gauge who they are, who others are in society as well as

what is and is not acceptable behavior.” 5 Collins asserts that attempting to “replace negative

images with positive ones can be equally problematic if the function of stereotypes as

3 Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (Routledge, 2002) 5, 69.
4 Sharon L. Jones, “Contemplating Basketball Wives: A Critique of Racism, Sexism, and Income-Level Disparity,” in Real Sister:
Stereotypes, Respectability, and Black Women in Reality TV edited by Jervette R. Ward (Rutgers University Press, 2015),141.
5 Tia Tyree, “African American Stereotypes in Reality Television” Howard Journal of Communications 22, no. 4 (2011): 395-397.

2
controlling images remains unrecognized.” 6 Therefore, my analysis identifies both the

destructive and affirmative qualities of familiar Black female stereotypes in dramatic

representation and popular culture to determine how they remain fixed and support damaging

perceptions of real-life Black women.

Beginning with Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign, popular culture has

depicted former First Lady Obama in disparaging ways that are indicative of how stereotypes

inform representation. A satirical cartoon featured on the July 2008 cover of the New Yorker

illustrates Mrs. Obama as a revolutionary with a machine gun (See Figure One).7 This

depiction made her question whether she fit into any recognizable stereotypes: “Was I too

loud, or too angry, or too emasculating?” 8 Sociologist Michael Eric Dyson argued that, while

the New Yorker was known for creating satire about current social and political events, the joke

fell flat because it did not consider the embedded racial implications in portraying Michelle

Obama as a Black militant. Instead, the cover helped perpetuate or “signify” existing

stereotypes of Black people. 9

Literary critic Henry Louis Gates describes signifying as an act that “both sustains and

alters,” which manifests in either damaging or constructive behaviors.10 His work applies

Ferdinand De Saussure’s linguistics definition of signifying as “the association between words

and the ideas they indicate” to analyze Black cultural history and symbolism. 11 Negative

connotations of signifying associate it with Black folklore’s signifying monkey derivative of

6 Collins, 114.
7 While some have argued that this is simply a spoof of Michelle and Barack’s fist bump, others argue that it is a blatant reference to
Black militancy. Staff, “New Yorker Editor Defends Obama Cover,” NPR, July 14, 2008.
8 Meyerson, “Michelle Obama Isn’t Holding Back on Racism Anymore.”
9 Gwen Ifill, Michael Eric Dyson, and Eric Bates, “New York Cover Satirizing Obama Raises Controversy,” PBS, July 14, 2008.
10 Henry Louis Gates, The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American Literary Criticism (Oxford University Press, 2014), xxxiii.
11 Ferdinand DeSaussure, Course in General Linguistics translated by Wade Baskin, edited by Perry Meisel and Haun Saussy (Columbia
University Press, 2011), 67; Roger Matuz and Cathy Falk, “Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Current Debate in African-American Literary
Criticism, An Introduction,” Contemporary Literary Criticism 63 (1991).

3
the spirit Esu Elegbara, a messenger and mediator in Yoruban mythology. 12 In songs and

narratives, the monkey, engages his friends in a game of “he said, she said” — conflicting

reports, essentially gossip — that turn the friends against one another. Once the friends realize

the monkey is the source of their animosity, they castrate him so that he is unable to

reproduce and will likely think twice about tricking people with the false claim that he was

repeating their words. 13 The trickster figure has taken many other forms in literature

throughout history from West African spider Anansi to U.S. American character Brer Rabbit. 14

Gates also cites the repetition and revision in the wordplay of jazz music and samplin g of

rhythm and blues songs in hip-hop music as part of the rich cultural history of signifying in

the Black community. 15 In “Elements of Style,” playwright Suzan-Lori Parks explains her use

of repetition and revision to disrupt traditional narratives and expose stereotypes, particularly

in Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World (1992).16 Unfortunately, the New Yorker

is one of many outlets that engaged the negative, trickster side of signifying by resuscitating

demeaning stereotypes to represent Michelle Obama. In other words, what stereotypes have

said about Black women throughout history is informing how Black women are presently

represented, and much of those images are hyperbolic or fictitious.

Additional commentary about Michelle Obama made negative assumptions about her

demeanor, body, and policies while at White House. Daily Mail journalist Tom Leonard argues

that Michelle “has routinely been portrayed as the one who really wears the trousers in the

12 Henry Louis Gates, “The Blackness of Blackness: A Critique on the Sign and the Signifying Monkey,” in Literary Theory: An
Anthology edited by Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan (Blackwell, 1998), 988-989.
13 David G. Myers, “Signifying Nothing,” New Criterion 8 (1990): 61-64.
14 Babacar M'Baye, The Trickster Comes West: Pan-African Influence in Early Black Diasporan Narratives (University Press of Mississippi,

2009); Albert Arnold, Monsters, Tricksters, and Sacred Cows: Animal Tales and American Identities (University of Virginia Press, 1996);
Joseph A. Opala, The Gullah: Rice, Slavery and the Sierra Leone-American Connection (USIS, 1987).
15 Gates, The Signifying Monkey, xx.
16 Suzan-Lori Parks, The America Play and Other Works (Theatre Communications Group, 2013).

4
Obama household.” 17 An image that went viral from Nelson Mandela’s December 2013

funeral shows Barack Obama taking a selfie with British Prime Minister David Cameron and

Denmark Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt while Michelle Obama looks away. Though

photographer Roberto Schmidt claims Mrs. Obama was laughing with those around her

seconds earlier, several news outlets used this single picture to suggest that she was

disapproving, controlling, and angry, reinforcing the stereotype of the “angry black woman”

(See Figure Two).18 In 2013, Bob Grisham, a since suspended White high school football

coach in Alabama blamed his school’s low-calorie lunches on “fat butt Michelle Obama.”19

His statement — which is similarly based upon little evidence and questionable, considering

that Mrs. Obama’s Let’s Move! nutrition initiative has been in place since 2010 —

simultaneously calls her overweight and sexualizes her body. These destructive beliefs about

Michelle Obama represent how cultural stereotypes perceive Black women.

Black feminist author Ayana Byrd emphasizes that there is an enduring “history in this

country of white people not showing adequate respect for and devaluing the bodies of black

women.”20 Although Michelle Obama is an educated and professional woman, popular

representations such as those itemized above have reduced her to Barack Obama’s

browbeating “baby mama,” a controlling woman, and a sexual object. 21 These disparaging

images of the former First Lady are evidence that racism persists in the United States, despite

the country’s supposed post-racialism that is ironically attributed to Barack Obama’s

17 Tom Leonard, “Is the Obama Marriage on the Rocks,” Daily Mail, January 17, 2014; Reference from Jane Hall quoted in Jon Scott’s
“Fox News Watch,” June 14, 2008.
18 Photographer Roberto Schmidt defended Mrs. Obama, claiming that “photos can lie” and, “In rea lity, just a few seconds

earlier the First Lady was herself joking with those around her.” Clyde Hughes, “Michelle Obama, Barack Switch Seats After
Mandela Funeral ‘Selfie,’” Newsmax, December 10, 2013; David Jackson, “Photographer: Mrs. Obama Not Upset Over Selfie,”
USA Today, December 11, 2013. Throughout the document, “black” is left lowercase only when in quoted.
19 Krissah Thompson, “Michelle Obama’s Posterior Again the Subject of Public Rant,” The Washington Post, February 4, 2013.
20 Evette Dionne, “Why Are White Men Obsessed With Michelle Obama’s Posterior?” Mic, February 5, 2013; Ayana Byrd quoted in

Thompson, “Michelle Obama’s Posterior.”

21 David Bauder, “Fox News Refers to Michelle Obama as ‘Baby Mama,’” The Associated Press, June 12, 2008.

5
presidency. The opposite can be said of the current administration’s backlash with phrases like

“Make America Great Again” which suggests that the nation’s long history of social progress,

perhaps its’ recent Black President and First Lady included, was moving the co untry in the

wrong direction. This divisive sentiment that determines what is “great” (White) and what is

not (Black/other) is simply an all-inclusive term for extreme conservatives who want to

restore the United States’ tradition of White leadership. One way of signifying that tradition is

through the demeaning stereotypes of non-Whites that dominate U.S. culture, particularly of

Black women.

Figure 1, Photo by Roberto Schmidt, AFP/ Getty

Images, Source: USA Today (reprint) Figure 2, The New Yorker cover, July
21, 2008, Illustrated by Barry Blitt;
Source: Huffington Post (reprint)

Examples of pejorative racial targeting toward Black women percolate in popular

culture and everyday life through social media bullying, red carpet criticism, racial profiling,

and job discrimination. While Michelle Obama endured criticism about her body and

disposition, Black female celebrities and working-class women have similarly encountered

discrimination and unflattering words with racist undertones. Shortly after the July 2016

release of the Ghostbusters remake, dark-skinned, statuesque Saturday Night Live comedienne

Leslie Jones was targeted for social media abuse by individuals on Twitter who called her a

6
“big lipped coon.” 22 Singer-actress Zendaya’s red-carpet appearance at the 2015 Grammy

awards was tainted by comments from former Fashion Police host Giuliana Rancic, who said

her faux dreadlocks made her seem as if she “smell[ed] like patchouli oil or weed.” 23 Black

doctor and chief resident at the University of Texas Health Science Center Tamika Cross was

deemed unqualified when she stepped forward to help an ailing airline passenger on a 2016

Delta flight from Detroit to Houston; eventually a white male doctor came to the passenger’s

rescue.24 Edith Arana’s six years at Walmart, in addition to her previous decade -long

experience in retail, was considered insufficient for any promotion that exceeded “a low -level

‘support manager.’” 25 In U.S. society, stereotypical assumptions are made about celebrity and

everyday Black women alike as their race and gender eclipse their professional and economic

status. Black women of all ages and careers are disrespected and disempowered due to

negative cultural biases.

Racial discrimination through the reductionist use of stereotypes affects Black women

in profound ways. Negative stereotypes of Black women function like a distorted mirror,

warping their reflection in a bizarre, unnatural way, and this problem spans class and skill. If

talented, accomplished, high-profile individuals like Michelle Obama, Leslie Jones, and

Zendaya, as well as middle and working-class women like Dr. Tamika Cross and Edith Arana

are all victims of such negative stereotyping, what hope does any Black woman have in

expecting positive representation? Their stories are but few examples of how countless Black

women experience unrelenting racism and sexism in the United States. Therefore, I analyze

how stereotypes inform mainstream representations of Black women in reality. How were

22 Kristen V. Brown, “How a Racist, Sexist Hate Mob Forced Leslie Jones off Twitter,” Fusion, July 19, 2016.
23 Taylor Bryant, “Zendaya Responds to Rude Comments about her Dreadlocks,” Refinery 29, February 25, 2015.
24 Ashley Hoffman, “Black Doctor Says Flight Attendant Blocked Her from Helping a Sick Passenger,” Time, October 14, 2017.
25 Nina Martin, “The Impact and Echoes of the Wal-Mart Discrimination Case,” Pro Publica, September 27, 2013.

7
these stereotypes established and how have they evolved? Despite Black women whose lives

and accomplishments defy damaging assumptions about them, which factors linger and keep

them associated with the negative stereotypes that permeate U.S. society?

One of theatre’s most powerful contributions is its ability to represent, respect, and

reject reality. Theatre encourages temporary suspension of one’s disbelief to accept the dramatized

events of a production and utilize aesthetic distance to understand that the events are not real.

However, stereotypical Black female representations are being perceived without these factors in

mind, leading too many people to assume that these portrayals represent real-life Black women.

Therefore, I believe it is necessary to analyze dramatic works in the form of plays and films to

question and challenge how prevailing negative stereotypes of Black women manifest in

reality.

Of the many Black female stereotypes that exist, Black feminist scholar Lisa Anderson

identifies the “mammy-mulatta-jezebel trio” as the most commonly utilized. 26 I determine

how dramatic representation constructs and propagates the Black female stereotypes of

mammy, mulatta, and mistress (jezebel) in U.S. society, whether intentionally or

unintentionally. Through my exploration of Black female representation in specific case

studies of plays and films, I investigate how these stereotypes manifest in the current age of

mass news media and social media interaction (See Figure Three). If we acknowledge that

derogatory iconic Black female representations exist in contemporary U.S. society, how do

they persist? Essentially, how do academic scholarship, mass media, and social media cooperatively

influence the perpetuation of negative Black female stereotypes through dramatic works, including

plays and films? Though my exploration will focus on the case studies of dramatic works, my work

26 Lisa Anderson, “Representation and Resistance” in an Anti-Black World,” in Mammies No More: The Changing Image of Black Women on
Stage and Screen, (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), 120.

8
makes use of mass media, social media, and scholarship to analyze the ways in which popular

representations of Black women radiate out into U.S. culture.

Black Female Stereotypes

(Negative/Derogatory)

Mammy Mulatta Mistress/Jezebel

(Mother) (Outsider) (Sexual Deviant)

Case Studies: Dramatic Works

(Stereotypes Illustrated in Plays, Films, Television Series)

Academic Scholarship Mass Media Social Media

(Data analyzing Representation) (Data demonstrating (Data suggesting Popular
Dissemination) Culture Perception)

Figure 3: Outline of project

Black Female Stereotypes Defined and Characterized

The “mammy-mulatto-jezebel trio” is an enduring combination of stereotypes that has

been studied and analyzed by Black feminist, African-American studies, and critical race

scholars. Black theatre scholarship locates these types within U.S. dramatic works including

plays and films ranging from early dramatic literature and minstrel shows to contemporary

films and reality television. Intellectuals from related fields likewise identify these three as

common stereotypes and situate them within social and historical context. Based on these

explanations, I define and identify characteristics of the mammy, mulatta, and mistress

stereotypes as follows:

9
Mammy (Mother)
The mammy is, foremost, a maternal character. Her focus is the care of white people,

and she is often portrayed as a dark-skinned, asexual, bandana-wearing woman who is

generally happy and overweight like Mammy in Gone with the Wind. Anderson calls the mammy

a “’good’ Negro,” denoting that she is a model servant who caters to her “’adopted’ white

family, rather than her own black family.” 27 Similarly, West describes the mammy as a

“subordinate, nurturing, self-sacrificing […] strong black woman,” who usually functions as a

single parent taking on multiple roles. 28 A focus group from Harris-Perry’s study characterizes

the mammy as a woman “who [is not] thinking about sex at all,” while Johnathan Green notes

in his Dictionary of Slang that she might express sexual interest in her White male

owner/employer. 29 Her independence, strength, and lack of sexual interest in Black men can

be seen as emasculating. Taken together, the prevailing characteristics of a mammy figure are

that of a large, domineering, self-sufficient Black female who loves her White family, covers

her nappy, unattractive hair, wears a frumpy dress/smock and apron, and has no family of her

own or limited access to them.

In “Mammy, Jezebel, Sapphire, and Their Homegirls,” psychologist, Carolyn West

describes institutionalized stereotypes about Black women including the mammy and mistress

(jezebel) in historical and contemporary films, television, and popular culture. She identifies

how mammy and mistress figures have been illustrated in films like Gone with the Wind and

commercials featuring the Aunt Jemima and Pine Sol representatives. She als o notes instances

in which high profile Black women have been stereotypically characterized. For example, she

27 Anderson, Mammies No More, 10-12, 24.

28 Carolyn M. West, “Mammy, Jezebel, Sapphire and their Homegirls: Developing an ‘Oppositional Gaze" toward the Images of Black
Women,” Lectures on the Psychology of Women: Fourth Edition edited by Joan C. Chrisler, Carla Golden, and Patricia D. Rozee, (Long
Grove, IL: Waveland Press: 2008), 289-293.
29 Melissa V. Harris-Perry, Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America, (Yale University Press, 2011), 33; Jonathon

Green, Cassell's Dictionary of Slang (Sterling Publishing Company, Inc, 2005), 36.

10
recalls when a guest psychologist on Oprah’s show called her “the mother of America,” and

suggested that her commitment to her professional career was the reason she did not have

children.30 Beyond the comment’s insinuation that women in general must choose between

motherhood and a career, it also painted Oprah as a mammy figure, taking care of everyone

else at the expense of herself and any personal aspirations. While women of any race are

assumed inherently maternal, the history of American servitude reveals that Black women are

expected to be the nation’s nanny, and they are continually mistaken for retail, restaurant,

caregiver, and custodial staff while shopping, eating, and working. West, herself, once received

a request to be seated in a restaurant from a White woman who assumed she was a server

rather than a patron. 31 As these experiences demonstrate, Black women especially are

expected to be the ever-available “help,” a role that often connects directly back to the

mammy stereotype.

Mulatta (Outsider)

A mulatta is a light-skinned, mixed-race woman whose inability to become a permanent

part of White or Black society renders her a confused and tormented outsider. Her life has

historically been a ceaselessly futile tug-of-war in which she was never fully accepted in the

field amongst her Black slave family nor in the house by her White relatives, and she might

only temporarily pass for White because of a White father with financial means. 32 In the

slavery era, abolitionists leveraged the mulatta’s nearly White appea rance to humanize slaves

and make White people more sympathetic to their condition, such as Zoe in Dion Boucicault’s

30 West, “Mammy, Jezebel, Sapphire and their Homegirls,” 289.

31 Ibid, 287.
32 David Pilgrim, “The Tragic Mulatta Myth,” Ferris State University, Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, 2000, Accessed

October 2016; Cedric J. Robinson, Forgeries of Memory and Meaning: Blacks and the Regimes of Race in American Theater and Film before
World War II (University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 51.

11
play The Octoroon (1859) or Eliza in Stowe’s famous novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852).33 Though

the mulatta type has shifted over time, she exhibits deep suffering and suicidal tendencies due

to the challenges of her conflicting racial identities. Anderson characterizes the mulatta as

“mean, violent, bitter, sullen, shadowy, and untrustworthy.” 34 While a mulatta takes on

multiple roles as daughter, playmate, and girlfriend, she often experiences rejection from her

family, community, and lover, which contributes to her resentment. Ultimately, the focus of all

mulatta descriptions is her distress about her ambiguous identity and unattainable love.

Mistress/Jezebel (Sexual Deviant)

The mistress, or jezebel, is typically dark-skinned, attractive, and in great physical

shape. Harris-Perry and West describe them as promiscuous and “immoral,” treading the fine

line between “sexually liberated and sexual object.” 35 Anderson emphasizes the

“exoticization” of jezebels (mistresses), noting that they are characterized as primal and

animalistic, and linked to “prostitution, sexual excess, deviancy, and lesbianism.” 36 Since Black

women’s entry into the United States was as property, it was common for White slave masters

to take advantage of them as secondary sexual partners. Though these women were forced

into submission, some began to see benefits in their sexual relationships with White men, and

to use those relationships to establish some agency in their lives. This subtle assertion of

sexual power became a way for Black women to counter their degradation during slavery, and

to gain some independence and power. This type shifted after the end of slavery as we ll, as

some Black women began to exercise control of their bodies and their sexual power actively,

33 Ariela Julie Gross, What Blood Won't Tell: A History of Race on Trial in America (Harvard University Press, 2009), 61.
34 Anderson, Mammies No More, 45.
35 Harris-Perry, Sister Citizen; West, “Mammy, Jezebel, Sapphire and their Homegirls,” 294-295.
36 Anderson, Mammies No More, 86-87.

12
sometimes choosing sexually charged relationships with men who were already married or in a

committed relationship. A prime example of the mistress is the title character of Carmen Jones

(1954), who seduces an army officer that is already engaged. Overall, the mistress is readily

recognized by her sexual availability, a trait that is often portrayed as deviant sexuality, but

that clearly has other dimensions as well.

Stereotypical Resemblance: How Are These Types Connected?

Many traits of the mammy, mulatta, and mistress overlap and are suggestions of

traditional stereotypical traits rather than absolutes. However, they are all representations of

Black women in the United States and have their historical origins in slavery. Melissa Harris -

Perry explains how associations for the mammy and mistress stereotypes are extreme opposite

with seemingly “no inbetween,” in that the mammy was fat and asexual, while the mistress was

fit and overly sexual, though both figures are often independent and have a similar skin tone.37

While they share a sexualized characterization, the mulatta is eternally tormented and suicida l

while the mistress is usually full of life (See Figure Four). Essentially, Black women are

negatively stereotyped in the United States based on their skin tone, body type, presumed

sexual preferences, and other superficial traits that formulate their caricaturized

representations in dramatic works. Anderson, Harris-Perry, and West argue that these

stereotypical extremes are proof that common images of Black female representation need to

be reshaped.

My research analyzes how academic scholarship, mass media, and social media

cooperatively influence the perpetuation of negative Black female stereotypes in dramatic

works, including plays and films. I examine Black female characters depicted as mammy,

37 Harris-Perry, Sister Citizen, 33.

13
 Mammy
fat, asexual

limited access to brown/dark skin,

family/lover slave/ independent
servant
Mulatta Mistress
sexual, lively, immoral
suicidal, bitter
physically fit

Figure 4: Similarities and differences between the mammy, mulatta, and mistress types

mulatta, and mistress stereotypes by bringing together scholarship that critiques dramatic

representation, mass media that disseminates (often biased) messages, and social media that

reveals popular perceptions of race. This chapter frames and contextualizes my study and

theoretical approaches, forming the basis for the work that will come.

In Mammies No More, Lisa Anderson reveals the essential problem of Black femininity

on stage and screen. She states that, “Because the cultural representations of black women a re

not abundant, none of them can be thought of as ‘just a black woman.’”38 Considering that

many Americans only exposure to Black women is through various forms of media, “white

interpretation […] becomes the so-called black.” 39 Anderson’s study is primarily a

comparative analysis of the distinct “mammy-mulatta-jezebel trio” represented in plays,

television, and movies, seek to rewrite those representations. She focuses on “plays and films

written and produced between 1960 and 1990,” arguing that the period’s representations are

38 Anderson, Mammies No More, 1.

39 Ibid.

14
marked by the need for a conscious resistance. 40 I follow in her stead, identifying related news

and scholarship from various disciplines that inform Black female representation . My case

studies pick up where she left of by assessing how stereotypes manifest in the 21 st century and

incorporating writers the additional analysis of social media, which has proliferated

exponentially since Anderson’s book was initially published in 1997. By bringing these

representations into the twenty-first century, I explore how these stereotypes continue to

pervade contemporary dramatic works despite recent shifts in the focus on race relations in

the United States.

As a light-skinned, heterosexual, educated Black female from a middle-class

background, I bring my unique cultural perspectives to this study. As a theatre scholar and

practitioner, I hope to contribute research centered on Black women to the body of

knowledge that will inspire productions featuring positive representations of Black females. I

find myself in a daily struggle to define myself against the mammy, mulatta, and mistress

stereotypes that percolate through society and reify with each appearance in dramatic works. It

is my desire to foster awareness of these negative and pervasive cultural stereotypes and to

inspire dialogue as well as the perpetuation of more positive representations of Black women

in dramatic works and popular culture.

Each chapter that follows will delve into one of the aforementioned stereotypes of

Black women: mammy, mulatta, and mistress. Within each chapter, I have identified two case

studies that feature Black females as main characters that either embody those stereotypes in

unique ways, with some resisting the trope and others embracing their representation. Because

I am particularly interested in the ways that these stereotypes continue to reverberate through

popular culture today, my case studies are all from the contemporary era, which I define as the

40 Anderson, 119, 120.

15
21 st century (2000–present). By first creating a picture of how these representations have

manifested on stage and screen historically, I explore how they have shifted and remained the

same over time to inform my deeper analysis of contemporary manifestations. This analytical

strategy allows me to recognize typologies across a range of different types of works from

which I hope to develop a continuum of characteristics that typify Black female stereotypes so

that they might be appropriately recognized and redefined.

Because of my interest in social media and popular culture, my case studies for each

chapter include a play and a film. My chapter focusing on the mammy will analyze Lynn

Nottage’s By the Way, Meet Vera Stark (2013), and film The Help (2011), which offer different ways

of looking at this type, whether the characterizations reify certain tropes or begin to break them

down. Similarly, Marcus Gardley’s The House That Will Not Stand (2014), and the independent film

Dear White People (2014) illuminate different contemporary presentations of the mulatta, while

Lydia Diamond’s Voyeurs de Venus (2006) and film 12 Years a Slave (2013) reveal different ways in

which Black women are sexually exploited in a variation of the mistress trope. The plays I analyze

have enjoyed successful Broadway, Off-Broadway, and/or regional production runs and the

films were critically acclaimed and shown in movie theaters nationwide.

My work primarily utilizes textual analysis aided by production reviews and

screenplays. I first read these plays and viewed the films with an inductive approach, taking notes

on initial impressions, and then repeated the process, identifying themes within each work. Through

deductive reasoning, I streamlined the general themes I discovered into ones that were common

among the case studies and included how a character(s) engages with traditional qualities of the

stereotype, maintains relationships, and resists the stereotype. From a theoretical approach, Black

feminism critiques the stereotypical representation of Black women in dramatic works while

critical race considers the social and political environment that allows these representations to

16
proliferate. Specifically, a Black feminist approach identifies stereotypes as co ntrolling images

and that portray characters in negative ways. Meanwhile, critical race considers the

sociopolitical environment that enables derogatory perceptions about Black women, in these

cases, characters, to persist. I implement these ideologies to evaluate the impact of derogatory

characterization as it manifests in popular culture and effects perceptions of real Black

women. Each chapter addresses the following questions: How have the mammy, mulatt a, and

mistress stereotypes functioned and persisted in dramatic works and popular culture in the

contemporary era? How do contemporary works adapt, challenge, reinterpret, and reimagine

these stereotypes? What does this suggest about shifts in representations of Black women in

the contemporary United States?

He Said, She Said: An Abridged Literature Review on Black Female Stereotypes and a

Call to Action for Revision and Resistance

Black female stereotypes, particularly the mammy, mulatta, and mistress, have pervaded

U.S. dramatic works since the nineteenth century. Scholarly analysis of these tropes varies in

focus and methodology, but generally seeks to expose the stereotypes themselves, the

conditions in which they emerged, and their impact in ongoing representation of Black

women. Some analysis also bridges the gap between representation and real women, delving

into how representation plays a very real role in Black women’s daily life and experience.

Film scholar Jorg Schweinitz states that “Stereotypes are developed, articulated,

conventionalized and mentally ingrained” schema that are either read critically as constructs or

naively perceived as fact. 41 Early cinema of the 1920s and 1930s established film as a medium

of conventionality that promoted stereotypical characterization through the rep etition of

41 Jörg Schweinitz, Film and Stereotype: A challenge for Cinema and Theory (Columbia University Press, 2011), 40.

17
visual images including “character construction and patterns of acting.” 42 Stereotypes are

explicit in The Birth of a Nation (1915), the first major motion picture in the United States

denoting race relations and distinctions between North and South. Conversely, in German

film Die Koffer des Herrn O.F. (The Suitcases of Mr. O.F., 1931), “Alexander Granowski presents

an iconic fairy tale about the modern capitalism of the era and reflexively touches on the

world of cinema.” 43 With a comedy that “through its fictitious film company caricaturizes the

stereotypization of film,” the film is one of the first that uses the form itself to evaluate film

production and representation. 44 Therefore, Granowksi’s film contributed to a trend of

dramatic work that recognizes and resists stereotypes through active critique.

Scholarship from various disciplines encourages the analysis of dramatic works to

identify the nuances of Black female representation. Melissa Harris-Perry’s Sister Citizen: Shame,

Stereotypes, and Black Women in America analyzes prominent literature with Black female

characters including Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and Alice Walker’s The

Color Purple, which have been adapted into films by Suzan-Lori Parks and Steven Spielberg

respectively. She argues that these works give Black women recognition, an aspect she deems

political as it relates to both “human and national identity.” 45 She argues, “the internal,

psychological, emotional, and personal experiences of black women are inherently political [...]

because black women in America have always had to wrestle with derogatory assumptions

about their characters and identity.”46 Harris-Perry “call[s] for the creation of new forms of

politics rooted in a deep and textured understanding of black women’s lives;” in other words,

one that will not reduce them to stereotypes. 47 Similarly, Carolyn West utilizes bell hooks’

42 Schweinitz, x, xii
43 Ibid, ix.
44 Ibid, x.
45 Harris-Perry, Sister Citizen, 4.
46 Ibid, 5.
47 Ibid, 22.

18
assertion that “Black feminist scholars should take an ‘oppositional gaze’ toward the images of

Black women.” 48 She argues that Black female intellectuals should combat racism and sexism

in the way that they “see, name, question, resist, and ultimately transform these and other

oppressive images.” 49

Notably, Donald Bogle’s text Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive

History of Blacks in American Film (2001) identifies five tropes established in the 1903 film

version of popular novel and play, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. He discerns how these caricatured

images evolve over time to complicate and add nuance to Black representation. 50 Lisa

Anderson deems early stereotypical representations “myth,” fabricated and exaggerated

portrayals of Black women based on assumptions rather than truth. She traces the trajectory

of the mammy, mulatta, and mistress stereotypes on stage and screen from slavery era

iterations to more modern characterization at the end of the twentieth century. Portrayals are

seen in the plays: Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) and The Octoroon (1859), A Raisin in the Sun (1959),

Funnyhouse of a Negro (1964), for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf

(1977), and The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World (1989); and in the films:

She’s Gotta Have It (1986), Daughters of the Dust (1991) and Corrina, Corrina (1994). Like her

colleagues, she advocates for these stereotypes to be reexamined and rewritten.

In her text The Sisters Are Alright: Changing the Broken Narrative of Black Wom en in America,

Tamara Winfrey Harris uses her work on beauty, sex, marriage, motherhood, anger, strength, and

health to deconstruct the notion that one is “pretty for a black girl.”51 Applying her ideas to

48 West, “Mammy, Jezebel, Sapphire and their Homegirls,” 288, 297.

49 Ibid; See also Barbara Christian, New Black Feminist Criticism, 1985-2000 (University of Illinois Press, 2007); Joan Morgan, When
Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-hop Feminist Breaks It Down (Simon and Schuster, 2000); Gholnecsar E. Muhammad, and
Sherell A. McArthur. “’Styled by Their Perceptions’: Black Adolescent Girls Interpret Representations of Black Females in Popular
Culture.” Multicultural Perspectives 17, no. 3 (2015): 133-140.
50 Donald Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American films (Bloomsbury Publishing,

2001).
51 Harris, The Sisters are Alright, 15.

19
performance and representation, I suggest concrete strategies that might positively affect Black

representation in both dramatic works and actuality. Because of its direct challenge to the

mammy, mistress, and mulatta stereotypes, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s play, An Octoroon (2014),

serves as an example of a dramatic work that consciously critiques these stereotypes. Along

with his inclusion of familiar figures and stereotypes, the playwright includes himself as a

character playing a role in the racial narrative and commenting on his agency or lack thereof i n

contemporary representation. I use this body of scholarship about the mammy, mulatta, and

mistress tropes as a call to action for analyzing Black women’s representations and imagining

possibilities that push beyond stereotypes.

Contemporary films and plays similarly identify problematic representations of Black

women as mammy, mulatta, and mistress figures by evaluating tropes within the dramatic form

itself. Vera of Lynn Nottage’s By the Way, Meet Vera Stark (2013) is unsatisfied with being

typecast as a maid figure in films, especially after having worked as one in real life. Nottage

confirms that she is aware of stereotypes’ impact through Vera’s conscious admission of

distaste with how she is being represented. Sam of Justin Simien’s Dear White People (2014)

similarly voices her opinions about race and stereotypes through radio and documentary.

While enduring her own identity crisis as a mixed-race woman, she resists images that her

environment tries to place on her. In Lydia Diamond’s play Voyeurs de Venus (2006), present

day novelist Sara must consider how to compassionately portray historical figure Saartjie

Baartman’s existence of sexualized exhibition and reconcile the parallels between Saartjie’s life

and her own. Their disparate positions of agency within slavery and the contemporary era are

respectively articulated as Saartjie’s handlers force her into degrading displays of her body,

while Sara nonchalantly pursues an extramarital affair with her book editor.

20
 Theatre and literary scholarship recognizes how these stereotypes manifest in dramatic

works in ways that connect historical moments to the present and acknowledge controlling images

of Black womanhood. In “Vera Stark at the Crossroads of History,” Harvey Young argues that the

title character both “enacts an extreme caricature of blackness” and “challenges the negative

contingences of identity,” an argument that paves the way for my own analysis of this

character.52 From the moment we first meet her as a servant in the 1930s to her talk show

appearance as a retired maid actress in the 1970s, Vera struggles to define herself as more than

a mammy figure in her lifetime. Diamond’s play Voyeurs de Venus merges past and present to

comment on collective memory and Black female sexuality. In “Venus: The Iconic Black Female

Figure of Sacrifice,” Connie Rapoo recognizes the parallels between Saartjie’s exploitation as a

mistress in her lifetime and Sara’s choice to take on the mistress role in the present day.53

News and scholarship weigh in on how Gardley and Simien characterize mixed -race

women, contemporary mulattas, as having reconciled or struggled with their identities. In her

critique of The House That Will Not Stand, journalist Anita Gates reviews a May 2014

production in New Haven, delving into the representation of the quadroon sisters and the way

in which their mixed race and social position complicate the need to marry during slavery. 54 In

article, “Black Like Who?” sociologist Bernard Beck explores how the Black students of Dear

White People navigate the university setting and define themselves against stereotypes, specifically

Sam, the young woman who plays the mulatta protagonist. 55 Collectively, these works about

mulatta figures past and present pose questions related to racial identity within the family and

52 Harvey Young, “Vera Stark at the Crossroads of History,” in A Critical Companion to Lynn Nottage edited by Jocelyn L. Buckner (New
York: Routledge, 2016), 114.
53 Connie Rapoo, “Venus: The Iconic Black Female Figure of Sacrifice” in Figures of Sacrifice: Africa in the Transnational Imaginary: 57-67

(ProQuest, 2008).
54 Anita Gates, “The Brady Quadroons: A Review of the House That Will Not Stand,” The New York Times, May 3, 2014.
55 Bernard Beck, “Black Like Who?: The Class of 2014 Considers Race in Dear White People,” Multicultural Perspectives 17, no. 3 (2015):

141-144.

21
the community. Gardley and Simien respectively utilize spaces of past and present with

plantation and university settings to illustrate how mixed-race women embrace their racial

background. Overall, these scholars explore how contemporary dramatic works engage with Black

female identity and sexuality in ways that challenge and complicate stereotypes.

There are also many studies related to the formation of stereotypes and negative

attitudes towards Black women. In Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to

Civil Rights, performance studies scholar Robin Bernstein explains the symbolic significance of

literature like The Dolls’ Surprise Party (1863) to early North American race relations, “in which dolls

come to life and black dolls, without comment or explanation, immediately serve white dolls,” which

set a standard for Black women’s societal position.56 While attractive factory dolls existed for both

races, they were expensive and uncommon, so dolls were likely to be homemade with makeshift

supplies and exaggerated features. Children frequently used the dolls to enact real social relationships

between white and Black people, beating, starving, or even hanging their Black dolls and thus

mimicking their real-life attitudes and experiences with Black people. Bernstein’s arguments are

supported by social science research as well. Psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark’s experiments,

conducted in the 1930s and 1940s, reveal that both White and Black children favored White dolls

over Black ones.57 Filmmaker Kiri Davis’s documentary, A Girl Like Me (2005), continues this work

by exposing the ugly truth that children in the present day, specifically young Black girls, still prefer

White dolls instead of the Black dolls they more closely resemble.58

Social scientists have also explored how stereotypes affect the mental state and self-esteem

of Black people. In “Identifying Stereotypes in the Online Perception of Physical Attractiveness,”

56 Francis Elizabeth Barrow, The Doll's Surprise Party by Aunt Laura (Breed, Butler & Company, 1863); Robin Bernstein, Racial Innocence:
Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights (New York University Press, 2011).
57 While this study was published in 1950, the Clarks began their experiments in the late 1930s and continued them into the 1940s.

Kenneth B. Clark and Mamie P. Clark, “Emotional Factors in Racial Identification and Preference in Negro Children,” The Journal
of Negro Education 19, no. 3 (1950): 341-350.
58 A Girl Like Me, By Kiri Davis, US: Reel Works Teen Filmmaking, 2005.

22
computer scientists Camila Souza Araújo, Wagner Meira, Jr., and Virgilio Almeida explain how

simple internet searches using the term ugly overwhelmingly return images of Black women,

reinforcing stereotypes and skewed beauty norms.59 Psychologists Audrey A. Elion, Kenneth T.

Wang, Robert B. Slaney, and Bryana H. French note that some Black university students and young

professionals at predominately White dominated businesses and institutions subconsciously or

intentionally link their personal gratification and positive self-esteem with a likeness to Whiteness.

Though most maintain their “racial identity,” they hope to transcend discrimination by striving for

“perfectionism,” which often means provisionally assimilating to the dominant culture.60 Another

survey about body image on Black youth aged 14-21 by psychology and African-American studies

scholars Valerie Adams-Bass, Howard Stevenson, and Diana S. Kotzin found that participants with

high self-esteem were likely influenced by their community and “Black history knowledge,” which

provided them with a defense against internalizing negative stereotypes and destructive norms.61

And finally, according to a nationwide Washington Post and Kaiser Family Foundation survey in 2012,

“67 percent of black women say they have high self-esteem; 85 percent are satisfied with [their] lives,

and 73 percent say that now is a good time to be a black woman” in comparison to previous eras of

overt racism.62

While these reports demonstrate how some Black people have taken measures to contest

societal assaults on their representation and self-esteem, many utilize “double-consciousness,” a

term coined by W.E.B. DuBois that describes the coping mechanism employed to maintain a sense

59 Camila Souza Araújo, Wagner Meira Jr, and Virgilio Almeida, “Identifying Stereotypes in the Online Perception of Physical
Attractiveness,” in International Conference on Social Informatics (Springer International Publishing, 2016).
60 Audrey A. Elion, Kenneth T. Wang, Robert B. Slaney, and Bryana H. French, “Perfectionism in African American Students:

Relationship to Racial Identity, GPA, Self-Esteem, and Depression,” Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology 18, no. 2 (2012):
118.
61 Valerie N. Adams-Bass, Howard C. Stevenson, and Diana Slaughter Kotzin, “Measuring the Meaning of Black Media Stereotypes

and their Relationship to the Racial Identity, Black History Knowledge, and Racial Socialization of African American
Youth,” Journal of Black Studies 45, no. 5 (2014).
62 Tamara Winfrey Harris, The Sisters are Alright: Changing the Broken Narrative of Black Women in America (Berrett-Koehler Publishers,

2015), 120.

23
of Black identity and self-appreciation while functioning in a White dominated world.63 Living with

separate public and private personas—one of which is on display in mixed-race company; the other

remains “private” within the Black community—is normalized in the Black community. This

double-consciousness is often hidden from the Whites with whom Blacks frequently interact and

requires the suppression of one’s private cultural experience. It also leaves many Whites unaware of

the numerous ways Black people regularly experience racial discrimination. In his January 2017

farewell address, President Obama noted the progress of race relations throughout American

history, but also stressed that recent events have made it clear that the United States is not post-

racial and the process of uniting the country along racial lines must continue.64 Such statements by

prominent Black leaders are partly what drives my critique of dramatic works in anticipation of

improved, genuine Black representation and resultant race relations.

It Runs Deep: Stereotypical Representation Theorized

The theoretical frameworks I employ to analyze my case studies include critical race theory

and Black feminist theory. In my examination of dramatic works, I focus on how texts, images,

and performed representations illustrate and/or challenge characteristics of Black female

stereotypes that fit within the mammy-mulatta-mistress trio. Critical race theory and Black

feminist theory appear frequently in studies of African American performance to reveal race

and gender issues. Taken together, these approaches critically assess how dramatic works and

popular culture depict Black women and encourage them to take agency over their own

representation. Though comparatively examining stereotypes in dramatic works is a common

63 W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches, (AC McClurg & Company: Chicago, 1903), 3.
64 Barack Obama, “Farewell Address” (speech, McCormick Place, Chicago, January 11, 2017).

24
critical practice, my research includes social media and popular culture references consistent

with contemporary conversations about iconic and stereotypical images.65

Critical race theory critiques racism and power dynamics, and therefore views race, class, and

gender as essential influences on one’s existence. Critical race theory helps me determine how legal

policy shapes American culture and consequently how people of color are perceived. Delgado and

Stelfancic take interest in “counterstories” and attempt to analyze “how Americans view race.”66

They assert that because “people have radically different experiences as they go through life,” it is

essential to recognize diversity within the law in order to dispel myths and assumptions about people

of color that taint their humanity.67 Derrick Bell explains that Blacks in America experience racism

“no matter prestige or position— [and are no] more than a few steps away from racially motivated

exclusion, restriction, or affront.”68 Ultimately, Bell encourages Blacks to employ defiant “courage

and determination” in order to influence real change.69 Critical Race Theory utilizes “feminism’s

insights into the relationship between power and the construction of social roles, as well as the

unseen, largely invisible collection of patterns and habits that make up patriarchy and other types of

domination.”70 I employ Critical Race Theory as a means to investigate and dispel mythical Black

female stereotypes in dramatic works and their resultant consequences for Black women in reality.

Specifically, this theoretical basis reveals how stereotypical stage and screen characters inform

perceptions of real Black women by themselves and others of diverse race and gender backgrounds.

Critical race theory is frequently employed in political science, criminal justice, and

Black studies fields but utilized by Black theatre history and performance scholars to critique

65 Lorayne Robertson and Joli Scheidler-Benns, “Critical Media Literacy as a Transformative Pedagogy,” Literacy Information and
Computer Education Journal 7, no. 1 (2016): 2247.
66 Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, (NYU Press, 2012), 44.
67 Ibid, 48.
68 Derrick Bell, “Racial Realism” in Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that formed the Movement edited by Kimberlé Crenshaw, (The

New Press, 1995), 306.

69 Ibid, 307.
70 Delgado and Stefancic, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, 5.

25
dramatic representation. 71 Specifically, Brandi W. Catanese discusses the controversial

challenges of color-blind casting and racial neutrality while Faedra C. Carpenter identifies

contemporary Black artists who define and perform Whiteness in order to contest traditional

representations of Blackness. From examining racial profiling in performance spaces to

thinking about race itself as “an invention, a convenience that encapsulates percei ved (or

imagined) difference,” critical race theory provides a way to examine how and why race

continues to be a divisive category in U.S. culture and the role of performance in reinforcing

or undermining that narrative. 72 In this way, critical race theory is a significant source for

evaluating how and why negative Black female stereotypes persist in current society and will

play a significant role in my project.

Just as critical race theory offers ways to parse out how race plays into society, the law, and

power, Black feminist theory is a way of extending this discussion to issues of gender and Black

femininity. The field is mostly dominated by Black women who analyze the way Black women are

represented, as I intend to do in my analysis of dramatic works. Black feminist scholarship identifies

the possibilities of reshaping the prejudices and images of previous works into positive and affirming

depictions, a possibility that I embrace and hope to catalyze further with my work. Kimberlé

Crenshaw pioneered the study of Black female intersectionality in work that focuses on identity

politics and “highlights the fact that women of color are situated within at least two subordinated

groups [race and gender] that frequently pursue conflicting political agendas.”73 Because racial and

71 Harvey Young, Embodying Black Experience: Stillness, Critical Memory, and the Black Body (University of Michigan Press, 2010); Daphne
Brooks, Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850-1910 (Duke University Press, 2006); Tavia Amolo Nyongó,
The Amalgamation Waltz: Race, Performance, and the Ruses of Memory (University of Minnesota Press, 2009); Brandi Wilkins Catanese, The
Problem of the Colorblind: Racial Transgression and the Politics of Black Performance (University of Michigan Press, 2011); Faedra C.
Carpenter, Coloring Whiteness: Acts of Critique in Black Performance (University of Michigan Press, 2014); Nicole R. Fleetwood, Troubling
Vision: Performance, Visuality, and Blackness (University of Chicago Press, 2011); Thomas F. DeFrantz and Anita Gonzalez, eds. Black
Performance Theory (Duke University Press, 2014); Soyica Diggs Colbert, The African American Theatrical Body: Reception, Performance, and
the Stage (Cambridge University Press, 2011).
72 Harvey Young’s Theatre and Race (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 5.
73 Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color” in Critical

Race Theory: The Key Writings that formed the Movement, (The New Press, 1995), 360.

26
gendered groups have competing agendas that are frequently at odds, efforts to contest Black

women’s discrimination are often futile.74 Patricia Hill Collins identifies issues of the allegedly post-

racial era, which she calls an institutionalized and subtle “new racism” that “relies more heavily on

the manipulation of ideas within mass media […] present[ing] hegemonic ideologies that claim

racism is over.”75 In other words, by suggesting that society has already dealt with its racial issues,

plays, films, and television shows continue to promote old stereotypes in new packages. To counter

this, Barbara Christian explains the ways in which Black women throughout generations have used

various forms of art to express themselves and assert their value as more than caricatures.76

Black feminism engages with critical race theory in scholarship that challenges White

patriarchal structures, policies, cultural norms, and biases that disadvantage Black women and

contribute to stereotypes. Ultimately, Black feminists work to reveal the history of sociopolitical

oppression that manifests in negative portrayals of Black women on stage and screen as well as in

ordinary life, a process that is inherently valuable to this project and my research into contemporary

dramatic representations of Black women. Black feminism is most essential to my analysis of Black

female stereotypes as it seeks to both critique and revise Black women’s cultural representation.

Black feminist theory and critical race theory expose cultural issues such as racism, sexism,

and classism in popular culture like film, television, and music. Ernest Morrell explains how an

analysis of popular culture “can help deconstruct dominant narratives and contend with oppressive

practices in hopes of achieving a more egalitarian and inclusive society.”77 He suggests that all

American citizens should be critical of societal culture that negatively portrays racial minorities.

74 This is a concept bell hooks touches on in her discussion of voting rights as White women allied with White men when they
anticipated Black men getting voting privileges due to their gender. She likens this to modern feminist movements in which White
women demand rights for themselves rather than for women of all races; bell hooks, Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics
(Pluto Press, 2000), 56.
75 Patricia Hill Collins, “The Past is Ever Present: Recognizing the New Racism,” in Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender and

the New Racism (2004): 54-55.

76 Barbara Christian, New Black Feminist Criticism, 1985-2000, (University of Illinois Press, 2007).
77 Ernest Morrell, “Toward a Critical Pedagogy of Popular Culture: Literacy Development Among Urban Youth,” Journal of Adolescent

& Adult Literacy 46, no. 1 (2002): 72.

27
Sherell MacArthur similarly acknowledges the legacy of Black women’s resistance against “largely

degrading media representations of Blackness.” As she argues, “Centering Black girls’ lived

experiences through critical media literacy can teach critical thinking and interrogation and enables

Black girls to negotiate visibility by counternarrating racist, sexist, and classist media narratives with

authentic stories of Black girlhood.”78 For McArthur, purposeful media critique encourages one to

“analyze how stereotypes and prejudices are communicated through media.”79

Educator Paulo Freire’s social justice agenda of encourages a shift from oppression to

liberation which inspired theatre practitioners Augusto Boal and David Diamond. Boal, author

of Theatre of the Oppressed, utilizes theatre as an active tool to change cultural power dynamics,

while Diamond, author of Theatre for Living, views theatre as a means to amend “behaviors that

create the structure, not only the structure itself.” 80 Boal and Diamond employ dramatic work

and performance to push beyond simply critiquing text and actively work through alternative

approaches for representation. By identifying how stereotypes are perpetuated by the media, my

research provides a basis for analyzing dramatic works, popular culture, and the ways these media

co-create meaning. As Collins notes in Black Feminist Thought, awareness of these stereotypes can lead

to the intentional rewriting of those types in popular culture, thus extending agency to the very group

that these stereotypes attempt to render powerless.81 Therefore, the implementation of critical

literacy in my work offers a way to promote the deconstruction of popular negative representations

of Black women among those who create, perpetuate, and consume those representations.

78 Sherell A. McArthur, “Black Girls and Critical Media Literacy for Social Activism,” English Education 48, no. 4 (2016): 362.
79 Ibid, 363.
80 Augusto Boal, Theater of the Oppressed (Pluto Press, 2000); David Diamond and Fritjof Capra, Theatre for Living: The Art and Science of

Community-Based Dialogue (Trafford Publishing, 2007), 38.

81 Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge,

28
 The Breakdown: A Blueprint for My Analysis of Black Female Representation

Like Lisa Anderson, I employ a comparative analysis of dramatic works to critically

analyze Black female stereotypes and consider how these representations function within

current news and entertainment. With the additional inclusion of social media, I merge

popular culture with intellectual conversations about stereotypical Black female representation

in critical race theory and Black feminist theory. Through my layered analysis of Black female

representation in dramatic works, scholarship, social media, I encourage audiences to consider

their part in how stereotypes proliferate in dramatic works and popular culture and how these

potentially damaging images collectively create meaning about representation. Taken together,

these mediums encourage people to recognize the differences between affirming and

destructive representation as well as the nuances that lie in between. Awareness of these

stereotypes can lead to the intentional rewriting of those types in popular culture, thus extending

agency to the very group that these stereotypes attempt to render powerless. My work offers a way

to promote the deconstruction of negative Black female representations among those who create,

perpetuate, and consume them. Ultimately, I utilize critical race theory and Black feminist theory

to unite the scholarly and popular discussions of Black female representations.

Chapter Two includes a detailed historical overview of relevant Black female

stereotypes established in works ranging from the slavery era (pre-1865) to the late twentieth

century and present day and observe how they progressively signal shifts in representation.

Much like Anderson, I survey works from the slavery era to the present focused on the

mammy, mulatta, and mistress tropes to determine what traits established the stereotype and

how these qualities have shifted over time.

Chapter Three deconstructs the mammy stereotype using Lynn Nottage’s By the Way,

Meet Vera Stark (2013) and Tate Taylor’s The Help film (2011). In my exploration of these three

29
case studies, I am most concerned with how the mammy stereotype has resurfaced in dramatic

works from the contemporary era to influence perceptions of real Black women. These case

studies are particularly fruitful because of their direct reinforcement of or challenge to the

mammy stereotype in works with a Black female lead character portrayed as an obese,

undesirable, and maternal servant. With its focus on racism in the film industry, Nottage’s play

covers a seventy-year period in which a Black maid, Vera Stark, navigates her job, her

relationship with her white movie-star employer, and her own potential career as a film

actress. She ultimately reflects on her experiences and regrets not being able to escape her role

as mammy both on screen and in real life. Tate Taylor’s controversial portrayal of The Help’s

repressed Black housemaids Aibileen and Minny attempts to champion their v oice through the

kindness of their White female friend Skeeter. She brings all the town’s Black housemaids

together to tell their stories because of her economic access and White privilege. Therefore, Aibileen

and Minny are only more than mammies when allowed a safe space by Skeeter. Minny is particularly

a prime example of a mammy figure due to her rotund physique, and Aibileen due to raising her

employer’s children. By analyzing how these stereotypes are characterized and critiqued, I

determine that the major arguments are related to the mammy’s frame, asexuality, independence,

and nurturing nature, as well as the lack of ownership over her own representation. How does the

mammy stereotype continue to shape the way maternal, plus-size, and/or subservient Black women

are represented in dramatic works and popular culture? How might women who possess the

traditional qualities of a mammy figure be characterized otherwise?

In Chapter Four, I primarily analyze portrayals of the mulatta in Marcus Gardley’s The

House That Will Not Stand play (2014) and Justin Simien’s Dear White People film (2014). The

plight of the mulatta is not often characterized as a central role or from her point of view, a

dramaturgical strategy that is often reflected in these works. Gardley’s text reveals that the fate of

30
mulatta mother Beartrice and her three quadroon daughters depends on their relationships with

privileged White men. Sam of Dear White People struggles to claim a definite racial identity and decide

whom to date. As these works show, the mulatta type has taken on a range of different

manifestations in performance. Even so, some of the traditional characteristics remain,

including conflicted self-identity, the trope of “forbidden” love, and the potential for tragic

outcomes. How has the representation of the mulatta stereotype escaped or remained captive

to its tragic fate? How might this stereotype be reimagined in performance so that it challenges

assumptions regarding mixed-race women and their complicated relationships with their families,

communities, and self-identity?

Chapter Five focuses on the mistress type with case studies such as Lydia Diamond’s

Voyeurs de Venus (2006) and John Ridley’s 12 Years a Slave film (2013). These works illustrate

how Black women from different eras and various stations are either forced into or take on a

mistress role to achieve some independence. The protagonist of Voyeurs de Venus, Sara

Washington complicates the traditional mistress character as she is married to a White man

and carries on an affair with the Black male editor of her book that is ironically about the

exploited African mistress, Sarah/Saartjie Baartman. Though Patsey of 12 Years a Slave is

considered Master Epps’s property, she attempts to utilize his fondness to lessen the toils of

her life on the plantation. While the socioeconomic status of the mistress figure has evolved

over time, she remains condemned or exploited for her sexual behavior. My essential inquiry

focuses on how Black women continue to be represented as mistresses no matter their

financial means, education level, or professional career. How might performance serve as one

way to demonstrate how Black women can assert their sexuality without being socially

criticized and/or perceived as sexually available?

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 Finally, Chapter Six reveals the connection between the three Black female stereotypes

in dramatic works as outlined in the analysis of Chapters Three, Four, and Five. I make further

connections between the mammy, mulatta, and mistress tropes as they manifest across my six

case studies of plays of films. I recognize parallels between the characters who navigate

different time periods or simply speak to a character whose story is set in another era.

Additional parallels include the ways in which the authors like Diamond, Nottage, and Simien

dramatize their awareness of the representations their characters represent. I conclude with a

discussion of other ways Black stereotypes can be analyzed including within television series, a

thread I wished to include but proved too much for the breadth of this study. While the

prominence of Black representations on stage and screen has increased in recent years, I hope

to investigate how genre, i.e. comic and fantasy stories, affect the images and characters

portrayed. Further, a more focused analysis of how an author’s intersectional background

informs the work they product is worthy of exploring as I only touch the surface. In essence,

this chapter serves as a space to collect and organize the many ideas this projec t has inspired

and presents some fruitful ways that the work may continue.

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 CHAPTER TWO

GHOSTS OF DRAMAS PAST:

THE HISTORICAL ORIGIN OF BLACK FEMALE STEREOTYPES

The decision to make central, to marginalize, or even erase a person, a gender, or a colle ctive movement—

whether in film, television, or history—does not take place through amoral happenstance. Rather, erasure and

placement is political, and the urge to enact this erasure is a key aspect of the programming we are all

subjected to from childhood. White men are programmed to take their own centrality for granted and thus,

when put in decision-making positions in the entertainment industry, are prone to erase any threat to that

centrality.

~Kellie Carter Jackson, “‘Is Viola Davis In It?’”

Like Lisa M. Anderson, I explore the origin of biased Black female representation by posing

the question, why are Black women assumed to have specific qualities, beliefs, and demeanors?

Because the United States is still mired in racial division and self-segregation, certain communities

only encounter Black people through media representation, which makes representations on stage

and screen even more important to long-term formation of public policy and perception. The

representations of Black women, in particular, have endured a long history of racial and gendered

stereotyping amidst the social and historical backdrop of slavery, Jim Crow, Civil Rights, the “war on

drugs,” and today’s “Whitelash” in response to the Obama administration.82 The historical origins

of the mammy, mulatta, and mistress serve as a way of tracing how and why these representations

endure and remain so damaging to Black women today.

82 John Blake, “This is What ‘Whitelash’ Looks Like,” CNN, 19 November 2016; “Whitelash” was a term used by CNN commentator
Van Jones to describe “an old reality [in which] dramatic progress in America is inevitably followed by white backlash.”

33
 With a specific focus on the mammy, mulatta, and mistress, I outline the formation and

trajectory of these three Black stereotypes in dramatic representation by tracing how they manifest

culturally throughout major sociopolitical periods in the United States. Because minstrelsy is the

earliest form of original theatre in the United States, and because the stere otypes of Black

people that it created have proven to be so pervasive as to, perhaps, serve as the foundation

for many that have followed, I focus first on minstrelsy in depth. Beginning with melodrama

of the mid-nineteenth century and ending with modern theatre of the late twentieth century, I

trace the histories of the mammy, mulatta, and mistress stereotypes separately. This

organization aligns with the chapters that follow, which deconstruct the characteristics of each

trope individually through close analysis of films and plays as case studies and provides me

with the opportunity to focus on relevant historical examples for each of the tropes. The

following discussion historicizes how various political and artistic movements affected the

mammy, mulatta, and mistress stereotypes within the dramatic works of each era.

Early Black Representation in Minstrelsy

Developed in the early nineteenth century, minstrel shows were the first uniquely American

theatrical form, and they have had long-term repercussions on Black representation in the United

States. Because of this, I include history and both male and female representations here. Despite its

overt illustrations of race, minstrelsy was part of a larger movement toward increased democracy and

privileging the common man from Jacksonian populism of the 1830s.83 In attempts to ridicule

intellectualism and slaves, minstrel shows “exaggerate both to the point of caricature.”84 In Black

Like You: Blackface, Whiteface, Insult & Imitation in American Popular Culture, literary scholar John

83 Jules Zanger, “The Minstrel Show as Theatre of Misrule,” The Quarterly Journal of Speech 60, no.1 (1974): 33.
84 Ibid, 34.

34
Strausbaugh describes how minstrelsy was a multilayered phenomenon with various goals and

manifestations that were not unilaterally destructive:

Simply condemning it all as entertainment that pandered to White racism does not

begin to account for its complexities, its confusion, its neuroses. It simultaneously

laughed at and wept for Southern Blacks. In the years leading up to the Civil War,

minstrel songs proposed both pro- and antislavery positions. After the war, minstrel

performers were as likely to be actual Blacks as blackfaced Whites.85

His words articulate the layered agendas of minstrelsy to portray Blacks according to different

political purposes and, despite its unflattering beginnings, pave the way for the Black-led

performances that followed.

Minstrelsy is a style of theatre born out of White observation of Black slave traditions which

uses humor to dramatize stereotypes and satirize social issues, a practice which had been going on

for decades prior to the beginning of minstrelsy as a genre. According to Constance Rourke in

American Humor: A Study of the National Character, a traveler visiting Maryland in 1795 called “the

blacks” “the great humorists of the nation… Climate, music, kind treatment act upon them like

electricity.”86 White performers fashioned slave characters after having witnessed their musical

talent, hunting and navigation skills, and seemingly good-natured attitude despite the hardships they

faced.87 To portray Black characters, White actors used burnt cork, greasepaint, and shoe polish to

darken their skin and embellish their lips and facial features. They also wore disheveled wigs, gloves,

and either worn, oversized clothes or tailcoats and formal attire to portray various character types.88

In 1820, for example, Edwin Forrest’s blackface costume and impersonation were so convincing as

85 John Strausbaugh, Black Like You: Blackface, Whiteface, Insult & Imitation in American Popular Culture. (Penguin, 2007) 101.
86 Rourke, 71.
87 Ibid, 71; Rourke discusses travelers who when encountering plantation regions in the South (Maryland, Mississippi, and the

Savannah River) and West, speak of Negroes with talent as singers while rowing their masters, and playing musical instruments
from banjoes they assembled from gourds.
88 Lott, 6.

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he “strolled the streets” of Cincinnati that an old Black woman “mistook him for a negro she

knew.”89 Because of their interaction, he persuaded her “to join him on stage for an impromptu

scene that evening.”90 At the time, Forrest, who would become an iconic American actor, was

known for his performance as a slave in backwoodsman play “Hunters of the Kentucky.”91

Soon the fabled moment arose when Thomas Dartmouth (T.D.) Rice, the so-called “Father

of Minstrelsy,” imitated a song and dance he saw a limping, elder Black stableman perform as he

tended to horses. It inspired his new character in the backwoodsman play The Rifle: “Wheel about,

turn about, Do jis so, An’ ebery time I wheel about I jump Jim Crow,” and minstrelsy was born.92

Minstrel shows capitalized on the idea of the supposed comic nature of Black people to dramatize

them as simple character types that could be easily reproduced. From “this new entertainment,” Rice

enjoyed popularity in the ‘30’s and ‘40’s which was said to be unmatched by that of any other

American comedian of his time,” and the form itself reached the height of its popularity between

1850 and 1870.93

Minstrel shows were usually three acts with jokes and songs, a speech, and a skit or short

play. Zanger and Lott credit Edwin P. Christy and the Christy Minstrels troupe with outlining the

basic format for minstrel shows in the 1840s, though Strausbaugh notes that Daniel D. Emmett also

contributed to early formations of the genre which earned him “the loudest bragging rights.”94 The

structure included “three characteristic elements of Black minstrelsy: the End Man – Interlocutor

relationship of the First Part, the stump speech of the Second Part or Olio, and the Burlesque of the

Third Part.”95 When the dignified White Interlocutor posed a question to the clownish, singing and

89 Rourke, 72.
90 Ibid.
91 Ibid.
92 Ibid, 72-3.
93 Rourke, 72; Mel Watkins, On the Real Side: Laughing, Lying, and Signifying—The Underground Tradition of African-American Humor that

Transformed American Culture, from Slavery to Richard Pryor, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994).
94 Zanger, 33; Lott, 37-38; Strausbaugh, 102.
95 Zanger, 33.

36
dancing End Men, they responded with a witty remark and mocked his pompous stature. And yet,

always reinforcing the superiority of the white audience and the relative “safety” of the Black

characters being portrayed, when the Interlocutor replied, he would confirm, “the audience’s

conception of its own superiority to the Black.”96 The first part ended with a walkaround, featuring

dances like the cakewalk.97 In the cakewalk, couples, with men performing women in drag, formed a

square perimeter and mimicked White mannerisms with “a high leg prance, backward tilt of the

head, shoulders, and upper torso.”98 One of the most famous examples is Dan Emmett’s “Dixie,”

which he wrote as a member of the Bryant’s Minstrels.

The Second Part, “Olio,” usually included the Stump Speech in which a Blackface actor

delivered a comic monologue full of multisyllable words used incorrectly and rumination about

topics allegedly too complex for slaves to understand.99 This portion of the show was likely in

response to public lectures held at the Lyceum lecture hall in favor of adult education from the

1820s to the early 1900s, some of which supported women’s suffrage and abolitionism. The third

part was often an extension of the Olio and included low burlesque, a style of mocking “upper-class

entertainment such as Shakespeare’s plays and Italian opera.”100 In 1833, TD Rice remixed opera,

transforming “Ernani,” while several troupes from 1861-1880, including the Ethiopian Serenaders,

Bryant’s Minstrels, and the De Angeles West Coast company, parodied Shakespeare’s Richard III,

Hamlet, and Othello.101 These pieces often included Mammy and Sambo figures in farcical situations

in which slaves spoke positively about their life on the plantation. Shows with anti-slavery leanings

included runaway slaves, uprisings, and trickster figures.

96 Zanger, 34.
97 This portion was derived from the competitive “prize walk” in which slaves were judged by their master and the winning couple
received a cake as their prize, giving meaning to the phrase, “take the cake.” Rourke, 78; Kislan, 32; Strausbaugh, 105.
98 Kislan, The Musical: A Look at American Musical Theatre (Hal Leonard Corporation, 1995), 32.
99 Zanger, 35.
100 Ibid, 37.
101 Ibid, 36-37.

37
 Many of the characters developed in these early minstrel shows became inextricably linked

with negative Black stereotypes. Rice’s song “Jump Jim Crow,” became the namesake for a comic,

raggedly dressed Black slave who sang and danced to a halting and happy tune, and the larger

symbol for the racist “Black Codes” governing the era from post-slavery Reconstruction to Civil

Rights.102 George Dixon’s “Zip Coon” joined Rice’s “Jim Crow” in portraying the “pure” coon, a

clownish, undependable male figure who mimicked mannerisms and style of dress akin to the White

dandy character.103 Additional stereotypes that regularly appeared in minstrel shows include the

friendly, “comic philosophizing” Uncle Remus or Rastus; the neglected, pickaninny child Topsy; the

uneducated and often disheveled Sambo; and the mammy, mistress, and mulatta, each of which will

be explored in more detail below.104 These types became stock characters that were utilized

throughout different stages of the minstrel show, and many also became enduring stereotypes.

Versions of the mammy, mulatta, and mistress figure emerge in the Black female characters

of minstrelsy as mostly comical and hypersexual. Because there were few female performers in the

antebellum minstrel shows, most women’s roles were played by men in drag, particularly in “cross-

dressed ‘wench’ performances,” which suggests these roles were heightened, most likely for comic

effect.105 Women characters were mainly seen “in skits and in dance numbers, played by men

ludicrously padded and wigged.”106 White male actors Francis Leon and Rollin Howard dressed in

drag to play female characters including mammy and mulatta, the latter of which often serves as a

mistress.107 The mammy figure, often named Aunt Dinah Roh, was a maternal character dedicated

102 Dale Cockrell, Demons of Disorder: Early Blackface Minstrels and their World (Cambridge University Press, 1997); C. Vann Woodward
and William S. McFeely, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (Oxford University Press, 2001), 7; “Jim Crow” also become synonymous
with Negro, thus Jim Crow laws signified Negro laws.
103 Bogle, 4-5; James H. Dormon, “Shaping the Popular Image of Post-Reconstruction American Blacks: The ‘Coon Song
Phenomenon of the Gilded Age,” American Quarterly 40.4 (1988): 451-452.
104 Bogle, 5.
105 Lott, 6.
106 Zanger, 34.
107 Toll, 78-79, 118-119.

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to the plantation family she serves.108 Early iterations of the mulatta wench or yeller gal portrayed

her as erratic, but attractive to the male characters because of the combination of her light-skinned

or almost-White features and the anticipated promiscuity of Black women. Later representations

show men either “titillated or disgusted,” as evidenced in TD Rice’s romantic duet of “Tell Me Joey,

Whar you Bin,” (1840) which featured a wench character who danced ballet style in matching

costume with an unruly Topsy wig.109 The jezebel character is sexually exploited by her slave master

and often included in the burlesque shows. Shows like Lubly Fan (1844) portray Black women as

“grotesque,” having large lips, while “Gal From the South” (1854) sexualizes and abuses women’s

bodies.110 In scenes where a Black female character is approached by the dandy figure, she is

expected to “provide companionship and sexual pleasure, comply with male plans and desires, and

tolerate all manner of demeaning behavior to remain an ideal woman.”111 Such scenes reinforce the

expectation that Black women exist to satisfy the sexual needs of the men who surround her; she has

no will, no ability to demur, and no ability to stand up against the many types of physical and

emotional abuses that she is forced to endure in the process of pleasing the men. This is a

particularly damaging representation, as it reestablishes the oversexualization of Black women and,

within the context of the minstrel show, tacitly reinforces the behavior of the men who abuse them.

Role reversals further complicate race and gender identity with Whites playing Black and

men dressed as women. These actors utilized blackface as “a doubled structure of looking,” a mask

to make Black women sexual objects while embodying the alleged predatory Black male figure who

fantasizes about White women.112 These roles establish a trend of Black female representation that

associates them with qualities of heightened femininity — either a nurturing matron or a hypersexual

108 Toll, 78-79.

109 Zanger, 37.
110 Watkins, 109.
111 William J. Mahar, Behind the Burnt Cork Mask: Early Blackface Minstrelsy and Antebellum American Popular Culture (University of Illinois
Press, 1998), 327-328.
112 Eric Lott, Love & Theft: Black Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (Oxford University Press, 2013), 150, 156-157.

39
and promiscuous woman waiting for a sexual encounter with a White man. Within this act of

“blackface transvestism,” particularly when White actors play the mulatta wench, Black women are

made desirable objects.113 Therefore, both Black male characters and audiences are observing Black

women as uncharacteristically attractive, a gaze that portrays them as sexually available.

Though some minstrel songs showed sentimentalism toward slaves and their plight to prove

their moral worth, most representations remained thick with basic humor.114 The exploitation of

Black as funny “was deeply resented by the anti-slavery leaders of an early day, and in the end, they

went far toward creating the idea that the Negro lacked humor.”115 Rourke claims that “After the

Civil War, it would still have been possible to reveal the many-sided Negro but minstrelsy with its air

of irreverence seems to have blocked the way,” suggesting a lack of nuance and complexity to the

character of African Americans and, with it, perhaps a lack of humanity as well.116

However, not everyone was susceptible to the potential corruption of the minstrelsy form.

Sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimke “addressed anti-slavery meetings,” which were part of a larger

movement of lectures on human and women’s rights “advertised in the same columns that displayed

the offerings of various minstrel companies in New York.”117 In Behind the Burnt Cork Mask: Early

Blackface Minstrelsy and Antebellum American Popular Culture, humanities scholar William J. Mahar

emphasizes that, like their slave ridicule, White minstrel performers “showed an equal disdain for

those women who gave public lectures.”118 Lott notes that abolitionist newspaper The Liberator was

founded in 1831, the same year TD Rice popularized minstrel show figure Jim Crow.119 The paper

which ran from 1831-1865 had religious leanings and advocated for the “immediate and complete

113 Lott, 151.

114 Rourke, 74.
115 Rourke, 74.
116 Rourke, 74.
117 Mahar, 93
118 Ibid.
119 Lott, 21.

40
emancipation of slaves” in the United States.120 By 1834, it had a three-quarters Black subscriber

rate including abolitionist and former slave, Frederick Douglass, whose oratory skills were a “living

counterexample to the narrowness of the pro-slavery definition of humans.”121 Douglass was so

inspired by The Liberator that he established the North Star anti-slavery newspaper in 1847.122 In an

1848 North Star article, Frederick Douglass expresses his distaste for minstrel shows, calling

blackface imitators “the filthy scum of white society, who have stolen from us a complexion denied

to them by nature, in which to make money, and pander to the corrupt taste of their white fellow

citizens.”123

By the 1840s and 1850s, White producers promoted minstrel shows featuring Black actors

and entertainers and, despite continuing blackface and maintaining some of the stereotypes for a

time, Black-led minstrels progressively adopted more authentic types of representation. In these

productions, “black facepaint doubly signified blackness as a performance trope and racial identity,”

since Black minstrels portrayed fictional versions of themselves.124 Billy Kersand’s version of “Old

Aunt Jemima” became so popular that it inspired the pancake brand that exists today.125 Thomas

Dilward and William Henry Lane in blackface created (more) authentic portrayals of African

American life that appealed to both Black and White audiences.126 Dilward, a dwarf whose small

frame attracted curiosity, was credited with being amongst the first Black performers to demonstrate

authentic Black dance on stage in blackface, a feat that was matched internationally by William

Henry Lane and the Ethiopian Serenaders. Meanwhile, Pat Chappelle’s Rabbit Foot Company was a

long-running troupe who toured Southern regions with shows of little plot in favor of cakewalks,

120 Peter C. Riley, The Black Abolitionist Papers: Volume III: The United States, 1830-1846 (University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 9.
121 Roderick M. Stewart, “The Claims of Frederick Douglass Philosophically Considered” in Frederick Douglass: A Critical Reader edited
by Bill E. Lawson and Frank M. Kirkland (Wiley Blackwell, 1999), 155-156.
122 David B. Chesebrough, Frederick Douglass: Oratory from Slavery (Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1998), 16-18.
123 Frederick Douglass, The North Star (27 Oct.1848).
124 Stephanie L. Batiste, Darkening Mirrors: Imperial Representation in Depression-Era African American Performance (Duke University Press,

2011), 14-15; Rourke, xvii; Cockrell, 60.

125 Toll, 256.
126 Toll, Blacking Up, 227; Watkins, On the Real Side.

41
ragtime music, and circus acts.127 Ma Rainey gained popularity with the Rabbit Foot Company as a

“coon shouter,” singing blues songs about her life experiences which led her to a record deal in

1923. Under her tutelage, Bessie Smith also gained recognition as a blues singer. And so, while Black

minstrelsy maintained many of the troubling stereotypes that were the hallmark of the form itself, it

also provided salaries, jobs, and opportunities for many Black performers who were able to

jumpstart careers in the performing arts. At the same time, minstrelsy characters like Aunt Jemima

have continued to endure, persisting in the representation of Black women. Ultimately, Blackface

minstrel shows of the late slavery years established common Black stereotypes including but not

limited to the mammy, mulatta, and mistress.

A Dramatic Trajectory of Mammy, Mulatta, and Mistress Characters

From this point of the chapter, my historical overview focuses on the mammy, mulatta, and

mistress as separate tropes that manifest in plays and films throughout different time periods.

Beginning with nineteenth century melodrama as a form that follows minstrelsy, I consider how

these character types are informed by their period and influence the evolution of the trope. This

approach helps keep the focus on the individual stereotypes and how they inform their individual

moment, rather than attempt to cover every political event that might be loosely connected to a

general study of racial stereotyping. My focused organization on the individual stereotypes helps

delineate the various characteristics that have been associated with each trope over time. This

chapter also follows my exploration of the three types through case studies of plays and films in

chapter three, four, and five. Correspondingly, I begin with the mammy and trace the various spaces

in which she is a maternal figure, the mulatta’s racial identity struggle as a social outcast, and how the

127 Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff, Ragged But Right: Black Traveling Shows, Coon Songs, and the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz (University
Press of Mississippi, 2009), 248–289.

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mistress transforms from hypersexualized victim to sexually independent being. As much as the

mammy, mulatta, and mistress character types have distinct qualities, there are some features that

overlap and complicate them, especially as the types interact with other characters and evolve over

time. Therefore, separating these tropes individual sections allows me to simultaneously reiterate

similarities and emphasize differences. Because chapter six addresses how the mammy, mulatta, and

mistress trope evolve and manifest in twenty-first century theatre and popular culture, I conclude

this chapter with twentieth century examples that point toward connections in contemporary

representation.

Mammy: From Plantation Maid to Caring Mother

The overweight, nurturing mammy from minstrelsy can be seen in nineteenth-century

melodrama as well. One-dimensional, stereotyped characters are a prominent feature of the genre,

and plots often end in clear-cut poetic justice, with the morally good rewarded and the bad

punished. George Aiken’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), the most famous adaptation of Harriet Beecher

Stowe’s famous abolitionist novel, demonstrates the form at work. In the play, Aunt Chloe, Uncle

Tom’s wife and the mammy to the slave-owning Shelby household, is known for her excellent

cooking, faithful service, and caring for her husband and kids. While she is a faithful slave to

the Shelbys, she is hurt that their financial strain prompts them to sell Tom to another family.

When she hears of their plan, she worries about her children and tries to convince Tom to run

away. She states, “Why don’t you run away? Will you wait to be toted down the river where

they kill niggers with hard work and starving? I’d a heap rather go there, any day!” 128 These

statements from Aunt Chloe as a mammy figure, show anti-slavery leanings that align with

runaway stories, and are particularly interesting coming from a mammy figure who is speaking

128 George Aiken, Uncle Tom’s Cabin Or, Life Among the Lowly (Samuel French, 1859), 141.

43
to her own husband in an attempt to preserve his happiness rather than that of the slave -

owning family. Likely due to the abolitionist origins of the source materials, Aunt Chloe is a

revolutionary mammy in this way, as she has both a marriage to a kind Black man and is loyal

to him over the white family that she cares for; however, her Black family is quickly torn apart

when Uncle Tom is sold and Aunt Chloe is left behind to continue on as the Shelby’s mammy

without her husband.

Though a slight departure from stage performance, another tradition established during this

period includes the use of caricaturized Black women as brand ambassadors to advertise products.

One of the most recognizable examples of this trend is the Aunt Jemima (1889–present) breakfast

foods brand, which took its name from a late-nineteenth century Black minstrel song and the

character it inspired.129 The company debuted with plus-sized Black spokeswoman Nancy Green in

a bandana, apron, and collared dress, an image utilized at the Chicago World’s Fair and through

television commercials in later eras until its revision to a Black female of average build with pearl

earrings and a natural hairstyle in 1989.130 With this marketing choice, Quaker leveraged the cooking

prowess of the mammy archetype to sell pancake mix and build a massive commercial enterprise.

Thus, the stereotypical representations that began with minstrelsy and melodrama and continued to

resonate in early films, were reinforced with performance and advertisements that spread far outside

of theatre spaces during Jim Crow and beyond. Even the contemporary reimagining of Aunt Jemima

continues to recall these early points of departure; while Aunt Jemima may be slimmer and free of a

headscarf, the close-up of the smiling Black woman’s face is likely to ghost the original Aunt Jemima

for some consumers.

129 Uncle Ben’s rice is another example of similar stereotypical advertising, though it was not introduced until 1943 and branded with
the well-dressed elderly Black servant figure in 1946, an image that remains in the present. Cream of Wheat’s initial Rastus figure
(1893-1925) is also part of a group of stereotypical advertisement figures; Moss H. Kendrix, “The Advertiser’s Holy Trinity: Aunt
Jemima, Rastus, and Uncle Ben,” Museum of Public Relations, 2015, Accessed November 2016.
130 Maurice M. Manring, Slave in a Box: The Strange Career of Aunt Jemima (University Press of Virginia, 1998).

44
 Early films like The Birth of a Nation (1915) continue the trope of a blindly devoted,

overweight female housekeeper in the Cameron household. The film dramatizes the conflict

between North and South during and after the Civil War, illustrated through the Stoneman

and Cameron families respectively. Though Mammy is not a major character, her devotion to

her Southern slave masters and her consistently asexual presence in the background is

significant. When she encounters the Stoneman’s butler carrying the bags, for example, she

demonstrates her careful attention to her duty by staying focused on her tasks; she shows him

where to put the bags but does not stop to chat. She also either purposefully ignores or is

oblivious to his sexual advances, reinforcing her asexuality. Film historian Donald Bogle

reiterates the many ways in which she conforms to traditional characteristics of the mammy

stereotype: “representative of the all-black woman, over-weight, middle-aged, and so dark, so

thoroughly black, that she was desexed.” 131

Often, film mammies remain known only as Mammy, as if it is unnecessary to provide

a name for a character that is merely a type—an extra—rather than a deeply drawn or complex

character. In another characteristic example, Mammy—a character who fulfills the mammy

trope so well that she is literally named “Mammy”—in the film Gone with the Wind (1939)

seemingly has no family of her own and stays loyal to her mistress, Scarlett, and her family,

even during Reconstruction after the Civil War should have granted her freedom. Though her

status would have technically changed to servant as opposed to slave following the war, there

is no visible difference in her role. As an early film representation, Mammy of Gone with the

Wind establishes a pattern of erasure in which Black women’s names, bodies, and lives are

either nonexistent or not their own.

131 Bogle, 14-15.

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 Later iterations of mammy archetype similarly include maids and nannies like Delilah

of Imitation of Life (1934), who becomes a surrogate mother to White widow Bea and her

daughter Jessie. Bea has Delilah cook pancakes in the front window of her restaurant to

relieve her debt. Eventually, Delilah becomes the face of Bea’s pancake brand, remin iscent of

Aunt Jemima, and is offered twenty percent of the profits. However, Bea defers power over

her earnings to Bea and continues to work as her housekeeper and pancake representative,

demonstrating a need to have a subservient relationship with her employer. Delilah’s

deference reinforces the expectation that Black women are immature and need guidance from

White superiors even when they are offered some autonomy to make their own decisions.

Delilah is also a single-mother to a White-passing daughter named Peola whom Delilah tries to

convince to embrace her Black identity. When Peola rebels and estranges herself, Delilah

appears stagnant in her position as a servant and dies heartbroken and helpless. She allows her

work obligations to prevent her from prioritizing her daughter’s welfare and their relationship.

Regardless of their profession, some mammy characters significantly alter the trope by

making family their main concern. Lena (Mama) Younger of Lorraine Hansberry’s play A

Raisin in the Sun (1959) functions as mother to her two kids, daughter-in-law, and

grandchildren who share a rundown one-bedroom apartment in Chicago. After using her

recently deceased husband’s insurance money to put a down payment on a house in a White

neighborhood, she entrusts most of the money to her adult son Walter Lee, Jr. to pay for her

daughter Beneatha’s college tuition and utilize the rest of money on a business investment for

the family’s benefit. Hansberry describes her intent to subvert tradition with Lena’s charact er

whom she calls “The Black matriarch incarnate: The bulwark of the Negro family since

slavery; the embodiment of the Negro will to transcendence.” 132 Lena champions Beneatha’s

132 Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun/ The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window (New York: New American Library, 1966), 88-89.

46
education and Walter’s professional endeavors as potential markers of this tran scendence.

While Lena “takes the risk” on the family’s move during a volatile and racially divisive housing

market during the height of Civil Rights action, she falls into traditional mammy habits of

submissive behavior and conservative thinking by giving Walter control of the family’s fate. 133

When Walter’s partner squanders the money and leaves him penniless, the Youngers move

into their new home despite their indefinite future. Therefore, Lena’s submission to Walter

Lee simply shifts the mammy figure’s tradition of deference from White employer to Black

male family member; from racial subservience to gendered subordination. Nevertheless, Lena

proves evolutionary as a mother figure whose sole priority is her own family.

Even as multifaceted maternal figures with prominent personal lives emerged, some

remain slave/submissive characters. For example, Belle, of Alex Haley’s miniseries Roots

(1977), is a cook on Dr. William Reynolds plantation. When Kunta Kinte— renamed Toby by

his owners— is punished for running away and sold to Dr. Reynolds, Belle tends to Kunta’s

wounded foot and helps him find spaces of hope among the otherwise terrifying

circumstances of slavery. They eventually fall in love, marry, and have a daughter together,

attempting to make the most of the life they have. However, Belle is not naïve to the many

ways slavery produces endless suffering as she states, “white folks break up families.” 134 Belle

helps shape previous iterations of the plantation slave mother as she is seen caring for and

developing a relationship with her own husband and child. Through the series subtitle: The

Saga of an American Family, Haley makes Belle’s family an important part of American history

and through Belle, he illustrates a slave mother’s life separate from her pla ntation duties.

133 Margaret B. Wilkerson, ““A Raisin in the Sun:’ Anniversary of an American Classic,” Theatre Journal 38, no. 4 (1986): 450.
134 Alex Haley, Roots: The Saga of an American Family (Burbank: Warner Brothers, 1977), Film.

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 More recent films illustrate traditional and revisionist versions of the mammy trope. In The

Color Purple, Celie and Sofia represent different facets of the stereotype. Celie is raped and beaten by

her father who separates her from her children and forces her to marry a man she calls Mister.

Mister also rapes Celie and tasks her with maintaining his disheveled house and unruly children.

Throughout the film, Celie’s body is familiarly not her own and she is denied access to her own

children while expected to take care of Mister’s. Therefore, she remains docile and carries out her

duties without much resistance, only brave enough to leave Mister with encouragement from his

mistress Shug with whom she adopts a romantic relationship. Meanwhile, Mister’s son Harpo has an

outspoken wife named Sofia who is jailed after she refuses a White woman’s request to be her maid.

Sofia’s rebellion is met with a violent beating and imprisonment, after which she becomes the

woman’s maid anyway. Sofia then rarely sees her children and becomes a subdued version of herself,

even allowing Harpo to openly have a mistress. The mammy role is forced on both Celie and Sofia,

particularly as self-sacrificing and maternal figures whose housekeeping duties take precedent over

their own lives and desires.

Late twentieth century representations of the mammy attempt to further adjust the trope

with mother characters who willingly sacrifice for their own family. For example, Gloria Matthews

of Waiting to Exhale (1995) is a single mother for years after realizing her son’s father is gay. Between

running her own salon and raising her son, she learns to relax her parenting and allow love into her

life when she finds love with her new neighbor. Gloria represents a common trope in Black women

who sacrifice romance and other personal fulfillment to raise their children alone, though she later

allows love to be a possibility in her life. Meanwhile, Josephine Joseph (Big Mama) of Soul Food

(1997) brought her three daughters and their families together for dinner every Sunday. When she

passes after a diabetic coma, the family soon falls apart which is only remedied by her grandson

convincing them that upholding the dinner tradition is what Big Mama would have wanted. The

48
family also discovers that Big Mama has left them money which is at the root of much of the

family’s tension. In this way, her spirit and sacrifice continue to take care of her family even after her

death. Gloria and Big Mama show that the maternal qualities typically associated with the mammy

stereotype have become family-oriented, and not only give the character a name, but a fulfilled life,

even if much of requires the care of others.

Mulatta: From Tragic Mulatta to White-Passing Girlfriend

The mild-mannered mulatta slave of minstrelsy becomes the tragic mulatta in mid-

nineteenth century melodrama, mostly due to her bi-racial identity. Though mulatta is often a

catch all-term for women of mixed-race identity of Black and White heritage, including

quadroons and octoroons. Aiken’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) features mulatta slave Eliza who

escapes a Kentucky plantation to prevent her son, who has been sold, from being taken from

her. Eliza demonstrates her kind nature when, faced repeatedly with life -or-death situations

while fleeing slave catchers, she refuses to engage in violence. Meanwhile, Zoe, the title

character of Dion Boucicault’s The Octoroon (1859) is also a slave in danger of being sold,

though she spent much of the play believing that her father, the recently deceased plantation

owner, had freed her years earlier. As “the mixed-race heroine,” Zoe “undergoes several

transformations in which her contradictory body is pushed and pulled between its multiple

significations according to a higher system of racial laws.”135 She shares a mutual attraction with

White plantation heir George, but anti-miscegenation laws prohibit their romance, which leads

Zoe to self-sacrificing suicide. In this way, Zoe is the epitome of the tragic mulatta (though

she is a very light-skinned octoroon): beautiful, light-skinned, and enacting the tragedy of the

135 Daphne Brooks, Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850-1910 (Duke University Press, 2006), 39.

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mixed-race woman who is forever trapped by the drop of blood that dooms her to always

being outside of white society, no matter how close she may come to “passing” for white.

William Wells Brown’s The Escape; or, A Leap for Freedom (1858) was “the first published play

by an African American writer,” which addresses issues of mixed-race racialized violence.136 The

play features Melinda, a prominent mulatta character as part of its major plot line. In the play,

plantation owner Dr. Gaines lusts after his biracial slave Melinda, who, in secret, has married Glen, a

slave of Mr. Hamilton, Dr. Gaines’s brother-in-law. Dr. Gaines goes to great lengths to hide Melinda

from his wife after she requests that Melinda be sold. Mrs. Gaines nearly poisons Melinda before she

and Glen escape and follow the North Star toward Canada. Despite Dr. Gaines sending hunters to

catch them, they find freedom on a ferry to Canada. Mrs. Gaines derogatory statements about

Melinda as “that mulatto wench” and “that yellow wench,” dramatize her jealousy that her husband

is sleeping with his slave, especially a mixed-race one produced from generations of sexual abuse.137

Dr. Gaines asserts his privilege over Melinda as his “attractive” property which is “part of a larger

cultural history of violence.”138 In “Reconstruction of Whiteness: William Wells Brown’s The Escape;

or, A Leap for Freedom” literary scholar John Ernest names Brown, a “manipulator of the conventions

of blackface minstrelsy [who] managed to cover a lot of cultural, ideological, and literary ground.”139

In other words, Brown utilizes many character types from minstrelsy but manages to create a story

that critiques U.S. race relations, especially through Melinda, who is shown to be sexually pursued by

Dr. Gaines and nearly murdered by Mrs. Gaines because of her status as a mulatta.

While mid-nineteenth century mulatta characters are largely compassionate slaves

attempting to preserve their families, often leveraged for the abolitionist movement, the early

136 John Ernest, “The Reconstruction of Whiteness: William Wells Brown’s The Escape; or, A Leap for Freedom,” Modern Language
Association 133, no. 5 (1998): 1109.
137 Brown, 21.
138 Ernest, 1114.
139 Ibid, 1109.

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twentieth century sees mulatta characters as devious harlots vying for the attention of

unavailable men. DW Griffith’s ground-breaking—and racist—film, The Birth of A Nation

(1915) signals a departure from the humble mixed-race slave who prioritizes family or

romance. Lydia Hamilton Smith, the biracial common-law wife of Pennsylvania Representative

Thaddeus Stevens inspired Griffith’s Lydia character, a manipulative, sex -crazed mulatta

mistress who lusts after a progressive northern White Congressman, Austin Stoneman, in a

home separate from his children. 140 Their illicit relationship, in which Lydia often clings to

Stoneman and nearly undresses in his presence, influences his decision to advocate for mixed -

race marriages and ultimately leaves his own (White) daughter at the mercy of a malicious

mixed-race man.141

Zora Neale Hurston’s Color Struck (1926) continues a shift toward the flirtatious

mulatta with the light-skinned Effie who causes a brown-skinned couple, John and Emma, to

break up at a cakewalk competition. While John is primarily responsible for fl irting with Effie,

the play perpetuates colorism by portraying her as more desirable explicitly because of her

light skin. 142 With their seductive demeanor toward men who are initially legally or

romantically off-limits, characters like Lydia and Effie signal a shift in the representation of

the mulatta that removes sexual innocence and adds promiscuity.

During the mid-twentieth century, the mulatta stereotype adopted “mean, violent, bitter,

sullen, shadowy, and untrustworthy” qualities as mixed-race characters experienced rejection in

their familial, community, and romantic relationships. 143 Mulatta characters often struggled

140 Marc Engal, Clash of the Extremes: The Economic Origins of the Civil War (Hill & Wang, 2010), 314.
141 Michael Rogin, “The Sword Became a Flashing Vision:” D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, Representations, No. 9, Special Issue:
American Culture Between the Civil War and World War I (1985), 150-195.
142 David Krasner, A Beautiful Pageant: African American Theatre, Drama, and Performance in the Harlem Renaissance, 1910-1927 (Palgrave

Macmillan, New York, 2002), 113-130; Faedra Chatard Carpenter, “Addressing 'The Complex'-ities of Skin Color: Intra-Racism in
the Plays of Hurston, Kennedy, and Orlandersmith,” Theatre Topics 19, no. 1 (2009): 15-27.
143 David Pilgrim, “The Tragic Mulatta Myth,” Ferris State University, Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, 2000, Accessed

October 2016; Cedric J. Robinson, Forgeries of Memory and Meaning: Blacks and the Regimes of Race in American Theater and Film before

51
with their mixed-race identities and assimilated into dominant White society for the prospects

of financial security and long-term relationships. Imitation of Life (1959) is a film adaptation and

remake in which a Black nanny’s fair-skinned daughter Sarah Jane passes for White to secure job

opportunities and pursues a relationship with a White boyfriend. She is conflicted about her

mixed race and distances herself from her Black mother but feels remorse after her death. Likewise,

Adrienne Kennedy’s play Funnyhouse of a Negro (1964) dramatizes the psychosis Negro Sarah

endures when rejecting her Black features and aspiring to White culture. Sarah is tormented by her

Black heritage and claims that her father raped her mother, a questionable claim considering the

fractured mental state that ultimately leads her to suicide. While mixed-race characters previously

experienced rejection in their personal and professional lives, characters like Sarah Jane and Negro

Sarah represent a shift in the mulatta trope that see the mulatta alienating herself from her Black

identity by living as a White women in order to gain job security or partnerships, a trend that

continues into late the twentieth century.

As evidenced by more recent works, the mulatta persona remains scorned by love and

family as well as caught between Black and White societies. Contemporary mulatta characters often

have strained family interactions and utilize either hypersexual or hidden identities to secure

relationships and income. Prominent light-skinned characters exhibit promiscuous tendencies by

vying for men’s attention for stability or status. For instance, Jane Toussaint of Spike Lee’s School

Daze (1988) flaunts her long, straight hair and light skin as measures of beauty. As the head of her

own sorority, Jane promotes colorism to insult dark skinned women and keep them out of her

group. She throws herself at a fraternity leader on campus who uses her for sex and shows her little

respect. Because of the film’s historically Black college setting, Jane’s character symbolizes a racially

World War II (University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 51; Diane A. Mafe, Mixed Race Stereotypes in South African and American
Literature: Coloring Outside the (Black and White) Lines (Springer, 2013), 130; E. Barnsley Brown, “Passed Over: The Tragic Mulatta and
(Dis)integration of Identity in Adrienne Kennedy’s Plays.” African American Review 35, no. 2 (2001): 281-295.

52
insecure and desperate mulatta figure, a trope that continues in various ways in many representations

of light skinned and mixed-race characters often lumped into the mulatta stereotype. The mulatta

characters of series Queen (1993) and film Devil in a Blue Dress (1995) push privileging a bit further as

they utilize their physical features to pass for White to find love and opportunity. In Queen, the title

character is not accepted by her White plantation family and later raped once a Confederate

soldier realizes that she is Black. Over the course of her life, several violent racial encounters

fuel her identity issues and eventually lead to her brief stay in a psychological ward until she

able to discuss them with her husband. Similarly, Daphne of Devil in a Blue Dress has a White

mayoral candidate boyfriend who believes she is White. Once his family realizes that she is

passing, they pay her off to disappear and Daphne retreats to the Black club scene to spend

time with her half-brother, with whom she eventually retreats to avoid social ostracization.

Through characters Queen and Daphne, modern portrayals of the mulatta figure demonstrate

persistent identity issues and how deceiving others by passing affects their relationships and

daily lives.

Mistress: From Desired Slave to Sexual Vixen

Historically, the mistress and tragic mulatta tropes overlap in several ways. Most

importantly, both of these types relied on a cultural and social mindset in which Black women

were seen as hypersexualized and property and, as such, neither needed nor had the ability to

consent to sexual advances. The Jezebel or mistress type was one of the rationalizations of

slavery, because it gave White men an excuse for engaging in sexual relations with Black

women; the mistress trope depicted Black women’s sexual desire as insatiable and unsatisfied

by Black men. Therefore, as the rationalization went, mistresses desired White men too.

Moreover, since slave women—as property, rather than people—could not be legally raped,

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consent was neither possible nor necessary. By this logic, Black women were seen as

hypersexualized in their desire for sexual relations and, due to their status as slaves, unable to

say no to a white man’s advances without serious, potentially life-threatening, repercussions.

Many tragic mulattas, quadroons, and octoroons emerged from these unwanted sexual

encounters, and these women went on to play out some version of the mistress trope in their

own lives. However, one of the most distinct differences between the mulatta and mistress

stereotypes is skin tone, as the former must be mixed-race or light skinned while the latter can

be of various complexions and must only be promiscuous or perceived as such.

Plays of nineteenth century melodrama include prime examples of White slave masters

rationalizing the sexual abuse of slave women. In George Aiken’s play Uncle Tom’s Cabin

(1852), mulatta slaves Cassie and Emmeline are sexually abused by their master Simon Legree .

The younger Emmeline is whipped for overtly resisting Legree’s advances and eventua lly runs

away with Emmeline to escape constant violation. In Dion Boucicault’s The Octoroon (1859),

the title character Zoe is pursued by cruel slave master McClosky, who plots who preys on

George Peyton’s financial misfortune and outbids another benefactor for Zoe at an auction.

Though Zoe loves George and ultimately poisons herself to avoid her fate, McClosky

relentlessly plots on how to make her his mistress. These characters demonstrate the long-

term impacts of White men’s sexualized thinking on the Black women who were enslaved, and

the overlap of the mistress and mulatta tropes. Though these women are victims, their status

as slaves makes them sexually available to their owners and therefore, early iterations of the

mistress trope.

As the mistress type moves into the twentieth century, she takes on a more predatory

role. In the most dramatic example, D.W. Griffith’s film The Birth of a Nation (1915) shows mulatta

servant Lydia lusting after her master Austin Stoneman. She is characterized as sexually aggressive

54
toward the congressman whom she manipulates into championing interracial causes. She also

socially benefits from her relationship with him by doing little to no housework that would be

expected of most slaves. Zora Neale Hurston’s Color Struck (1926) also portrays Effie’s flirtations as

the cause of couples’ break-up at a cakewalk competition. While John deserves some fault for

allowing Effie to distract him, she is portrayed as seductive force that exacerbates latent issues in his

relationship with Emmaline. Despite vacillating from predator to victim, these initial

representations of the mistress character establish Black women as sexual and desirable , as

well as manipulative.

Musicals of the 1930s and 1940s portray philandering and manipulative Black female

characters and continue to distinguish the mistress from the tragic mulatto. Based on the 1927

play Porgy, Porgy and Bess (1935) illustrates the Black community of 1920s Charleston and

focuses on the “ill-fated love affair between Porgy, a crippled beggar, and Bess, a ‘loose’

woman with a penchant for hard liquor, cocaine, and abusive men.” 144 Essentially, Bess relies

on her relationships with three different men for shelter and protection, and largely functions

as Porgy’s “live-in lover.” 145 Though Bess seems most attached to Porgy’s kindness, her

attraction to what the other men offer drives much of the conflict. Other Black female

characters have asserted sexual authority by engaging in relationships with taken or married

men, as does the title character of Carmen Jones (1943), who seduces Joe, an engaged army

officer. While Joe is on military leave to marry another woman, he is tasked with delivering the

delinquent Carmen to the police and though she uses flirtation to escape, their subsequent

relationship encourages his violently jealous tailspin in response to every man she attracts and

144 Ray Allen, “An American Folk Opera? Triangulating Folkness, Blackness, and Americaness in Gershwin and Heyward's Porgy and
Bess,” Journal of American folklore 117, no. 465 (2004): 246.
145 Alice Marguerite Terrell, “Themes of Blackness: Commonality and Unity in Selected African Heritage Literature,” PhD diss., Drew

University, 2017.

55
entertains. 146 Characters like Bess and Carmen, whose roles were reprised in 1950s film adaptations,

embody traditional mistress qualities as calculating and immoral figures in theatrical representation.

By the 1970s a significant shift in the representation of Black women had occurred and

mistresses were commonplace on the big screen. Films and mini-series of the mid- to late-twentieth

century continued to portray the mistress figure as either helpless sexual victim or uninhibited

vixen — a sexually provocative woman— with Black heroines and protagonists. Though

Blaxploitation films such as Cleopatra Jones (1972) and Foxy Brown (1973) included strong, physically

fit heroines to mimic their male counterparts in Sweet Sweetback’s Baaaadasss Song (1971), Shaft (1971),

and Superfly (1972), they further sexualized and exploited women, as the name of the genre itself

suggests. The title character of Foxy Brown poses as a prostitute to exact revenge on the gang who

murdered her boyfriend but is drugged and raped once her cover is blown. Though she eventually

recovers and completes her vendetta, Foxy’s body is objectified as both an impersonating sex

worker and an unwilling sexual object. Despite the powerful perspective on slavery in Alex Haley’s

oft-celebrated ancestral narrative Roots (1977), Kizzy’s recognizable status as adverse slave

mistress to Master Tom is “a representation of black women’s powerlessness.” 147 Like most

slave women in previous dramatic works, Kizzy is a defenseless sufferer of Tom’s sexual abuse

with little power to change her circumstances and she opts not to pursue any social benefits

she might gain from pushing their relationship any further. Together, these characters reveal

the sexual prevalence of the mistress stereotype and lack of agency over their bodies,

regardless of a characterization as protagonist or prey.

146 Harry M. Benshoff and Sean Griffin. America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality at the Movies (West Sussex, UK:
John Wiley & Sons, 2011), 87; Ironically, Dorothy Dandridge, played the leading role in the film adaptations for both Porgy and Bess
(1959) and Carmen Jones (1954), and “was promoted as Hollywood’s first African American leading lady” but because she was
“trapped within the old Hollywood formulas and stereotypes,” her career further demonstrates how Black women are typecast in
theatre and in real life. The film version of Carmen Jones (1954) was remade in 2001 as Carmen: A Hip-Hopera with pop singer
Beyoncé Knowles as the lead.
147 Delia Mellis, “Roots of Violence: Race, Power, and Manhood in Roots,” in Reconsidering Roots: Race, Politics, and Memory

edited by Erica L. Ball and Kellie C. Jackson: 81-96 (University of Georgia Press, 2017) 86, 90; Roots was remade into a
mini-series again in 2016.

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 Films of the late twentieth century prove comparable to previous eras in their portrayal of

sexualized Black women as repackaged mistresses who either refuse commitment, exhibit tastes for

non-heteronormative sexuality, or flaunt their bodies for money. During the early twentieth century,

juke joint singer Shug of The Color Purple (1985) is rejected by her preacher father for sinful

behavior like having sex before marriage and sleeping with Mister, Celie’s husband. Though

Shug enjoyed casual sex with Mister, she develops a romantic connection with Celie as they

bond over the abused they have both suffered over the years as women. By simultaneously

entertaining three male suitors and rejecting a monogamous relationship, Nola of She’s Gotta

Have It (1986) embodies the independent and promiscuous qualities of a mistress. Nola is also

courted by a young woman named Opal who is sexually attracted to her, and their relationship

is symbolic of her freely exploring her sexuality. Within the realm of social expectations, Nola

and Shug refuse to conform to heterosexual normativity by entertaining physical relationships

with women. This perceived sexual deviancy is another quality associated with mistress figures

who neither settle on a monogamy nor heterosexuality. Further, within the circumstances of

their environment, both Shug and Nola exercise a modern mistress mentality of choice

regarding with whom they have sex and relationships.

Black female objectification persists in films of the 1990s with women who are objects of

male characters’ voyeuristic gaze. In Friday (1995), Craig takes interest in Debbie even though he

already has a girlfriend. Early in the film, Craig and his friend Smokey ogle Debbie as she runs

through the neighborhood in a sports bra and tight shorts. There is also a scene in which a middle-

aged woman named Mrs. Parker has an extra-marital affair and attracts men in her neighborhood

with revealing clothes and sexual gestures while tending to her front yard. Because their bodies are

objectified by the male characters, Debbie and Mrs. Parker unknowingly and intentionally figure as

mistress characters in the film. Although Diamond of the The Players Club (1998) claims that she is a

57
stripper only to support her college tuition, she is degraded by her peers for exposing her body in a

public setting. Because Diamond freely chooses to display herself, she gives the impression that she

is sexually available, an assumption that she struggles against with unwanted advances from male

characters throughout the film. Thus, modern film representation still often depicts Black women as

unrestrained and irresponsible sexual beings that are too free with their bodies, sexual habits, and

who, in Diamond’s case, exploit themselves for monetary gain.

Contemporary plays take a similar approach in representing Black women as sexual

conquests and mothers to kids by multiple men. Inspired by The Scarlet Letter’s (1850) Hester

Prynne, Hester La Negrita of Suzan-Lori Parks’ In the Blood (1999) is a Black single mother of

five labeled a slut by her children’s fathers who refuse to help her raise or financially support

them.148 Though Hester’s supposed promiscuity is expected of a mistress, her lack of sexual

restraint proves socially alienating and financially detrimental when her sexual partners cast

her aside. Hester is a character whose perceived sexual irresponsibility socially ostracizes her

and limits her opportunities. While some mistress figures utilize their bodies for professional

and economic advancement, Hester appears a desperate jezebel whose only gift was children

she does not have the means to care for alone. Like her film counterparts, Hester represents a

movement toward mistress characters who openly exploit themselves for money and attention.

The Influence of Historical Representation on Contemporary Television and Film

Despite the mammy, mulatta, and mistress trope becoming less degraded since minstrelsy,

many unflattering qualities remain staples in Black female characterization. For the mammy,

maternal instincts are a potentially powerful association with her image, and yet, the expectation that

148 Carol Schafer, “Staging a New Literary History: Suzan-Lori Parks's Venus, In the Blood, and Fucking A.” Comparative Drama 42, no. 2
(2008): 181; Suzan-Lori Parks’ Fucking A (2000) about a Black female abortionist, is also inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s
The Scarlet Letter (1850).

58
she must always sacrifice personal fulfillment to care for others is a damaging representation.

Though the mulatta figure progressively learns to navigate disparate identities, contemporary

characters reveal her inner struggle to embrace her biracial status. Mistress characters have

transformed from enslaved assault victims to women who take control over their bodies and reject

normative sexuality, which in some ways reinforces ideas about their hypersexual and deviant sexual

habits. Regardless of how these types have evolved from overtly degrading images, Black women

deserve more nuance and authenticity. According to Africana studies scholar Kellie Carter Jackson,

We continue to only “see” black women in film when their images are peripheral—

which is another way of saying that black women are barely seen in historical films.

An apparent exception are films such as The Color Purple (1985), Eve’s Bayou (1997), or

The Help (2011), which feature black women centrally and which all give the surface

appearance of historicity, but in fact are fictional stories, based on novels rather than

the lives of real people, and mainly portray women who occupy subordinate roles

(such as maids). There has yet to be produced a collection of biographical and

historical films about black women which would be comparable to the set produced

by Hollywood in 2013—films in which we would see filmic portrayals of real black

women.149

Thus Jackson recognizes that, despite some standout pieces that revere Black women, their

representation largely remains problematic, inauthentic, and incomplete. As she notes, these

films give the “surface appearance of historicity, but in fact are fictional stories,” and these

stories dramatize women who play the roles of servants and other peripheral characters—

149 Kellie Carter Jackson, “‘Is Viola Davis In It?’ Black Women Actors and the ‘Single Stories’ of Historical Film,” Transition 114, no. 1
(2014): 173-184.

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versions of the mammies, mulattos, and mistresses who have been central in the

representation of Black women since the days of minstrelsy.

Though each theatrical piece must be assessed according to factors like its era, setting, and

target audience, it is difficult to determine the formula for dismantling stereotypes in a culture so

intricately ensnared within them. Is it because housekeeping mammy characters of the Jim Crow

era like Nottage’s Vera Stark (2011) and The Help’s Aibileen and Minny exist that a maternal self-

sufficient character can thrive in the present? Did the sacrificial position of mixed-race slaves like

Beartrice and her quadroon daughters enable the critical stance of college student Sam? To what

extent has time period and social status separated a contemporary mistress like Sara from slave

women Venus and Patsey? In the following chapters, I explore the mammy, mulatta, and

mistress stereotype as separate and enduring images.

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 CHAPTER THREE

JUDGE YA MAMMY:
A RESPECT CHECK FOR BLACK FEMALE MOTHERHOOD

“I want you to be my mommy.” 150 These were the controversial words directed at

Beyoncé by White British singer Adele at the 2017 Grammy Awards during an acceptance

speech. Though Adele likely intended to express her admiration and suggest that Beyoncé

should have won the award instead, Black Twitter exploded as fans expressed their disgust

with Adele, who was seconded by country singer Faith Hill, turning Queen Bey into a

Mammy, “a mother in service to them.” 151 Conversely, Beyoncé is one of the most motivated

and respected pop artists of this generation. She also happened to be pregnant at the time with

twins of her own. Since she prides herself on her image as a mother, sex symbol, and

performer, and has skillfully cultivated a complex and nuanced public image of powerful and

positive Black femininity, Black fans revealed their disillusionment with her being reduced to a

mammy to take on a maternal role to a White woman, like many Black women since the

slavery era. How could a musical legend like Beyoncé be diminished to a mammy figure ?

While many fans came to her aid about Adele’s possible slight, Beyoncé cried and

expressed appreciation at Adele’s later speech for the night’s biggest accolade, Album of the

Year. This speech might be considered clarity in that it emphasizes how worthy Beyoncé’s

album was of winning that year’s Grammy award. Upon taking the stage Adele states,

Five years ago, when I was last here, I also was pregnant, and I didn’t know.

And I was awarded that shortly after — I found out shortly after, which was the

150 Giovanni Russonello, “Beyoncé’s and Adele’s Grammy Speeches: Transcripts,” The New York Times, 12 February 2017; Adele’s full
quote is “I adore you and I want you to be my mommy;” the latter is used to emphasize the reason fans may have were frustrated
and may have interpreted the statement as a mammy comparison and insult.
151 Denene Millner, “Beyoncé is Not the Magical Negro Mammy.” NPR, February 15, 2017.

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 biggest blessing of my life. And in my pregnancy and through becoming a

mother I lost a lot of myself. And I’ve struggled, and I still do struggle being a

mom. It’s really hard. But tonight winning this kind of feels full-circle, and like

a bit of me has come back to myself. But I can’t possibly accept this award. And

I’m very humbled and I’m very grateful and gracious. But my artist of my life is

Beyoncé. And this album to me, the “Lemonade” album, is just so monumental.

Beyoncé, it’s so monumental. And so well thought out, and so beautiful and

soul-baring and we all got to see another side to you that you don’t always let us

see. And we appreciate that. And all us artists here adore you. You are our light.

And the way that you make me and my friends feel, the way you make my black

friends feel, is empowering. And you make them stand up for themselves. And I

love you. I always have and I always will. 152

Beyoncé responds “I love you. Thank you. I love you,” with tears streaming down her face.” 153

Certainly, Beyoncé understands the phenomenon in which Black women who can seemingly

do everything are demeaned as mammies in the dominant narrative, and not appropriately

recognized but that seemed not to be Adele’s intention. 154 Instead, she recognizes that

Beyoncé’s ability to do it all is undeniable. Ironically, Beyoncé was criticized for working too

much to have kids before the birth of her first child, Blue Ivy in 2012. Now that she is the mother of

three kids, how did she become mother to all? Or rather, why would fans interpret Adele’s words as

meaning that Beyoncé was simply a mammy?

152 Clarisse Loughery, “Grammys 2017: Read Adele’s Speech in Full, ‘My Artist of My Life is Beyoncé,” Independent, 13 February 2017.
153 Philiana Ng, “Beyonce Cries After Emotional Adele Dedicates Her Album of the Year GRAMMY to ‘Lemonade,’” Entertainment
Tonight, 12 February 2017; Michaela Coel, “Adele’s Tribute to Beyonce was a Frank Admission of Privilege. I Salute It.”
154 Patricia J. Williams, Seeing a Color-Blind Future: The Paradox of Race (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2016).

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 Typical mammy characteristics include unattractive, overweight, caregiving, and

subservient, but most of all, maternal. The mammy type originated during slavery for Black

maids who functioned as a surrogate mother, housekeeper, cook, nanny, and sometimes wet

nurse for the White family that employed them. The expectation that the mammy bury herself in

work implies asexuality in her personal life, meaning that she either has no partner and family or has

little time to spend with them. Therefore, even when Black women have kids, most of their

nurturing is directed to the children of families they work for as a nanny and housekeeper. A

traditional example of this figure includes the comedic and jovial maids of minstrelsy.

Characters like Aunt Dinah Roh were initially performed by White male actors as a loyal

maternal figure to a plantation family. In melodramas such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), Aunt

Chloe is known for her excellent cooking, faithful service, and caring for her husband and

kids. Likewise, early films like The Birth of a Nation (1915) continue the trope of a blindly

devoted slave. Characteristically, Mammy of film Gone with the Wind (1939) seemingly has no

family of her own and stays loyal to her mistress, Scarlett, and her family, even during

Reconstruction after the Civil War should have granted her freedom. Though her status would

have technically changed to servant versus slave following the war, there is no visible

difference in her role. For the single mammies, familial void produces a sense of independence in

the agency they are allowed outside of their work environment though they are still largely perceived

as domestics in social spaces.

Later iterations of mammy archetype similarly include maids and nannies like Delilah

of Imitation of Life (1934), who becomes a surrogate mother to her White or White passing

children. Even as multifaceted maternal figures with personal lives emerged in films like Lena

(Mama) Younger of A Raisin in the Sun (1959) who functions as mother to her two kids,

daughter-in-law, and grandchildren, Belle of Roots (1977) remains a submissive slave character.

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The subservient and comic mammy trope has proliferated in works ranging from Forrest Gump

(1994) with his childhood maid Viola to the male portrayed title characters of Big Momma’s House

(2000-2011) and the Madea character of Tyler Perry’s film series (2006-2018), who take on

responsibilities for other people’s children. Therefore, even contemporary plays and films portray

Black women as mammy figures with maternal instincts for either their employer’s children o r

their own. Regardless of time period, economic status, or personal obligations, enduring

characteristics of a mammy figure associate Black women with caring for children in addition

to or other than their own.

How does the mammy stereotype contribute to the representation of large, nurturing, and

submissive Black women in dramatic works and popular culture? How does this stereotype continue

to reverberate through popular representation? What alternate possibilities exist for women who

might otherwise fit into this stereotype? The main Black female characters in Lynn Nottage’s play By

The Way Meet Vera Stark (2013) and the Academy Award-winning film The Help (2011) reinforce,

subvert, or transform the mammy stereotype. Through characters Vera, Aibileen, and Minny, I

analyze how the mammy stereotype proliferates in these two case studies and influences perception

of Black female representation in the U.S. culture. Though all of these characters are afforded

limited opportunities as housekeepers during the Jim Crow era, they find ways to create bonds

within their personal spaces and accomplish the unexpected in their profession to make their lives

more than housekeeping. Vera helps her actress employer rehearse lines which prepares her to

transition from a real-life maid to one on the big screen. Despite many of her parts being typical

mammy figures, Vera personalizes the role to create an image she feels is her own. While she makes

sacrifices to love her husband Leroy, she finds his support an endearing and necessary part of her

life. Meanwhile, Aibileen and Minny find themselves personally invested in their jobs as nannies and

housekeepers, especially since their home lives are disheartening. While they mostly comply with

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their employers’ expectations, they both find redemption for their mistreatment. Together, Vera,

Aibileen, and Minny flirt with traditional qualities of the mammy in their lack of social agency but

defy the type through their personal and workplace relationships, and through challenging

demeaning treatment from their employers. I also find that reviews vary on how effectively By the

Way, Meet Vera Stark and The Help reify or destabilize the mammy stereotype.

By the Way, Meet Vera Stark : Nottage’s Title Character Plays Her Own Version of

Mammy in Her Career, Relationships, and Assertive Approach

Vera Stark Defines Stereotypes through the Ages

Lynn Nottage’s By the Way, Meet Vera Stark (2013) is a comedic investigation of

stereotypes through three distinct ages of Hollywood that utilizes layers of historical racism,

colorism, and classism through purposeful characterization, doubled roles, and complicated

relationships. The play focuses on different stages of Vera Stark’s life as a maid and as an

actress typecast as a maid. Act One begins in the 1930s with Vera, “an African-American

beauty” attending to her “White” employer Gloria, a successful Hollywood actress whose

career she supports by reading the corresponding lines of servant figures. 155 Vera’s befriends

other aspiring actresses Lottie, a “pretty, heavyset, brown-skinned woman” and Anna Mae, a

“fair-skinned African-American.”156 Vera also forms a bond with Leroy, who later becomes

her husband, is an educated musician and as a personal valet to White director Maximillian

Von Oster.157 When Gloria hosts Von Oster at her home, Anna Mae accompanies as his

“Brazilian” date, hoping to break into the industry and achieve success. Vera, Lottie, and

155 Nottage, 14-15, 94.

156 Nottage, 24, 26.
157 Nottage, 36; Though no description of Leroy’s skin tone is offered here, the dialogue between he and Vera about race implies that

he is visibly Black, i.e. brown-skinned.

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Leroy allow her charade but mock her method of race swapping.158 Vera and Lottie also work

in tandem to impress Von Oster with an impersonation of oppressed Negroes. 159 Von Oster

is so moved by their act that he casts them along with Anna Mae in his film The Belle of New

Orleans, starring Gloria.

Act Two features a scene from the film in which Gloria plays ailing octoroon mistress

Marie, who is looked after by her French singer friend Cecilia (Anna Marie), and her maids

Tilly (Vera) and an unnamed slave woman (Lottie). The play then shifts to a 2000s panel

discussion during which scholars Herb, Carmen, and Afua reflect on the racial discrimination

Vera and others experienced by featuring her perspective in a 1970s talk show interview.

While Vera aspires to Gloria’s reputation and opportunities, skin tone places them in disparate

social classes and she is typecast as a maid throughout her career in performance and real-life.

During what was one of her last public appearances, Vera reveals how difficult it was to

navigate racism in the industry which affected the roles she was offered, strained her personal

relationships, and defined much of her career.

Nottage reveals that Vera as well as the other female characters were inspired by

former actresses in the industry. Her initial questions for the play were centered on the lives of

Black female actresses in the early film industry: “Who are these women in early Hollywood?

These beautiful, talented, African American women who were very much ingénues, but were

unfortunately pushed to the margins. What were their lives like? What were their aspirations?”

These questions linger in the present day with Black female actresses yearning for respectable

roles.160 Nottage notes that she carefully crafts her characters as “ordinary, extraordinary

158 Nottage, 26-30.

159 Nottage, 24, 54.
160 Lynn Nottage, “On Creativity and Collaboration: A Conversation with Lynn Nottage, Seret Scott, and Kate Whoriskey,”

by Jocelyn Buckner, A Cambridge Companion to Lynn Nottage, edited by Jocelyn Buckner (New York: Routledge, 2016), 182.

66
women” who come from hard-working female ancestors, particularly those who “were raising

white children… and helped shaped the sensibilities of this country.”161

The novelty of Vera Stark is Nottage’s methodical use of a theatrical text which

dramatizes the careers of Black actors and entertainers to comment on stereotypes within the

entertainment industry. Notably, Vera’s role is portrayed by an actress playing an actress who

initially works as a maid to finance her acting. Vera’s colleagues in Act One: valet/musician

Leroy Barksdale, fellow maid Lottie McBride, and socialite Anna Mae Simpkins respectively

become filmmaker Herb Forrester, professor Carmen Levy-Green, and journalist Afua Assata

Ejobo, her critics at the 2003 colloquium in Act Two. During the panel, they show Vera’s

1973 controversial interview with Brad Donovan played by the actor who played director Von

Oster in Act One. The use of doubled roles in this segment functions as Nottage’s analytical

plot device for critiquing stereotypes by allowing modern characters to comment on their

predecessors/former selves, the roles the actors formerly played in Act One. This shift in

actor representation also suggests some evolution in class status and occupation through the

decades which has been a slow process for Black representation in dramatic works and real

life. Through moments like these, Nottage acknowledges the various ways Black actors, artists,

and scholars endure and evaluate stereotypes. She critiques the very medium she creates and is

therefore, very aware of the character tropes and intention behind the work. In “ Vera Stark at

the Crossroads of History,” cultural historian Harvey Young reiterates that because “every

female character is African American, Nottage invites audiences to consider the role of

performance in the fabrication and maintenance of social identity.” 162 Young emphasizes that

this play establishes “how their manipulation of speech, dress, and gesture enables them to reveal

Ibid, 184.
161

Harvey Young, “Vera Stark at the Crossroads of History,” in A Critical Companion to Lynn Nottage edited by Jocelyn L. Buckner
162

(New York: Routledge, 2016), 110.

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the artifice and thin construction of racial and class categories.”163 Collectively, these characters

illustrate the persistent issue of representation for Black actors and entertainers dur ing the Jim

Crow era.

Vera Stark is a mammy character that both represents and critiques the stereotype by

articulating the complicated nature of Black womanhood and the ongoing self-negotiation

about when to conform or resist restrictive cultural standards. Vera embodies traditional

mammy characterization through her brown skin tone, servant role to employer Gloria, and

lacking personal life or family obligations. However, as a brown-skinned “beauty,” Vera resists

many of the characteristics that pervade typical mammy characterizations with brief marriages

during her lifetime, revisionist maid portrayals in film, and a clear, vocalized discontentment

with discrimination and criticism when interviewed (in the play) later in her career. Through

the talk show scene and the consequent scholarly discussion which analyzes it, Nottage pays

homage to Black actresses of the early to mid-twentieth century like Hattie McDaniel and

Theresa Harris who paved the way for Black representation on stage and screen by enduring

demeaning stereotypes for sheer visibility. Because Vera’s role is seen and critiqued in each of

the three distinct eras, she is the common denominator that unites these disparate decades and

serves as one way to measure how much theatrical Black representation has changed over

time. Of particular interest to this chapter is Vera’s agency within her circumstances as a mai d

and an actress, her attempts to maintain meaningful relationships despite her demanding

career, and her efforts to subvert degrading images and influence her own representation.

Through the title character, By the Way, Meet Vera Stark has generated conversation about the

mammy and other Black stereotypes past and present in accounts from scholars, actors, and

audience members. Pushing the Status Quo: Vera is a Maid, Not a Mammy

163 Ibid.

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 Though Vera leaves her housekeeping job behind for a thriving acting career, being

typecast as a maid because of skin tone makes her feel as if the role is inescapable. Because of

this, she resents her White passing cousin Gloria’s success. Theatre scholar Soyica Diggs

Colbert describes how the exchange between Vera and Gloria in Act One sets the tone for

how “racial designations become intertwined with professional roles,” which are apparent

Figures 5: By the Way, Meet Vera Stark productions with Black Veras and White Glorias. From left
to right, Photo by Sara Krulwich, Source: New York Times; Second Stage, 2011, Stephanie J. Block
(left), Sanaa Lathan (right); Photo by Jeff Swensen, Source: Pittsburgh Playhouse, 2014, Maria
Beacotes-Bey (left), Kelly Trumbull (right); Photo by Allen Weeks, Source: The Chicago Tribune,
Penumbra Theatre, 2015, Norah Long (left), Crystal Fox (right)

throughout the play. 164 During an interview Vera gives on The Brad Donovan Show in Act Two,

Vera grows progressively tense and more frustrated when Gloria, her cousin, former

employer, and fellow actress, is revealed as a surprise guest. The interview recalls how Vera

resumed her role of Gloria’s housekeeper as her co-star in The Belle of New Orleans and is

undeniably jealous of Gloria having passed for White to score leading lady roles and

popularity. 165 Diggs Colbert notes that the familial ties between Vera and Gloria “complicate

the easy dichotomy of black help and white employer” to comically comment on the “histories

and hearsays that produce America’s miscegenated family tree.” 166 In reality, slaves often

164 Soyica Diggs Colbert, “Playing the Help, Playing the Slave: Disrupting Racial Fantasies in Lynn Nottage’s By the Way, Meet Vera
Stark,” Modern Drama 59.4 (2016), 401.
165 Since my next chapter about the mulatta stereotype addresses colorism in depth, I here simply acknowledge its role in

the play as the root of discriminatory casting based on skin tone which privileges Gloria and suppresses Vera.
166 Diggs Colbert, 401.

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shared blood ties with the White family they served and though these relations were no secret,

they were not recognized as relatives since it would upset the social order of racial divide and

hierarchy. Therefore, slaves and their master’s family performed their roles as separate entities

inhabiting completely disparate worlds. This served versus server relationship involved Black

and mixed-race slaves working for their White slave master fathers, half siblings, and family

members. The relationship between Vera and Gloria personifies this toxic, historical tradition

since Gloria needed to be White to establish superiority over Vera.167 Vera ultimately blames

Hollywood colorism for Gloria’s success as a leading lady compared with her own mostly

static representation as a maid.

Though Vera personalizes her filmic maid roles to deviate from the mammy stereotype,

she receives criticism from scholars, decades later. A 2003 panel on Vera Stark’s legacy

features a recording of her 1970s talk show appearance. Hosted by filmmaker Herb Forrester

(played by the actor who played Leroy in Act One), professor Carmen Levy-Green (played by

the actor who played Lottie in Act One), and journalist Afua Assata Ejobo (played by the

actor who played Anna Mae in Act One), the panel deems Vera’s performance in the fictional

1930s film The Belle of New Orleans strikingly similar to that of Hattie McDaniels’ role of

Mammy in Gone With the Wind. Herb suggests that though Vera was “breathtaking” in the

movie, “ultimately she was still just another shucking, jiving, fumbling, mumbling, laughing,

shuffling, pancake-making mammy in the kitchen.” 168 His biting words equate Vera with an

Aunt Jemima-like figure and echo the criticism that Black actors past and present receive for

accepting roles that perpetuate stereotypes.

167 Similar portrayals of families separated by racial lines is also present in television series like Roots (1977/2016) and
Underground (2016-17) in which slave children serve their White slave master father.
168 Nottage, 100.

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 Though Nottage draws direct comparisons to Hattie McDaniel, perhaps Prissy, also of

Gone with the Wind is a more fitting contemporary to Vera in that she was a young, slender

maid whose outspokenness was punished by her White family. A former Broadway dancer

who notably never married or had children, actress Butterfly McQueen acknowledges that

though “the part of Prissy was so backward,” it allowed her to make a living. 169 However,

McQueen was quickly unsatisfied with how that role typecast her throughout her career. She

states, “I didn’t mind playing a maid the first time, because I thought that was how you got

into the business. But after I did the same thing over and over, I resented it. I didn’t mind

being funny, but I didn’t like being stupid.” 170 At the end of her career, Vera likewise despises

the expectation that she be subservient on and off screen. Consequently, she becomes less

popular in the business as she increasingly resists her societal and theatrical role as a mammy

and freely expresses her opinion.

Despite the criticism Vera and real-life maid actresses largely received from the Black

community, some utilized the limited type/number of roles Hollywood offered them to make

a living not dependent on actual servitude. Though McDaniel and McQueen are the most

recognizable comparisons of Black mammy figures from the 1930s, the lesser known actress

Theresa Harris was Nottage’s actual muse when fashioning Vera Stark. Like McDaniel, Harris

performed alongside famous actors like Bette Davis, Clark Gable, and Jean Harlow, but is

perhaps best known for her role as a charming maid and confidant to her promiscuous White

employer in Baby Face (1933), starring Barbara Stanwyck. Similarly, Vera’s role as Tilly in The

Belle of New Orleans is a maid to lustful octoroon Marie, played by Gloria. However, Harris’s

tale is less dramatic than that of Stark’s. Instead of alienating herself from the entertainment

169 “Butterfly McQueen. 84. ‘Gone With the Wind’ Actress, Dies from Burns.” Jet Magazine, Entertainment, 60.
170 Ibid.

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industry with controversial remarks and fading into obscurity by her early 60s, Harris

comfortably retired from acting in her early-mid 50s and spent the remaining years of her life

with her husband until her death at age 78.171 Nottage’s choice to make Vera outspoken about

her representation in the film industry suggests that agency has a cost; while Vera

progressively works to disrupt and undermine the tradition of the mammy figure, her own life

and career suffer the consequences. Nottage illustrates through Vera that resisting cultural

norms is not as simple as critics suggest and that audiences’ compliance contributes to

accepting and supporting damaging representations.

Vera’s Personal Relationships Are Dictated by Her Career

Vera’s personal life both upholds and challenges the mammy stereotype . Typical of a

mammy/maid figure, Vera seems to have no children or consistent partner, but attempts a

personal life with two brief, “problematic marriages.” 172 Her lack of children is likely because

she tends to Gloria as both family and employer. Black feminist and sociologist Carolyn West

determines that “The Mammy image reinforces the belief that Black women” make “p ersonal

sacrifices within [their] family, community, or workplace” and “happily seek multiple roles”

without expecting any assistance from others. 173 Since both are adult women at age 28, Vera

functions as a nurturing personal assistant to Gloria rather than a mother figure. Gloria relies

on Vera for the confidence and prowess to succeed in her high-profile career as an actress, so

their interaction reinforces the typical mammy narrative in which Black maids provide

personal advice and support. However, the basis of their relationship is characteristically one-

171 “Vera Stark Biography.”

172 Nottage, 83.
173 Carolyn M. West, “Mammy, Jezebel, Sapphire and their Homegirls: Developing an ‘Oppositional Gaze" toward the Images of

Black Women,” Lectures on the Psychology of Women: Fourth Edition edited by Joan C. Chrisler, Carla Golden, and Patricia D. Rozee,
(Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press: 2008), 290.

72
sided in that Gloria offers essentially no support to Vera in return. During their reunion at

Brad Donovan’s talk show in 1973, Gloria even apologizes for “taking her for granted all

these years.” 174 However, Gloria referring to Vera’s maid years as “a gorgeous time” makes it

clear that she has a skewed view of their non-reciprocal relationship. 175

Vera meets her first husband Leroy Barksdale, a “trumpeter for the Petie Owens

Orchestra,” outside a film studio in 1933. They discuss their simultaneous admiration and

disappointment for Black actors who have made it on screen albeit in demeaning roles with

Vera, even stating “I sense judgment in your voice,” when she tells Leroy about her desire to

break into the industry.176 Though he initially picks on her with a “spot on impression of

Stepin Fetchit,” he encourages her career, stating, “You don’t seem like the kind of gal who’d

just stand around back, waiting on small opportunities. You seem like the one folks should be

paying money to see.” 177 Leroy plays a small but significant role in establishing that Vera

experienced romance and support at some point during her life, even if short-lived.178

Meanwhile, Vera’s second husband, the abusive, philandering “prizefighter” Dortch Ross, is

only briefly mentioned with the implication that the relationship is either too ugly or

insignificant to provide any details. Therefore, the text focuses solely on how Vera’s supported

Leroy as a friend and partner, despite their relationship not lasting long-term.

Vera empathizes with Leroy’s violent response to persistent bigotry, though it limited

her career. Her candid interview in which she speaks about her life and legacy is analyzed by

modern-day academics in a 2003 panel, including Herb, Carmen, and Afua. Herb, host of the

panel, explains that Leroy “accidentally beat a drunk heckler to death with his trumpet,” and

174 Nottage, 98.

175 Nottage, 88.
176 Ibid, 41.
177 Nottage, 41.
178 Nottage, 83.

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served time for manslaughter. 179 Afterwards, “Vera’s career took a major hit, because she

stood by him throughout his troubles.” 180 She reveals that “back then, love came with a price”

since “Celestial Pictures terminated [her] contract because of Leroy.” 181 However, Vera puts

the “unfortunate” event in context, stating that she understands Leroy’s frustration:

He was backed into a corner and came out fighting. Young people don’t know

this, but we had to be fighters back then… But I make no excuses for him. He

reacted humanly, too humanly perhaps... I’m sorry for the man that who was on

the dark side of his historic rage, but it happened… 182

Panelist Afua emphasizes the significance of Vera’s unfiltered opinion in that era, stating,

“She’s challenging them to understand Leroy’s historic rage. Remember, these sorts of things

don’t get said on popular television.” 183 Afua’s statement acknowledges that in her own way,

Vera made conscious decisions to defy discrimination during the height of her career in the

1930s and when clarifying her decision to support Leroy in the 1970s. While Vera’s marriage

efforts distinguish her from the traditional mammy whose family is absent or non-existent,

Leroy’s behavior compromises her work and is portrayed as the reason for their relationship’s

demise. Their failed union illustrates how Black women often had to sacrifice their partner and

family for their careers. 184 Vera resolves, “I had that kind of unfortunate love for Leroy, and

it’s only after a couple cocktails and a sedative that I make peace with it.”185 Their inability to

coexist further perpetuates the expectation that Black maids are unable to establish or

maintain a romantic partner.

179 Nottage, 83.

180 Nottage, 83.
181 Nottage, 81-82.
182 Ibid, 74-81.
183 Nottage, 81.
184 Patricia Hill Collins. Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism (Routledge, 2004) 60,
185 Nottage, 81-83; “Vera Stark Biography,” By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, Finding Vera Stark, 2013, Accessed 2017: Nottage’s website

for the play further explains the racially charged argument during a musical performance that led to Leroy’s imprisonment for
murder.

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Beyond the Apron: How Vera Subverts Mammy Characterization

Vera’s is unable to escape the mammy role on screen and off which she contests with

her acting and physical appearance. Though she initially made concessions by accepting

caricaturized roles to work as a Black actress, Vera found ways to complicate the static,

conventional mammy character and personalize the role including advocating for her lines in a

film with a typical maid attending to her mistress. Knowing that her talents far exceeded the

parts she was given throughout her career, she fought “tooth and nail for the last line in early

1930s film The Belle of New Orleans,” because the studio “didn’t want Tilly, a Negro woman to

have the final word.”186 Her line, “Stay awake, and together we’ll face a new day” also

humanizes the maid figure who shows sympathy and hope for her mistress’ condition as she

lay dying. Leroy describes her as “a damn good actress [that] Hollywood didn’t treat right.” 187

He explains that when Vera is “of course, playing a maid,” she had her ridiculous pickaninny-

like costume taken in “two inches around the waist and the hips, so it looked real sexy.” 188

Vera’s carefully planned choice to update her wardrobe attracted the director’s attention and

allowed her “get a little more than they was willing to give her.” 189 However, her choices had

some material consequences, as she recalls the film being “very daring for its time. It was

banned in most theaters in the South.” 190 Therefore, Vera’s defiance signals some progress in

being released with her last impression, despite some censorship. Additionally, while becoming

more politically involved with civil rights protests, Vera recalls having “publicly turned down

the role of Hanna Gunn in the film The Ghosts of Alabama.”191 By literally reshaping her attire,

186 Nottage, 92.

187 Ibid, 84-85.
188 Ibid, 84.
189 Ibid, 85.
190 Nottage, 92.
191 Nottage, 76.

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creating a lasting image, and rejecting particular parts, Vera resists the asexual and compliant

mammy role as well as the limitations the industry tries to place on her abilities.

Throughout the 1970s talk show, Vera expresses her own frustrations with racism in

Hollywood which meant that her brown skin determined the role she would play literally and

figuratively her entire life. She resolves that she chose to play a maid for years rather than

continue to work as one: “I’ve had to battle all of my career! It’s easy for people to point

fingers today, but, honey, should I not have taken that role and cleaned toilets and made beds

in someone else’s home instead?!” 192 Vera’s statements incite direct real-world comparisons to

that of Hattie McDaniel, best known for playing Mammy in Gone with the Wind (1939). In

response to criticism from the NAACP as well as a 1945 Cleveland Gazette article calling her a

“Tom,” McDaniel asks “Why should I complain about making $700 a week playing a maid? I’d

being making $7 a week being one.” 193 What proves troubling is that despite the slight

progress and personal economic advancement they achieve in taking these roles, they play into

White expectations of their subservient role in society and reify stereotypical images that

upwardly mobile Black-led organizations like the NAACP wish to escape. Vera asserts that her

career “opened doors in Hollywood,” and laments that although her representation has shifted

among her “over fifty-five pictures, all anyone seems to remember is The Belle of New

Orleans.”194 Vera says her “old tongue can’t be restrained,” and that she “marched with Dr.

King and was one of the first actresses in Hollywood to be outspoken about the Civil Rights

Movement of the fifties.” 195 Vera’s open dialogue about racism in the entertainment industry

challenges talk show decorum which remains mostly subdued in the 1970s despite the country

192 Ibid, 92.

193 “No Hope for the Negro in Films As Long As Hattie McDaniel ‘Toms,’” Cleveland Gazette, February 17, 1945, 9.
194 Nottage, 78.
195 Nottage, 75.

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having recently passed civil rights legislation. As “a classically trained actress,” modern -day

panelist Carmen relates to Vera’s struggle to escape stereotypes.196 She states,

I’m a woman of a certain girth, so I know how easy it is to be ascribed a role

and become imprisoned by it. At the academy I played Juliet, Nora, Medea,

classic roles, but in the professional world I’m offered the same crumbs that in

many respects defined Vera’s career. 197

While Vera voices how her career was progressive for its time, Carmen confirms how Black

women remain the object of traditionally harmful images.

Vera Stark’s Reviews & Impact on Mammy Characterization

Beginning in 2011 with various Off-Broadway and regional productions, audiences

have recognized Nottage’s multifaceted characters who defy the mammy and other

stereotypes. The initial 2011 Second Stage Theatre and 2012 Geffen Playhouse productions in

New York and Los Angeles respectively feature the likes of a “vibrant and fresh” Sanaa

Lathan, famous from film Love and Basketball (2000) and an “equally effective” Merle

Dandridge, best known for series Greenleaf (2016—) that “shine[s] as well.” 198 Strong

performances in additional regional productions in Atlanta and St. Paul from versatile and

established Black actresses including Toni Trucks of series Barbershop (2005), Kellee Stewart of

film Guess Who (2005), and Crystal Fox of OWN network’s The Haves and the Have Nots (2013-

2017) set the tone for the play’s success.199

196 Nottage, 82.

197 Ibid.
198 Ibid; Ben Brantley, “A Black Actress Trying to Rise Above a Maid,” New York Times, Theatre Reviews: By the Way, Meet Vera Stark,

May 9, 2011; Samuel Garza Bernstein, Los Angeles Theatre Review: By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, Stage and Cinema, October 2, 2012.
199 Other productions include Baltimore, Charlotte, Chicago, Long Beach, and Pittsburgh which launched and reinvigorated the

careers of Dawn Ursula, Brandi Feemster, Tamberla Perry, Adanna Kenlow, and Maria Becoates-Bey; Crystal Fox is Nina Simone’s
niece.

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 Through Nottage’s characterization of Vera in By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, audience

members watch and discuss a renewed representation of the mammy in social media and

online news reviews. Social media response about Vera Stark yielded production reviews from

a diverse population of audience members from various cities that transcend the typical 40-50

age range.200 Twitter users, particularly Black female professionals aged 25-40, posted positive

reviews about the play. #VeraStark was “hilarious” and “#awesomeplay.” Reviewers

“HIGHLY recommend #VeraStark esp if ur a scholar of/interested in the hist of black actors

in film” because it “makes us laugh—and think about why we’re laughing.”201 Reviews for

various universities account for most of the 174 public Instagram posts with the hashtag

#verastark which likewise demonstrates diverse interest. 202 Reviews from primarily middle-

aged White male theatre critics emphasize content flaws that potentially affect Vera’s

characterization. Chicago Tribune journalist Chris Jones argues that the competing stylistics of

realism and satire in the Act 1 to Act 2 transition as well as the embedded film distract the

play’s intention to debunk stereotypes. 203 While Jones acknowledges that Vera Stark imbues

Black actor stereotypes with “‘subversive readings,’ wherein [racial] minority and women

actresses filled a role and undermined its objective elements at the same time,” New York Times

reviewer Ben Brantley similarly states that “much of the comic material feels stereotyped in

itself.”204 It is telling that most Black audience members who reviewed the play had kind

reviews and little to no criticism, seemingly supporting Nottage’s presentation of Black

women, while White critics analyzed its plot structure to question her effectiveness at

200 Don Aucoin, “Theater Audiences are Growing Older,” Boston Globe. June 17, 2012.
201 Twitter: Theater in Dallas: @TheatreThree, “#VeraStark makes us laugh…” (26 June 2014); Black female professor under 40:
@blackwritergonerogue: “This play is hilarious.” (23 October 2013); Black female Marketing/Advertising Pro, Maya, @wayamaya,
“HIGHLY recommend #Vera Stark,” (26 October 2013); Black female food blogger under 40: Nadine, @BKFoodie97,
“#awesomeplay (10 November 2013).
202 These universities include Ursinus College, Pomona College, Arizona State, University of Florida, University of Iowa,

University of Washington, and Brown University; Instagram, Explore: #verastark.

203 Chris Jones, “’By the Way, Meet Vera Stark,’ at the Goodman Theatre,” Chicago Tribune, May 6, 2013. Accessed 2017.
204 Ibid; Brantley, “A Black Actress.

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subverting stereotypes. Regardless of their varying opinions, these social media post s and

articles reveal that Nottage’s play has undeniably generated discussion about Black female

stereotypes.

While these major theatre critics are certainly entitled to their perspectives on new

work, the complexity of Nottage’s work has also earned additional scholarly scrutiny. Nottage

utilizes different time periods (1930s, 1970s, and 2000s) and different dramatic formats in

addition to the play itself (the film scene of The Belle of New Orleans, Vera’s filmed interview

video, and the academic colloquium) to repeatedly demonstrate the many ways in which Black

actors were, are, and continue to be typecast in the entertainment industry. Tony Adler of the

Chicago Reader finds that the “academics have no real dramatic function” other than “to make

their points, and then make them again. And again.” 205 Though Adler expresses annoyance at

the play’s repetition in the colloquium scene and otherwise, maybe repetition is the point.

Nottage implements repetition to illustrate how dramatic works perpetuate race and class

differences through recurrent stereotypical representation like the mammy figure. Therefore,

Nottage’s creative response to stereotypes in By the the Way, Meet Vera Stark stresses that

debunking racism is a complex and recurring problem. Unlike Adler, I perceive Nottage’s

work as composite, carefully constructed, and very aware of its metaphysical exploration of

stereotypes, particularly the mammy.

Regardless of their opinion on the play’s overall effectiveness, critics and fans alike

acknowledge Nottage’s reverence of early Black actresses and attempt to challenge stereotypical

assumptions. Vera both embodies and rejects the mammy stereotype through her choices and

performance of self in her career and otherwise. She is not maternal in that she is neither

205Tony Adler, “Second Act Troubles Afflict By the Way, Meet Vera Stark,” Reader, Arts & Culture, May 8, 2013, Accessed 2017.”; A
similar argument surrounds scholarship about Saartje Baartman as well as the Suzan-Lori Parks and Lydia Diamond plays for which
her story forms the plotline.

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caring for her employer’s nor her own children, but she provides Gloria unreciprocated

nurturing and assistance as her servant, which is typical in some relationships between a maid

and female employer who may require the same level of child-like assistance. Though she

attempts to have romantic connections, her career obligations and ambitions together with her

husbands’ problematic personalities largely contribute to her unsuccessful love life. She

accepts her mammy role for visibility on screen but refuses to play it as written , which is an

issue that often plagues contemporary Black actresses. Thus, Nottage’s work provides a logical

segue into film and television representation in which Black actors often find themselves

conflicted between securing work, visibility, and authenticity. The characters articulate an

awareness of the stereotypes and racial assumptions they simultaneously embody and resist .

Toni Trucks, star of the 2013 Alliance Theatre production, said in an Atlanta Tribune

sponsored Google Hangout session that she believes playing Vera’s role was an opportunity to

reveal that during the Jim Crow era, Black female actresses’ “parts were limited but their

talents were not.” 206 As a Black female actress of today, she recognizes that her “obstacles are

definitely present but different because of the hard work of the actors that came before

[her].”207 Trucks’s perspective suggests the parallels between Vera’s story of Black actors

struggling for roles and authentic representation during the Jim Crow era, and Black actors

enduring the same in the present.

I similarly explore how social discrimination affects the main Black female characters

in the film The Help (2011) as they conform to or deviate from the traditional mammy

stereotype in their roles as nannies and housekeepers. Like Vera, Minny and Aibileen

experience hardship in their careers that limits their personal lives, though they forge bonds

206 Atlanta Tribune, Google Hangout Live, You Tube, 23 October 2013.
207 Ibid.

80
with the women for whom they work. Albeit from the perspective of a White protagonist, the

illustrated livelihoods of Aibileen and Minny become the spotlight. How does the film’s

characterization of these women as maids render them recognizably compliant servants even

as it creates their distinct and multidimensional identities?

The Help : Maids Minny and Aibileen Play Maid, Make Friends, and Speak Up

Whose Story Is It? The Help through Skeeter’s Eyes

White director Tate Taylor’s The Help (2011) is based on White author Kathryn

Stockett’s novel of the same name. The film dramatizes the dichotomous coexistence of White

housewives and their Black maids in Jackson, Mississippi during the 1960s. Inspired by the

loss of her family maid Constantine, burgeoning writer Skeeter Phelan is the film’s narrator and

protagonist, and she provides the outlet and means through which Aibileen Clark, Minny Jackson,

and other town housekeepers tell their stories. Throughout the film, Hilly Holbrook uses her social

influence as president of the Jackson Junior League to pressure other housewives and harass the

maids. While most White women in Jackson are concerned with upholding social appearances

through racial discrimination, Skeeter forms bonds with the maids she secretly interviews to

compile a book that provides a glimpse into their authentic experiences as distinct personalities,

rather than just hired help. As a college-educated, single woman unconcerned with outward

appearances, Skeeter is an outsider amongst the White suburban housewives who proliferate in her

community and comprise the group of town socialites.

Aibileen and Minny both embody and resist traditional characteristics of the mammy figure

in their appearance and professional decorum. While Aibileen is of an average build, what shape she

may have is downplayed to give her a plain, figureless appearance. Amongst her housekeeping

duties, Aibileen’s primary responsibility is to take care of the Leefolt’s child, Mae Mobley, with

81
whom she forms a bond. Aibileen goes above and beyond the typical care expected of a nanny who

does simply what is asked of her by showing Mae love she does not receive from her mother. Her

relationship with Mae seemingly fills a void since Aibileen is single with a deceased child. Despite

her love for Mae, Aibileen reaches a breaking point and decides her nannying does are done when

she is falsely accused of stealing. In her capacity as surrogate mother, Aibileen reifies the mammy

stereotype, though she cares for Mae more than is obligated by her position until her dignity is

challenged, and she pushes back at the expense of their relationship.

Minny is a large woman whose body type is more closely aligned with the conventional

mammy stereotype. Meanwhile, Minny works for racist Hilly and her senile mother but is fired after

using their indoor bathroom. When Minny retaliates by cooking Hilly a chocolate pie full of poop,

she is blacklisted from the maid circuit until hired by the endearing Celia Foote, whom Hilly hates

for marrying her ex-boyfriend and ostracizes from the community. Minny and Celia form a bond

over their distaste for Hilly as well as feminine issues. With her stature and culinary skills, Minny

upholds traditional qualities of the stereotype. While her family in the form of kids and an abusive

marriage slightly challenge the trope, her overt challenge to racism is revolutionary for her era.

The maids’ personal lives and workplace bonds contend with predominant iterations that

have no significant or reciprocal relationships. While Aibileen’s husband is absent and her grown

child is deceased, Minny has young kids that she attempts to shield from her abusive husband. In

contrast to dramatic works like Gone with the Wind (1939) which marginalize the Black maids as

secondary, rather than primary characters, The Help humanizes Black women who are otherwise

portrayed as compliant and ignorant servants unworthy of their employer’s attention. White female

characters Skeeter, Mae, and Celia show immense compassion for their Black maids in The Help

whose stories comprise the film’s major plotline. However, the maids risk their livelihood while

Skeeter and Celia merely suffer some social alienation. Nonetheless, the interracial female bonds

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between Aibileen and Mae and Minny and Celia demonstrate the important role Black nannies

played in the lives of White women and children during the period between Jim Crow and Civil

Rights. Collectively, their workplace behavior, relationships, and individual choices establish their

inclusion in the mammy trope though their characters are prioritized in the narrative as multifaceted

figures that personalize the type.

Further, maids Aibileen and Minny develop close relationships with the women of the

families that employ them. However, they are perpetually cognizant of the difference between

their situational domestic bonds and social class status. Since the film primarily illustrates their

lives as housekeepers, to what extent do Aibileen and Minny fit into traditional tropes of the

mammy figure? In what ways do they resist social expectations and find agency in their

representation? How does the film demonstrate specific details about the precarity of their

daily existence? What has been the cultural response to the film’s story and characterization in

movie reviews and social media posts?

Like Vera Stark, The Help has layers. The film’s protagonist Skeeter is author Stockett

personified as both are White women disseminating Black women’s stories. The film’s setting within

Southern rural Mississippi during the Civil Rights era further illustrates the complexity of race

relations in the United States.

The Maids Fight for Family

Traditionally, mammies are unmarried or have little time to spend with their own families

due to housekeeping obligations for the family that employs them. The Help demonstrates the

practical ramifications of this for Aibileen and Minny in different ways.

The Help makes no mention of Aibileen having a husband or long-term relationship. Even

subtexts within the memories of her recently deceased son insinuate that she raised him on her own.

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When Skeeter asks Aibileen “What does it feel like to raise a child when your own child’s at home

being… looked after by someone else?,” she reflects on her son’s death at 24.208 Aibileen explains

how Treelore was neglected after a serious accident at his lumber yard job when his “lungs were

crushed.”209 While Aibileen was tending to another family’s needs, her son’s employer “threw his

body on the back of a truck, drove to the Colored hospital, dumped him there and honked the

horn.”210 After the hospital was unable to care for him, she brought him home and he quickly

passed on her living room couch. Unfortunately, she claims that because of her limited time away

from work, she “didn’t even get a chance to pray for Treelore,” whom she claims God took quickly

so she would not have a chance to argue.211 Her pointed focus on Skeeter and rejection of Minny’s

consolation give the sense that this may be Aibileen’s first time telling this story, and only because

Skeeter asked. Though Skeeter and Minny are very empathetic and attempt to comfort her, Aibileen

resists their touch and recounts the events in a deadpan manner as if Treelore’s death is a distant,

though undeniably painful, memory. Her demeanor suggests that she has become accustomed to

holding in her feelings which she is rarely, if ever, allowed to express. Her suppression of this tragic

loss reveals how Black women are often tasked with the responsibility of caring for everyone else

while no one in turn cares for their well-being. Further, without a partner to help, she had no choice

but to be her son’s sole caregiver and spend her final moments with him the best way she could. Her

story about his death reveals how deeply she continues to grieve his death over two years later.

Minny offers a slight twist to the conventional mammy who either has no husband or rarely

gets to see her husband. Her home life is not a happy or fulfilling one though. Minny’s husband

Leroy is an abusive alcoholic and Minny spends her limited time at home attempting to pacify him

208 Taylor, np.

209 Taylor, np.
210 Ibid.
211 Ibid.

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and protect her five kids from his wrath. On the phone with Aibileen, Minny recalls the “terrible

awful thing” she did to Hilly by giving her a contaminated pie and worries that she “ain’t gone never

get no work again.”212 She states, “Leroy gone kill me.”213 Seconds later, he slaps her causing her to

drop the phone and Aibileen is forced to hang up to avoid hearing her screams. While Minny’s

relationship status may signal a departure from the conventional mammy, her marriage is not to be

celebrated and further perpetuates additional stereotypes about Black relationships being

dysfunctional.214 Minny’s quick-witted temper at work arises from the need to vent frustrations

about her husband’s volatile behavior. This characterization further omits or incriminates Black men

and makes Black women victims to their violence. The portrayal of Leroy and Minny’s marriage

suggests that when Black couples have the audacity to exist, they are doomed to fail.

Aibileen and Minny Form Meaningful Relationships and Resist When Necessary

Aibileen is a mostly deferential maid for the Leefolt family, and her primary job is to

care for their child Mae. Aibileen voices frustration to Skeeter and other neighborhood

housemaids that pregnant housewife Mrs. Leefolt attends social functions with friends and spends

little time maintaining her home or bonding with her kids, even having neglected basic hygienic

needs like changing her young daughter’s diaper at night.215 Because Mae yearns for attention she is

not getting from her mother, Aibileen fills a surrogate role by teaching her the affirming mantra

“You is kind. You is smart. You is important.”216 Though nannies typically care for the children

they watch, Aibileen’s special attention to Mae’s emotional void encourages a particularly close

emotional bond that surpasses obligation. Though Mr. Leefolt advises Mrs. Leefolt that they cannot

212 Ibid.
213 Ibid.
214 In “The Past Is Ever Present, Recognizing the New Racism,” Patricia Hill Collins addresses how the tradition of strained

relationships originated in slavery, pgs. 53-86

215 Tate Taylor, The Help, script, np.
216 Ibid.

85
afford it, she is bullied by housewife Hilly Holbrook into installing a separate outdoor bathroom for

Aibileen. Soon after the bathroom is installed, Mae voices her devotion to Aibileen by exclaiming

“Me and Aibee bafroom, Momma” and attempting to use the facilities before her mother drags her

into the house.217 This exchange reveals where Mae’s loyalty lies since Aibileen is her primary

caretaker.

The Leefolts are mostly unappreciative of Aibileen’s efforts to make up for what they lack in

nurture, but she endures her job for the children’s sake until the very end of the film. Once Skeeter’s

book is published, Hilly is angry that the chocolate pie incident is included and fears that the town

will learn her secret even though her name is not mentioned. Because Hilly believes that all the

maids are conspiring against her, she seeks revenge on Aibileen as an easier target since blackmailing

Minny led her to Celia and kept her out of reach. Mae’s attachment to Aibileen is heartbreakingly

clear in their final scene together after Hilly has accused Aibileen of stealing and the Leefolts dismiss

from the Leefolt residence. Aibileen’s bond with Mae is apparent as she collapses, cries, and screams

out “Don’t go, Aibee. Please don’t leave.”218 Until this moment, Aibileen has been mostly complicit

in following the rules of a domestic worker in favor of keeping her job and keeping the peace. She

resists the mammy stereotype when her honor comes into question and is willing to let Mae go to

defend it.

Because she believes that all the maids are conspiring against her, she accuses Aibileen of

stealing from the Leefolts who fire her due to peer pressure. Disgusted that she is unable to defend

herself, Aibileen curses Hilly and leaves a distraught Mae crying as she says goodbye to her and

nannying for good.

217 Ibid.
218 Ibid.

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 While Minny reifies the typical physicality and cooking style of a mammy, she adamantly

resists the mammy’s stereotypically obedient nature. This contributes to her vastly different

relationships with her two employers, Hilly and Celia. Minny’s first employer, Hilly, is overtly racist

and fires Minny for using the indoor restroom during a terrible storm. Minny, however, takes the

concept of revenge to the extreme. After first raising a “pie behind Hilly’s beehive, dreaming of

smashing it into her head,” she bakes an “apologetic” chocolate pie and offers it to Hilly disguised as

a peace offering. Hilly eats two pieces before Minny reveals that it was made with a hint of poop.

Mortified, Hilly retaliates by labeling Minny a thief to prevent her from working in other homes until

social outcast Celia Foote requests her help.

Having been abused by her own husband as well as vindictive White employers like Hilly,

Minny covers her fragile state with a rough exterior and defensive posture, which is only contested

by Celia’s persistent kindness as her new house maid. Minny is at first taken aback by Celia’s

compassion and lack of racial boundaries which complicate the typical dynamic in which a White

employer only interacts with their Black help when making demands. Celia earns Minny’s trust after

paying her fair wages and spending quality time together at the same table discussing their personal

lives. Minny ultimately becomes Celia’s domestic mentor and friend, teaching her how to cook and

maintain her home. Journalist Dyane Jean Francois contends that Celia is child-like and “responds

to [Minny] as if to a mother. This relationship is meant to counterweight the blatant racism of other

characters, most notably Hilly who now refuses to share a bathroom with [Minnie], the maid who

raised her.”219 The two prove a great match due to their shared disillusionment with Hilly and

demonstrate mutual respect by helping one another through social mishaps, miscarriage, and abuse.

At one point, Celia even tells Minny, “I just want you to know I’m real grateful you’re here.”220 Like

219 Dyane Jean Francois, “Film Review: How ‘The Help’ Failed Us,” Huffington Post, 14 August 2011.
220 Taylor, np.

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Aibileen and Mae, Minny and Celia create one of many female bonds that make the film powerful.

Uncharacteristic of most of the relationships between White employers and their Black employees,

Celia returns the care Minny provides during Celia’s miscarriage by tending to Minny’s wounds after

Leroy batters her face in a fight. Their interaction demonstrates the strength of female bonds within

the film across racial boundaries, especially in empowering one another and helping each other cope

with painful situations.

As the oldest maid character featured in the film, Constantine epitomizes the conflict Black

women in this era felt when having to choose between their work family and actual family. Though

Constantine is a minor character with few scenes, Skeeter considered Constantine family and friend,

having shared a close bond like that of Aibileen and Mae Mobley. When Skeeter returns from

college and learns that Constantine has been fired, capturing her story becomes partial motivation

for her book. Like Mrs. Leefolt who was coerced into firing Aibileen, Mrs. Phelan feels compelled

by dinner guests to fire Constantine after her daughter’s early arrival at the front door rather than

the kitchen door interrupts the meal. In this case, Constantine’s years of loyalty to her employer are

forgotten in a moment of anger at the expense of her job. Though Mrs. Phelan is ashamed of her

role in the incident and tries to conceal what happened, Skeeter’s relentless pursuit of Constantine’s

story eventually compels her to tell the truth. Unfortunately, Constantine moved and passed away

before Charlotte had a chance to reconcile with her and, like Mae; Skeeter is devastated by the loss.

When White families fire the housekeepers they have grown close and accustomed to due to societal

pressure and concerns about their reputation, it reveals that maids are dispensable, despite the length

or quality of the relationship. Though most of the maids’ transgressions, from coming inside the

main door instead of the back door and from using the inside bathroom instead of an outhouse

during a storm should be forgiven, the maid’s White employers feel obligated to follow racist

traditions that chastise and disadvantage Black help. Tense interactions such as these illustrate ever-

88
present class differences between maids and their mistresses, as well as signify the dissolution of a

significant relationship from which both parties feel psychological loss.

The female bonds between White female employers and their Black maids suggest that the

political implications of the Jim Crow era, particularly racist friends, are outside influences that

interrupt these otherwise positive relationships. Like Adele wanting Beyoncé to be her mommy,

White women from the Jim Crow era often sought connections with their nannies, some

having closer relationships with them than their own mothers. It is unfortunate that

generational racism socially and domestically caused those relationships to be manufactured,

strained, and sometimes broken apart over time. The feminine bonds within the film show

how women of all races share some similar concerns, even if they are not able to agree about

how to tackle them in the same way.

The Film’s Impact and Criticism: Could These Maids’ Images Still Use Some Help?

The comparable experiences of housemaids Aibileen, Minny, and Constantine illustrate the

lack of agency they have in their work status. Though they deviate in some ways from the traditional

mammy types, their roles contribute to their strained familial relationships which they replace with

female bonds in their workplace. Although these characters submit to their subservient position to

some extent, they are given much more depth than their predecessors Mammy, Aunt Chloe, and

Aunt Jemima, and selectively allowed to speak their minds, albeit only through the film’s White

female protagonist. The Help makes some progress in diverting from the original mammy stereotype

since Skeeter’s mission to collect Black women’s stories—which typically go untold—forms the

basis of the plotline. Yet Skeeter’s book filters the Black maids’ narrative through her White female

perspective as does Taylor’s film which is based upon Stockett’s novel which keeps Skeeter as the

agent of change. Further, the little bit the film shares about the maids’ personal lives is tragic and

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disheartening, which is an overarching criticism of mainstream Black female representation,

particularly for the mammy figure.

Questions about the historical accuracy, idealized truth, and omission of certain facts

concerning the vulnerability of a Black female maid form the bulk of criticism about The Help.

According to media scholars Kathleen McElroy and Danny Shipka, when compared with other

civil rights films like The Butler (2013) and Selma (2014):

The Help as a fictionalized story, written and directed by a white woman and

man respectively, was found the least favorable overall from reviewers. Though

there are compelling, Black female characters, some critics argued that their

story is disseminated through the White perspective both in the context of the

film (and novel) through the White female protagonist, as well as the screenplay

and direction that created the movie. 221

For some viewers, The Help is among several films and creative works guilty of “racial

ventriloquism,” in which Black stories are told from a White perspective based on uninformed

assumptions that contribute to stereotypical representation.222 The success of The Help was

complicated by a lawsuit, in which novelist Kathryn Stockett sent her brother’s maid, Ablene

Cooper, a letter informing her that The Help was mostly fictional, but “inspired [by another]

family housekeeper.” Cooper deemed Stockett “a liar” and sued for the use of her likeness

without attribution in 2010. 223 Despite the case being dismissed, it raised questions of

authenticity or intent within her novel and the subsequent film which are undeniably loosely

based on the author’s experiences with Black housekeepers. 224

221 August Wilson? In next version include film review from McElroy & Shipka, “I Give Civil Rights Four Stars…,” 1-15
222 Claire O. Garcia, Vershawn A. Young, and Charise Pimentel, From Uncle Tom’s Cabin to The Help: Critical Perspectives on White-Authored
Narratives of Black Life (Springer, 2014), 4.
223 Holbrook Mohr, “Author’s Letter is Focal Point in ‘The Help’ Lawsuit,” The Final Call: Associated Press, September 5, 2011,

Accessed 2017.
224 Ibid.

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 Likewise, critics assert that these stories are not authentic to Black women’s

experiences, that they villainize and exclude Black men and make White men liberal heroes,

and cast White women as either the saints or sinners of the movement toward Civil Rights. 225

While it is likely that some issues were left out to establish camaraderie between White women

and their Black housekeepers, the film omits the gruesome narrative of how many Black

women were raped by their White male employers since, save for Celia’s husband, White male

characters in the film rarely interact with the Black maids directly. 226 Having secretly worked

with Celia, Minny takes off running upon seeing Johnny, thinking he will harm her in some

way for trespassing or being at the house without his knowledge. Instead, he promises her he

means no harm, thanks her for helping Celia, and helps her carry the groceries. While the

exchange between Minny and the Footes shows the possibility of healthy interactions, the

suppression of sexual harassment in the film and often in real life, is a real issue that made my

own grandfather work longer hours to prevent my grandmother from having to take a

housekeeping job.

Scholars and audience members alike voice their frustration with The Help as one of

many contemporary films that continues to show servant class Blacks in an era of struggle for

basic civil rights, as if the déjà vu of current news is not reminder enough. The film

simultaneously supports the tradition of representing Black women as mammies in service to

the masters, while celebrating the small victories they accomplish when they oppose those

roles of loyalty and compliance. Even with the Oscar nominated and winning performances of

revered actresses Viola Davis (Aibileen) and Octavia Butler (Minny), as well as a strong cameo

appearance from Cicely Tyson (Constantine), many Black audience members feel that both

225 Commentary, A Critical Review of the Novel The Help, Its Audio Version, and the Movie, Blog, 2010.
226 Trysh Travis, “Is The Help Realistic? It Depends.” Black Past.

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actors and audience deserve more nuanced roles told from their perspective. Francois of The

Huffington Post claims that “The only positive thing about this movie is that it put several Black

actors on a screen before a wide audience.” 227 Akiba Solomon is similarly critical of the film’s

“historical whitewash” and argues that “there are too many group hugs to be trusted as an

accounting of the Civil Rights movement.” 228 Their statements contest that there is more to

the maid’s story, particularly their livelihood and the authentic experiences of their social

environment. Therefore, mammy figures like Aibileen and Minny amongst other stereotypes

in contemporary films irritate an already sore spot within the Black community that through

both ancestral heritage and social discrimination they are unable to forget but wish to move

past nonetheless.

Regardless of criticism, film and novel sales, as well as memes and gifs featuring

favorite quotes by and about Aibileen and Minny reveal the film’s impact on popular culture.

Literary scholar Suzanne W. Jones describes the The Help’s popularity and success:

The movie held the number one spot in box offices for several weeks after it

was released in August 2011… Three months after the film’s release, it had

grossed $160 million at the box office. Both novel and film have been discussed

in likely and unlikely television venues, such as The View and Hardball. Add to

that, DVD purchases, Netflix rentals, e-books downloads, and readership and

viewership [that] may someday surpass that of Gone with the Wind.

These figures suggest that this story with prominent maid roles has impacted a large audience

and potentially influenced their views on mammy representation. 229 Minny’s cooking is an

227 Francois, np.

228 Akiba Solomon, “Why I’m Just Saying No to ‘The Help’ and its historical Whitewash,” Colorlines, 10 August 2011.
229 Pamela McClintock, “‘The Help’ Audience: Just Who Exactly Is Going to See It?”, Hollywood Report, August 26, 2011, Accessed

November 2017.

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audience favorite. “Minny don’t burn chicken,” “Fried chicken just tend to make you feel better

about life” and in response to keeping Minny’s employment secret from Celia’s husband,

“Ain’t he wonderin’ how the chicken so good.” 230 These memes about Minny’s love for fried

chicken reiterate the traditional mammy stereotype and emphasizes her influence on Celia

when Minny teaches Celia how to cook. Other posts enjoyed satirizing Aibileen’s mantra for

her surrogate child, Mae: “You is kind. You is smart. You is important.” 231 With these few

words, Aibileen uses the time she has with Mae to encourage and mentor her, affirming her

with assurances she is unlikely to hear from her own mother. Utilizing its flawed grammar,

viewers remixed the statement into: “You is broke. You is tired. You is a teacher,” and “You

is petty. You is messy. And you is extra.” 232 Some critics of the film may be repurposing

Aibileen’s mantra to poke fun at her character and at the film, but even in jest, Aibileen’s

inspirational phrase is also a testament to her strength and enduring positivity in the face of

adversity throughout the film’s majority. This minor show of defiance—bringing care and

attention to a child desperately in need of love—is one enduring way of bringing the mammy

into the twenty-first century. Yet it is the deviations from the mammy type that have retained the

most staying power, as Minny’s infamous pie scandal is one of the scenes that has received the

most appreciation on social media. With memes like “Minny Jackson: Have you tried her

chocolate pie?,” “Humble Pie: You DON’T want a piece of this,” “Eat my shit,” and “Eat yo

pie bitch,” it is clear that her character’s distinct personality and fulfilled retribution delighted

many fans of the film. 233 Minny’s defiance is atypical of a traditional mammy and the most

230 Pinterest, “Minny Don’t Burn Chicken;” Pinterest, “Fried Chicken…”; Tumblr, “Ain’t He Wonderin’.”
231 Amino Apps, “You is Kind…”
232 Pinterest, “You is Broke;” Pinterest, “You is Petty.”
233 Pinterest, “Minny Jackson…”; Pinterest, “Humble Pie…”; Tumblr, “Eat my Shit;” Pinterest, “Eat yo Pie, Bitch.”

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perceptible quality of her character. Collectively, these social media posts expose how the film

affects popular culture’s perception of Black female mammy figures.

According to Solomon, a journalist for Colorblind, “Implicit in The Help and a number

of other popular works is that notion that a white character is somehow crucial or even

necessary to tell this particular tale of black liberation.” 234 Atlantic reporter Alyssa Rosenberg

claims that The Help “softens segregation for a feel-good flick. Even more than in the book,

the film downplays the ugliness of Jim Crow and fixates on the goodness of its White

protagonist.”235 I agree with critics who suggest that The Help being told from Skeeter’s

perspective, as orchestrated by director and screenwriter Taylor, falls short in some respects

concerning the harsh realities Black maids faced in the Jim Crow South. Perhaps Tate Taylor’s

screenplay and Stockett’s novel coupled with the primarily White production team is another

point of critique as assistance from Black screenwriters and crew members may have

contributed to balancing the film’s multiple perspectives. However, Taylor, whose other

directing credits notably include racially charged short film Chicken Party (2003) and James

Brown biopic Get on Up (2014), has a clear investment in championing Black stories and

tackling racism. Though in their own ways Aibileen, and Minny deviate from the traditional

mammy, the film largely depends on the stereotype due to its time and context. Much of what

separates them from mammies of the past is the bit the film exposes about their personal

lives, but these details about Aibileen’s deceased son and Minny’s abusive husband seem to do

more damage than good in terms of explicating their character, since it reinforces the trope

that mammie have a broken or absent personal life. Though criticized for its authorship

origins, the film champions strong female relationships that transcend race and class divisions

234 Solomon, np.

235 Alyssa Rosenberg, “‘The Help’: Softening Segregation for a Feel-Good Flick, The Atlantic, 10 August 2011.

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with Black housekeeper’s roles at the forefront. Ultimately, The Help provides a focused

depiction of Black maid’s lives whose physicality, behavior, and relationships determine th e

extent to which they accept or resist mammy associations.

Mammy Revised or Memorialized?

Vera Stark and The Help have been widely seen and despite mixed reception and

varying reviews, recognized for their attempt to stage captivating Black female characters and

challenge stereotypical assumptions surrounding the mammy figure. Together, these works

reinforce and challenge the mammy as a recognizable stereotype. Vera Stark straddles the line

between full-on mammy and revolutionary by consciously utilizing the stereotype as she

deconstructs it. Aibileen and Minny bear close resemblance to the traditional trope in their

duties as housekeepers and nannies as well as in the stories they share about their experiences.

However, they disrupt typical mammy obligations when they become close to Skeeter as she

authors their stories and forge bonds with the White women they care for that surpass the

expectations of their duties. By actively resisting Hilly’s targeted disrespect, Minny and Aibileen

defy typical depictions of a docile mammy. Though the format and method of storytelling of

these dramatic works differs in so far as audience demographic and accessibility, viewers

readily identified and analyzed both the realistic and problematic representations of the

mammy stereotype via social media, blogs, reviews, and scholarship. In this digital age of

social media and instant web platforms, creative artists might benefit from considering

existing audience criticism to improve how their work is received in terms of demystifying

preconceived notions about Black women, particularly those who otherwise fit the physical

and social characteristics of the mammy trope.

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 How do By the Way, Meet Vera Stark and The Help collectively inform representations of

the mammy trope? Although Black women of all skin tones might have been a nanny or

housekeeper, Brown and dark-skinned women are typically portrayed in these roles onscreen as are

Aibileen and Minny. The brown-skinned Vera Stark from Nottage’s play previously makes this point

as she voices her frustration at being typecast due to her appearance throughout her career.

However, Vera, Aibileen, and Minny find individual ways to maintain relationships and navigate

their circumstances, privileges from which the earlier iterations of the mammy figure were excluded.

These dramatic works use historical racism as an empathetic lens to challenge contemporary

racism and demonstrate a new form of Black female resilience and strength in spite of the

racism that remains. Recognizing how this trope has transformed and remained the same is

important because it reflects societal attitudes about race which have progressed in some ways

and remained stagnant in others. Overall, these dramatic works generate fruitful discussion

and uncover ways in which the mammy stereotype has begun to shift over time. Issues of

colorism and class are particularly fruitful in my discussion of the mulatta fig ure in the

following chapter.

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 CHAPTER FOUR

“GET IN WHERE YOU FIT IN”: EVERY MIXED CHICK’S MYSTERY

Mulatta Under the Microscope: Women of Black and White Parentage in Historical &

Dramatic Representation

In 1863, New York World journalists David Croly and George Wakeman persuaded readers

against Abraham Lincoln’s reelection by manufacturing the term miscegenation to suggest that

“newly freed slaves would attempt to mate with white women to create mixed-blood mulattos.”236

Derived from the Spanish word for mule or hybrid, mulatto is a term “originally used to mean

the offspring of a ‘pure African Negro’ and a ‘pure white.’” 237 While White men feared that

Black men would sexually assault White women and produce mixed-race children, the reverse was

actually true; it was very common for White men to sexually abuse Black women, and this behavior

accounted for most mixed-race children during slavery.238 Though mixed-race denotes at least two

separate racial backgrounds that may include but are not limited to Black and White, this study uses

the terms mixed-race and the feminine mulatta interchangeably by focusing on the latter. While

White women typically entered socially acceptable and often profitable relationships with their

husbands, Black women were property who bore children with men they could not marry.

Therefore, is the shame and secrecy about mixed-race children because enslaved Black men are

indeed not the founding fathers for most mulatto lineage? Is it because White men are not supposed

to be attracted to Black women? Considering how slavery has impacted the spectrum of Black skin

tones, why does the US insist on upholding racially divisive, all-or-nothing categories that seem to

236 Errol G. Hill and James Hatch, A History of African-American Theatre (Cambridge University Press, 2003), 313.
237 Sharon M, Lee, “Racial Classifications in the US Census: 1890–1990,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 16, no. 1 (1993): 75-94.
238 Sally G. McMillen, Southern Women: Black and White in the Old South (John Wiley & Sons, 2017), 31-40, 220.

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implicitly rely on the one-drop rule ideology, rather than allowing an individual to identity with a

multiplicity of races?

Slavery led to many of the United States’ race related issues. Persistent phenomena like

racism and colorism use superficial measures to separate light from dark. The one-drop rule is one

such measure, which “historically defined anyone with any ‘drop’ of black blood as black,” and

“applies primarily to people of mixed African-European background, and not to other patterns of

so-called ‘racial intermixture.’ It applies only to Americans of entirely or partially African descent.”239

The one-drop rule is such “an important factor [in] shaping racial identity, particularly for multiracial

Americans with black ancestry,” that it was recently cited by Mariah Carey and Halle Berry, which

“suggests that even our most well-known mixed-race celebrities are not ‘post-race.’”240 Since

slavery, the decennial U.S. census has utilized the one-drop approach for racial categorization.

Until 1930, people of Black and White parentage, regardless of ratio, were classified as Black

or mulatto. 241 During this period, some distinctions included quadroon and octoroon, who

have respectively one-fourth and one-eighth Black blood. 242 Since 1930, the census has only

included Black or other as possible categories for a mulatto person. 243 According to

sociologist Sharon M. Lee, “Eventually in the United States, the terms mulatto, colored,

Negro, black, and African American all came to mean people with any known black African

ancestry.” 244 This established system of racial categorization informs my explication of mixed -

race or mulatta women of Black and White parentage in dramatic works.

239 Nikki Khanna, “If You’re Half Black, You’re Just Black: Reflected Appraisals and Persistence of the One-Drop Rule,” The Sociology
Quarterly, 5.1 (2010), 96; Winthrop D. Jordan, “Historical Origins of the One-Drop Racial Rule in the United States,” Journal of Critical
Mixed Race Studies 1, no. 1 (2014), 101.
240 Khanna, “If You’re Half Black,” 96; Sika Dagbovie-Mullins, Crossing Black: Mixed-Race Identity in Modern American Fiction and Culture

(University of Tennessee Press, 2013), 106.

241 Lee, 75-94.
242 Ibid, 77-78.
243 Ibid.
244 F. James Davis. Who is Black?: One Nation's Definition (Penn State Press, 2010), 5-6.

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 Interracial sex and marriage, miscegenation and amalgamation, remain issues “the discourse

of race has yet to transcend.”245 Former Suits (2011–present) actress Meghan Markle, who married

British Prince Harry in May 2018, has received much media coverage and criticism about her mixed-

race heritage, both in the US and the UK. Seemingly an affront to the “whitelash” of the current

administration in response to former mixed-race president Barack Obama, controversial

commercials from companies like Amazon, Cheerios, Humira, and Swifer have featured healthy,

interracial couples and families.246 Alexandros Orphanides of NPR argues that regardless of the

United States’ rapidly growing mixed-race population, “the hope that a mixed-race future will result

in a paradise of interracial and ethnically-ambiguous babies is misleading” and does not acknowledge

the extent to which racism is a culturally embedded “active system.”247 Literary scholar Michele

Elam determines that since “mixed race people are neither new nor apparently increasing,” inquiries

should focus on “Why we see more people as mixed race now” and “How do people self-identifying

as mixed see themselves?”248

According to the enduring one-drop rule, any trace of Black blood, especially in the form of

physical features makes one Black. Though light skinned people, like myself, are likely mixed-race,

they may not always identity as other than Black for lack of ancestral data or familial ties to another

race. Since slaves were often separated from their families and/or not acknowledged by their White

slaveholding relatives, those without immediate interracial families (i.e. parents or grandparents),

might be unaware of their true racial makeup.249 Yet for individuals who could pass for White, their

racial identity may manifest differently. In late nineteenth-century Louisiana, White passing octoroon

245 Tavia Nyongo, “The Amalgamation Waltz: Race,” Performance, and the Ruses of Memory (University of Minnesota Press, 2009), 23.
246 John Blake, “This is What ‘Whitelash’ Looks Like,” CNN, 19 November 2016; “Whitelash” was a term used by CNN
commentator Van Jones used to describe “an old reality [in which] dramatic progress in America is inevitably followed by white
backlash.”
247 Alexandros Orphanides, “Why Mixed-Race Americans Will Not Save The Country,” Code Switch: Race and Identity Remixed,

NPR, 8 March 2017.

248 Michele Elam, The Souls of Mixed Folk: Race, Politics, and Aesthetics in the New Millennium (Stanford University Press, 2011), 6.
249 Though DNA kits are now readily available, many rely on racial/ethnic percentage rather ancestral background, save for

Ancestry.com.

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Homer Plessey would likely have been able to ride on a “Whites only” railway car instead of being

arrested had he not been part of known experiment to test whether physical features were reliable

traits to segregate Black and White. Racial distinctions of skin color, hair, and other physical features

are markers that have perpetuated colorism to divide the Black community since slavery and prove

that race is complicated.250

Contemporary internet memes use either satire to promote light-skinned versus dark-

skinned rhetoric or critique that divide as self-damaging and inconsequential to predominate

White society. Some memes perpetuate skin-tone based stereotypes with light-skinned women

portrayed as mean, uppity, and self-centered in a summer post explaining that “You gotta text

light skinned girls today ‘Merry Christmas’ to get a reply on December 25 th.”251 Others

challenge a dark-skinned woman’s mixed-race, light-skinned people’s involvement in Black

Power, and critique the stereotype that singing abilities correlate with skin tone. 252 Referring

to the latent jealousy that began with light skin privileging during slavery, one meme even cites

darker lion Scar’s betrayal of lighter lion Mufasa in animated film Lion King (1994) as to blame

for “how light skin vs. dark skin beef got started.” 253 Though most of these memes are meant

in jest, there is some truth to the privilege light skinned people received as domestic versus

field slaves, through passing or, as Gardley portrays, marrying White partners, causing a rift

with their dark-skinned contemporaries. This type of divisiveness within the Black race often

exacerbates identity struggles for light-skinned and mixed-race people.

Alternate ideology dismisses colorism by recognizing that according to persistent one-

drop rule racial classification, all people with some trace of Black identity are Black and

250 Kerr.
251 “You gotta text a light skinned girl ‘Merry Christmas’ now to get a reply on December 25th,” Me.me, Accessed March 2017.
252 “Dark skin girls be like I’m mixed. With what— Charcoal?,” Memes.com, Accessed March 2017; “You’re too light skinned for

Black Power,” Tumblr, Angela Davis Black Power: I’m High Yellow, Mixed Race, and Pro Black as Hell. Miss Me With the
Bullshit; “Not all dark men cannot sing, not all light skin men can sing,” Pinterest. Accessed March 2017.
253 “How light skin vs. dark skin beef got started,” Pinterest, Accessed March 2017.

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treated thusly. A poignant meme features slave men of both complexions with chains around

their necks, stating “Team Dark Skin, Team Light Skin. Didn’t Matter Then. Doesn’t Matter

Now.”254 Another features the once socially conscious rapper Kanye West interrupting intra -

racial dialogue like he interrupted Taylor Swift’s 2009 VMA acceptance speech, stating, “I’ma

let this light skin vs. dark skin BS continue… but Willie Lynch started colorism to divide &

conquer slaves.” 255 These critical examples from popular culture reveal how systematic racism

continues to oppress Black people and encourages them not to perpetuate hegemon ic

colorism amongst themselves. Unfortunately, these posts reflect real opinions of Black people

who have long been pitted against one another based on skin tone. Because art reflects life,

theatrical works likewise channel or challenge these colorist sentiments.

In dramatic representation, a mulatta is a mixed-race woman whose light skin and dual

identity proves problematic to racial categorization in a country that prefers easy definitions of

Black and White, and this identity shifted over time. Since the mulatta stereotype includes mixed-

race characters of Black and White parentage, I focus on dramatic works with mixed-race characters

and use mulatta and mixed-race interchangeably. Mixed-race as opposed to biracial works best for

my study as a broader term that can mean any mixture of two or more races, which accounts for

quadroon and octoroon. Beyond the horrendous conditions of slavery, a mulatta endured

psychological warfare from occupying the space between her Black field hand family and her

White plantation owning relatives. Since slavery, this intermediary space between Black and

White has fueled colorism, “the allocation of privilege and disadvantage according to the

254 CK Matters, “Team Dark Skin, Team Light Skin. Didn’t Matter Then. Doesn’t Matter Know.” Me.me. Accessed March 2017.
255 “I’ma let this light skin vs. dark skin BS continue but Willie Lynch started colorism to divide & conquer slaves,”
Memegenerator.net, Accessed 2017, The existence of Willie Lynch is controversial/disputed as well as the speech cited as the
source for colorism, Kanye West’s line “I’ma let you finish but…” comes from him interrupting Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech
at the 2009 MTV awards to voice his support for Beyoncé instead; “White people be like ‘house slaves and field slaves still
beefing,’” Pinterest, Stop with the Light Skin vs. Dark Skin Madness, Accessed March 2017.

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lightness or darkness of one’s skin.” 256 Therefore, a mixed-race woman’s hybridity and light skin

subsequently made her an outsider within both White and Black society. 257 Historically,

slaveowners emphasized a mulatta’s Blackness to justify enslavement and separate her from

freedom. Conversely, slavery-era abolitionists utilized a mulatta’s nearly White physicality and

genteel mannerisms to elicit sympathy for slaves’ lives and experiences. 258 Though a mulatta’s

light skin and fractured racial identity remain consistent characteristics of representation,

stereotypical factors like a cruel or miserable demeanor, financial or emotional motivation, and

complicated or ill-fated relationships shift from the slavery era to the present day. I incorporate

the history of racialized relationships and privileging of lighter skin to explore how the mulatta

stereotype is represented in Marcus Gardley’s The House That Will Not Stand (2014) and Justin

Simien’s Dear White People (2014).

Dramatic representation illustrates the trajectory of the mulatta figure beginning with

abolitionist literature and early film from mild-mannered slave to promiscuous mistress. I

provide a brief review of the stereotype’s qualities and their evolution as detailed in chapter

two. In the mid-nineteenth century, abolitionists leveraged the representation of the tragic

mulatta to serve their needs. Zoe, the title character of Dion Boucicault’s The Octoroon (1859)

falls in love with White plantation heir George but commits suicide when she is sold to a rival

owner McClosky, refusing to be with anyone else. Because George wins her back soon

afterwards, Zoe represents a tragic mulatta who makes fatal decisions based on irrational

thoughts. Early twentieth century mulatta characters are portrayed as mischievous women who

seduce and manipulate engaged and taken men. Lydia of DW Griffith’s The Birth of A Nation

(1915) functions as progressive Congressman Austin Stoneman’s common law wife and

256 Meghan,Burke and David G. Embrich, “Colorism,” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences 2 (2008): 17-18.
257 Faedra Chatard Carpenter, Coloring Whiteness: Acts of Critique in Black Performance (University of Michigan Press, 2014).
258 Ariela Julie Gross, What Blood Won't Tell: A History of Race on Trial in America (Harvard University Press, 2009), 61.

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heavily persuades his position on interracial marriage. With her sexual behavior and

manipulation, Lydia’s character encourages the promiscuous mulatta trope that endures in

subsequent representation. In works of the mid-twentieth century, the mulatta stereotype

adopted “mean, violent, bitter, sullen, shadowy, and untrustworthy” qualities as mixed-race

characters experienced rejection in their familial, community, and romantic relationships. 259

Much of the bitterness associated with mulatta characters comes from their identity and

relationship issues. For example, in film Imitation of Life (1959 Sarah Jane passes for White to

encourage relationship prospects and job security, and therefore, distances herself from her

Black mother. Similarly, Adrienne Kennedy’s play Funnyhouse of a Negro (1964) commits suicide

because she is unable to accept her mixed-race and Black features, blaming her dad for her tainting

her beauty. Therefore, Sarah Jane and Negro Sarah represent a part of the mulatta trope that rejects

her family and Black identity to enjoy privilege that is uniquely possible for fair-skinned women.

As evidenced by more recent works, the mulatta persona remains scorned by love and

family as well as caught between Black and White society. Contemporary mulatta characters often

have strained family interactions and utilize either hypersexual or hidden identities to secure

relationships and income. Prominent light skinned characters including Shug of The Color Purple

(1985), Jane Toussaint of Spike Lee’s School Daze (1988), and Leticia of Monster’s Ball (2001) exhibit

promiscuous tendencies by vying for men’s attention for stability or status. The main characters of

television series Queen (1993) and film Devil in a Blue Dress (1995) pass for White to find love and

opportunity while the title character of film Belle (2014) struggles to date and be accepted amongst

her White relatives amidst periods of societal racism. How has the representation of the mulatta

259 David Pilgrim, “The Tragic Mulatta Myth,” Ferris State University, Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, 2000, Accessed
October 2016; Cedric J. Robinson, Forgeries of Memory and Meaning: Blacks and the Regimes of Race in American Theater and Film before
World War II (University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 51; Diane A. Mafe, Mixed Race Stereotypes in South African and American
Literature: Coloring Outside the (Black and White) Lines (Springer, 2013), 130; E. Barnsley Brown, “Passed Over: The Tragic Mulatta
and (Dis)integration of Identity in Adrienne Kennedy’s Plays.” African American Review 35, no. 2 (2001): 281-295.

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stereotype escaped or remained captive to its tragic fate? How might this stereotype be reimagined

in performance so that it challenges assumptions regarding mixed-race women and their complicated

relationships with their families, communities, and self-identity? An archetype that was first

utilized to emphasize likeness and encourage humanity regressed into a “tragic mulatta” figure

perpetually distressed about her seemingly incompatible and indefinite racial identities.260

However, I explore modern representations that challenge the mean-spirited mulatta wench

stereotype in favor of a self-sufficient revolutionary.

I explore how mulatta characters authenticate their Blackness and belonging within the Black

community through a hyperawareness and performance of self. What measures do mulatta women

take to be accepted amongst their critical Black audience? The play The House That Will Not Stand and

the film Dear White People, both of 2014 and both created by Black men, are among current dramatic

works that feature a prominent mixed-race female character who either accepts or resists traditional

qualities associated with the mulatta stereotype. Unlike early dramatizations that portrayed suffering

mixed-race women, these works feature strong-willed mulattas whose stories concerning family,

love, sex, and identity, are told from their perspective. Beartrice, the mulatta mother of Gardley’s

text, is ruthless in her efforts to keep her three quadroon daughters financially secure and free from

mimicking her life as a placée, mistress to a White suitor. Meanwhile, Sam White of Simien’s Dear

White People vacillates between a public Black radical identity and guarded relationships with her

White father and boyfriend. Colorism factors heavily in the setting of each dramatic work and

influences how Beartrice and Sam navigate these facets of their life. Collectively, these mulatta

characters claim agency over their identity and circumstances, endure complicated familial and

romantic relationships, and measure their accomplishments within the societal norms of their era.

260 Anderson, Mammies No More, 45; Early iterations of the mulatta stereotype included suicidal tendencies which continue in
some modern literature; i.e. from Lydia Maria Child’s short story “The Quadroons” (1842) to Achmat Dangor’s novel
Bitter Fruit (2001).

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 The Multifaceted Mulatta: Marcus Gardley Illustrates a Mixed-Race Family’s

Illusory Freedom, Fragile Bonds, and Futile Feats in The House That Will Not Stand

Plaçage and Colorism in Historical New Orleans

During the nineteenth century, “A small, wealthy free mulatto elite concentrated in

Charleston and New Orleans challenged any attempt at a clear-cut definition of race or a

notion that blacks were inevitably destined for slavery.” 261 New Orleans offered one of the very

few exceptions to the widespread practice of slavery; due to its African and French influence, and its

resulting diverse Creole and mulatto population and multilingual culture, mixed-race women could

operate outside of the rigid structure of slavery via plaçage.262 New Orleans was founded as a

French colony in 1718 and vacillated between French and Spanish rule until the Louisiana Purchase

made it property of the United States in 1803. New Orleans’ “Afro-Creole population came from

families who were freed during the colonial or antebellum era, were Catholic, were often mixed-race

or of lighter skin color, were French-speaking or bilingual, were educated, and were often wealthier

than their black non-Creole neighbors.”263 Nineteenth century New Orleans functioned within a

three-tiered classification system in which White, mixed-race, and Black people were granted

privilege and access respectively.264 For people of color, the “paper bag” test is one such “marker

that distinguishes ‘light skin’ from ‘dark skin’ and [is] believed to “center” blackness on a continuum

stretching infinitely from black to white.”265 Black literature scholar Audrey Kerr states, “Because

interracial marriage was not permitted between mixed people and whites, a system of extramarital

unions known as plaçage emerged [which] permitted white men to keep interracial mistresses, often

261 Gross, What Blood Won't Tell, 20.

262 Creole is a term to describe both people of French descent born in the Americas and people of mixed African and French descent
while mulatto is a general term to describe all mixed-race people; Rebecca J. Scott, “Paper Thin: Freedom and Re-Enslavement in
the Diaspora of the Haitian Revolution,” Law & History Review 29, no. 4 (2011): 1061-1087; Lawrence J. Kotlikoff and Anton J.
Rupert, “The Manumission of Slaves in New Orleans, 1827-1846,” Southern Studies 19, no. 2 (1980): 172-181.
263 Emily S. Clark, A Luminous Brotherhood: Afro-Creole Spiritualism in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans (UNC Press, 2016), 27.
264 Audrey Elisa Kerr, "The Paper Bag Principle: Of the Myth and the Motion of Colorism." Journal of American Folklore 118, no. 469

(2005): 271-289.
265 Kerr, 272.

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in a lifelong-relationship, living in separate homes.”266 Typically, these partnerships resulted from

meeting at quadroon balls and included arrangements that the woman’s mother agreed to, even

though they “did not prevent the white male from also taking a white wife and raising a ‘respectable’

family.”267 Thus nineteenth century New Orleans “provides a particularly apt vehicle for

examining the absurdity of, and damage created by, the monetary valuation of women,” as

illustrated by the main characters in Marcus Gardley’s play The House That Will Not Stand.268

First produced in 2014 at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Gardley’s The House That Will Not

Stand (2014) adapts Federico Garcia Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba: A Drama About Women

in the Villages of Spain (1945) in which intimidating mother Bernarda forces her adult daughters

to mourn her second husband and prohibits them from dating. 269 Gardley self-describes the

work as “a drama about free women of color in New Orleans in 1836 that portrays the unique

privilege mixed-race women possess due to nineteenth century plaçage.”270 While women in

other regions of the United States were subject to the awful conditions of traditional slavery,

mixed-race women of New Orleans could participate in a system of plaçage and effectively

become entirely financially dependent upon white men of means. In The House That Will Not

Stand, Gardley portrays six mixed-race women: Beartrice, the mother and a mulatta; her three

quadroon daughters, Agnès, Maude Lynn, and Odette; Beartrice’s sister Marie Josephine, and

Beartrice’s former friend La Veuve. The fact that Gardley chooses to represent various mixed -

race women in The House That Will Not Stand challenges one-dimensional mulatta stereotypes

266 Kerr, 282.

267 Kerr, 282.
268 Chirico, 621.
269 Of the 121 public Instagram posts: @the3rdtwin: “entertaining, thought provoking, heart wrenching + inspiring piece of

work. I can’t wait to see what else this playwright has to offer the world,” @ann ie_g_0509: “Got to watch an awesome
play tonight,” and @aigbinosun: “Talk about breathing life into a piece, these sisters were making magic tonight;”
Twitter: @kgdwyer: #TheHouseThatWillNotStand was powerful, moving, eloquent,” @jdwyer: “Incredible, moving, important,”
@MDreaux: “#TheHouseThatWillNotStand play is incredible…”
270 Gardley, 1; Miriam Chirico, “The House That Will Not Stand by Marcus Gardley (Review),” Theatre Journal 66.4 (2014): 619.

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and suggests that the issue of representation is becoming much more complex than it has been

in the past.

Because the play revolves around Beatrice and her daughters Creole beneficiaries, I

focus on how their financial means and social status are significantly jeopardized when Lazare,

Beartrice’s White long-term lover dies. Coupled with the lingering inquiry into Lazare’s sudden

death, issues of colorism and financial security drive the plot including Beartrice’s daughters

determining whether they will attend the quadroon ball and secure an affluent White suitor

like their father. The title of Gardley’s play is inspired by a Bible verse that states: “A house

divided against itself cannot stand,” since colorism pits light against dark and demonstrates how

Black people segregate themselves based on skin tone to assimilate into predominately White

culture.271 Gardley “pulls a historical drama up into the present” with “contemporary slang”

and an innovative approach to colorism and the Louisiana Purchase, reminiscent of Beyoncé’s

“Formation” video, which pays tribute to New Orleans culture past and present. 272

In his descriptions of the characters, Gardley details each woman’s qualities, including

skin tone, personality, and relationship status which either conform to or contend with the

traditional mulatta stereotype. Beartrice is Lazare’s calculating mistress who was primarily with

him for financial security. In name as well as personality, Beartrice’s character is an homage to

Lorca’s fierce and maternal Bernarda and likely the loving but sharp -tongued Beatrice of

Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing (1612). Reminiscent of Chekhov’s Three Sisters (1900)

and Brady Bunch’s (1969-1974) Marcia, Jan, and Cindy, Beatrice’s three daughters have distinct

personalities that determine how they process their father’s death and respond to their mother’s

271 Gardley, 1; Mark 3:25.

272 Anita Gates, “The Brady Quadroons: A Review of ‘The House That Will Not Stand’ In New Haven,” New York Times, 3 May 2014;
Chris Jones, “Powerful ‘House That Will Not Stand’ Brings Racial Past into Present,” Chicago Tribune, 20 June 2016; Adelaide Lee,
“The House That Will Not Stand,” Reviews, Theatre Mania: For Theatre Everywhere, 26 June 2016; Michael Billington, “The
House That Will Not Stand Review— Unlike Any Other Play in London,” The Guardian, 20 October 2014.

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demands, particularly about attending the quadroon ball, which allows White men to court mixed-

race women.273 Though she is the eldest sister, Agnès is young and naïve, hoping to emulate

her mother’s success by finding a wealthy White partner. Maude Lynn is the middle child who

is most affected by her father’s passing and is victimized by her sisters for her chaste and

melancholy behavior. Finally, Odette is the youngest daughter who desires romance over

money and social status. Altogether, each woman represents different facets of mulatta

characterization that challenge the typical one-dimensionality of the stereotype. Though she

tries to rescue them from reliving her fate as a placée, Beartrice and her daughters largely conform to

many traits of the traditional mulatta stereotype. As they attempt to ensure agency over their

livelihood, their family bond and relationships are tested, and their accomplishments are

debatable.

Independent Woman: Beartrice Literally Takes Justice Into Her Own Hands

Beartrice’s ability to achieve autonomy over her circumstances in an era of bondage through

her relationship with Lazare modifies characteristics of mid-nineteenth to early twentieth century

mulattas. Though Beartrice seeks a relationship with a White proprietor, she is emotionally stable

and intentionally utilizes their partnership for economic means versus true passion. Once her patron

Lazare dies under mysterious circumstances in Act One, Beartrice states her claim over his property

including the deed to his house to ensure financial security for their three quadroon daughters.

Determined to save them from her fate as a mistress or placée, Beartrice forbids her daughters from

attending the masked ball, and expects “that the house go into mourning for seven months in honor

of their father, the only white man she loved as much as Jesus.”274 This statement acknowledges the

273 Gates, “The Brady Quadroons,” New York Times.

274 Gardley, 6.

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history of Christianity in which masters typically convinced their slaves that Jesus was a White

enforcer who cursed them as the descendants of Ham, the alleged father of African nations.275 The

comparison to Jesus also suggests that Lazare was a savior of sorts for Beartrice and her children,

except that Beartrice’s part in his crucifixion seems to curse her family. Though Beartrice benefitted

from her relationship with a wealthy White man, she asserts, “that she would rather die than see her

daughters become placées and thusly the property of white men even if it meant increasing the family

fortune.”276 Beartrice is even willing to barter with Lazare’s wife to make sure her daughters are

financially set. Throughout the play, her daughters’ financial well-being is of the upmost importance

and she justifies her harsh words and cruel behavior as necessary to maintain her claim of Lazare’s

home and possessions. Thus, while she was still subject to the restrictions of the plaçage system,

Beartrice enjoyed a level of freedom that was unavailable to most mulatta women during slavery.

Beartrice clearly chafes under those restrictions, however, and is willing to take action to ensure that

her daughters are free from plaçage.

The tragic mulatta trope usually depicts desperate and mild-mannered women, who tragically

take their own lives, like Zoe in The Octoroon or Sarah in Funnyhouse of Negro. Beartrice’s desperation

manifests differently. Her cunning and capacity to murder are emphasized in speculation about her

romantic relationships by Marie Josephine, her clairvoyant sister, and La Veuve, her “sworn

enemy.”277 In Act One, Marie Josephine calls Beartrice “cold, callous, malicious and mean but still a

lady,” who baked her former White partner, Armand, a lethal sweet potato pie upon finding him in

bed with her “dearest friend, Madame La Veuve,” illuminating the origin of their feud. Because

275 Jacquelyn Grant, “White Women’s Christ and Black Women’s Jesus,” in Women’s Studies in Religion edited by Kathleen McIntosh
and Kate Bagley (Routledge, 2017); Mia Bay, The White Image in the Black Mind: African American Ideas about White People (Oxford
University Press, 2000), 210-211; The representation of White Jesus and/or the White oppressive interpretation of the Bible was
contested by abolitionist Sojourner Truth and later by Black nationalist groups like Marcus Garvey’s United Negro Improvement
Association and the Black Panther before and after the popularization of Warner Sallman’s Head of Christ portrait.
276 Gardley, 7.
277 Gardley, 2.

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Beartrice afterwards had a “tight knit story for authorities” about Armand’s mysterious

disappearance, Marie Josephine believes this is evidence that she likely killed both him and Lazare,

who is planning revenge and to “push down on [the] house till it won’t stand.”278 Though Marie

Josephine’s story provides an indirect account of Beartrice’s threatening behavior, it insinuates that

she is wrathful and willing to take drastic measures for assured financial security. Likewise, La Veuve

suggests that “Monsieur Lazare is not the first of Beartrice’s lovers to die from unnatural causes.”279

La Veuve believes that housekeeper Makeda overhearing Beartrice and Lazare’s violent argument

hours prior to Beartrice “detailing every task [of his funeral arrangements] like she had been

planning it for weeks,” is proof that Beartrice murdered him.280 However, Makeda states, “She may

be crass, calculating, and unkind but a killer she is not.”281 When Lazare returns as a spirit in Act

Two to ensure that the girls become placées because “It’s what they were raised for,” Beartrice

remarks that she “will not, in this life or the next, sell [her] daughters into the world!”282 She resists

giving “them to more men like him… having to be some man’s thing. A mule in a dress,” and

admits killing Lazare with a black magic song after seeing their inequitable relationship and violent

encounter(s) as representative of her daughters’ future.283 Instead of taking her own life, this

reimagined mulatta’s desperation manifests through murdering her abusive white lover.

Beartrice & Her Daughters Channel Colorism in Their Family and Relationships

Traditionally, mulatta characters were rejected by family and lovers as their mixed-race

caused social scandal. Beartrice directs harsh and colorist comments toward her family and friends

seemingly as a defense mechanism to embrace her identity and assert independence. She self-

278 Gardley, 28-29.

279 Gardley, 4.
280 Gardley, 6.
281 Gardley, 9.
282 Gardley, 43, 38.
283 Gardley, 43-44.

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describes her demeanor as one of “a cold beauty and indestructible grace.”284 Most of Beartrice’s

nastiness is aimed at her former friend La Veuve, with whom she is competitive about relationships

and means. La Veuve resents Beartrice’s colorist remarks that challenge the mixed-race background

which grants her placée privilege. She states, “Her: sticking her nose up at me, telling folks I don’t

have Creole blood, taking my lovers, spreading gossip and weaving lies.”285 Despite their mutual

animosity, La Veuve supports Beartrice’s “beautiful” daughters being courted at the masked ball by

young men like Ràmon, “one of the wealthiest bachelors in all of New Orleans.” 286 Beartrice takes

this as an opportunity to call La Veuve a whore who does not have children and is unable to “keep a

man.”287 This prompts La Veuve to plot revenge as she predicts that although Beartrice “may be the

wealthiest colored woman in New Orleans,” her “house built on sand, lies, and dead bodies will

soon fall.”288 Since defeating her would be both a personal and financial victory, it is La Veuve’s

“greatest wish to snatch Beartrice Albans down from her high horse, take this home from her tight

embrace and watch her die penniless and pathetic in some prison like the rat she is.” 289 La Veuve’s

grudge against Beartrice illustrates the cut-throat social competition mixed-race women endured by

necessarily relying on the preferences of selective White suitors for financial security, a rift that is

later duplicated between Beartrice’s mixed-race daughters.

Each of Beartrice’s daughters represent various characteristics and personalities of the

mulatta trope including sad, strategic, and romantic. After Lazare’s death, Maude Lynn (maudlin) is

excessively inconsolable and “overwhelmed with grief,” common characteristics of “the tragic

mulatta,” sans suicide.290 Odette describes Maude Lynn as “so full of sorrow, her legs can’t carry her

284 Gardley, 20-21.

285 Gardley, 9.
286 Gardley, 16.
287 Gardley, 13-15, 18-19.
288 Gardley, 20.
289 Gardley, 9.
290 Gardley, 10; See previous definition of “tragic mulatta” on pgs. 4-5.

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and her heavy heart,” and Beartrice scolds her for self-indulgent and “incessant weeping,” in front

of company.291 While Odette believes that their father “was sinful but did good deeds,” Agnès

contends that he “barely knew” them, and treated them “like porcelain dolls with empty heads… he

knew the value of bodies and blood and good breeding; he was our patron and in some ways we

were his greatest possession.”292 Since Odette is “yearning to fall in love,” she also resents her

mother forbidding them to attend the ball, stating that they “might as well be prisoners.”293 While

Maude Lynn uses religion to dismiss lustful indulgencies, both Agnès and Odette show mulatta

tendencies in desiring a relationship that is respectively prohibited and doomed to fail. Collectively,

the sisters simultaneously exemplify and complicate traditional traits of the mulatta figure with

Maude Lynn as depressed but religious, Agnès as seductive but ambitious, and Odette as scorned

but optimistic.

However, the sisters’ personalities clash and they argue about whether the quadroon ball is

beneficial. Unfortunately, while the sisters fight over who will and will not attend the ball in order to

gain access to the men (and the financial means or potential for love they represent), they end up

chasing the same man and destroying one another’s hopes. Maude Lynn is chaste and obedient to

her mother by not attending. Odette hopes attending will help her find the love she desires. As the

eldest, Agnès feels responsible for her sisters’ future and her plan to attend the ball and find a suitor

is financially focused. Agnès sees her opportunity to secure her role as placée after receiving a love

letter in church from wealthy White suitor Ràmon Le Pip, asking her to meet him at the ball.294

While Odette finds the letter romantic, Maude Lynn judges Ràmon for ripping pages out of a holy

hymnal to write “Agnès a letter like she was a harlot.”295 Beartrice is also dismayed at Ràmon’s late

291 Gardley, 10, 14.

292 Gardley, 11.
293 Gardley, 17.
294 Gardley, 15.
295 Gardley, 23.

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church entrance and lack of racial decorum by having the “nerve to sit in the colored section like he

forgot he was white.”296 Though she disregards Beartrice’s warnings, Agnès is like her mother as the

most headstrong and vocal of the sisters and is forthright about their need to “find a white man with

good blood and good fortune, bed him and take all his money.”297 Agnès expresses concern that the

United States will change the fortune and privileged status of mixed-race women in New Orleans.

She states, “We must show the world why men come from France to sell their hearts to free colored

women… before Yankees come with their savage slave laws and rule New Orleans like cattlemen.

We’re Creoles: we must be vigilant yet gentile.”298 Though Odette agrees to impersonate their

mother and sign Agnès’ papers to be Ràmon’s placée, she recalls that “Maman say being a placée ain’t

much different from being a slave” while Agnès, who ironically shares her mother’s flair for

criticism, calls Beartrice “a hypocrite [who] would be nothing if she wasn’t a placée.”299 Though their

different opinions illustrate complexity in mulatta representation, they also set the tone for sibling

rivalry.

As the sisters of close age but different skin tone prepare for the ball, complexion becomes a

contentious comparison that reveals how colorism can destroy family relationships. Agnès “is the

color of butter,” and the eldest daughter at nineteen, Maude Lynn, “is white as milk” and the middle

child at eighteen, and Odette “is brown as oatmeal” and the youngest at sixteen.300 Their

disagreement about whether the ball advantages mulatta women erupts into a harsh colorist

exchange as the pursuit of money and affection respectively pit Agnès and Odette against each

other. Agnès uses blunt insults to educate Odette on the realities of “the grown-up world,”

determining that her brown skin tone is “the family stain” that is too dark to attract a White man’s

296 Gardley, 15-16.

297 Gardley, 12.
298 Gardley, 12.
299 Gardley, 31-32.
300 Gardley, 2, 10.

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attention.301 She states: You’re dark, Odette. You’ve got more brown than the paper bag. This

means you wear the stain in our blood that we so desperately try to hide […] you are beautiful […]

but you are black. And that means you have no choice in life.302 Agnès articulates the basic tenants

of colorist idealism that distinguish her from her sister and divide their family.303 Upon returning

from the ball, the sisters argue because Odette flirted with Ràmon who “seemed to think [she] was

beautiful,” though Agnès contends it was only because her mask covered her dark skin tone.304

Beartrice punishes Odette for betraying Agnès and risking their livelihood by cutting her hair. This

triggers her physical insecurities about her Black features as she states, “My hair was the best part of

me… I’m not myself without my hair. I’m black and ugly.”305 Odette’s statement mirrors previous

iterations of the mulatta stereotype such as Negro Sarah of Funnyhouse of a Negro (1964) who

expresses self-hatred about her kinky hair and other typically Black features.306 However, Makeda

convinces her that “Black ain’t never been ugly.”307 Though all three sisters are mulattas, Odette’s

darker skin compared with her lighter siblings makes her an outsider amongst outsiders.

Accomplishments or A Series of Unfortunate Events?

The aftermath of the ball irreparably divides the sisters and proves counterproductive to

their economic and romantic goals. Nonetheless, it demonstrates how Beartrice, Agnès, and Odette

each channel qualities of the desperate mulatta stereotype in their pursuit of means and favorable

relationships. Beartrice is furious when she discovers that Agnès and Odette have tied Maude Lynn

301 Marcus Gardley, The House That Will Not Stand (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014), 32.
302 Ibid.
303 Kerr, 282; Some venues in New Orleans and elsewhere allowed entry only to those that were lighter than a physical paper bag

while others implied using a similar entry system for measuring skin tone without a physical paper bag visible.
304 Gardley, 48.
305 Gardley, 55.
306 Adrienne Kennedy, Funnyhouse of a Negro: A Play in One Act (Samuel French, Inc., 1969).
307 Gardley, 55.

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up and snuck out to secure Agnès’s status as Ràmon’s placée. However, Beartrice’s soon learns that

regardless of Lazare leaving her everything in writing,

the laws have already changed. And, according to US law, a colored mistress can’t be

given assets over a white widow. Even if it’s writ in the deceased’s will. Even if he

has children with the colored mistress and none with his wife. The widow still gets

everything ‘cause her skin is the real currency and mine seems to be losing value as

the days go by… Which means I have nothing.308

Since her plans to protect and provide for her daughters are destroyed, Beartrice is hopeful that

Agnès’ placée status has earned them six hundred dollars, enough to maintain their home, but it is

rendered void the next morning when Odette and Ràmon run off together after Maude Lynn and

Beartrice find them having sex. Therefore, Odette’s claim “If we can’t lean on each other then we’re

all doomed to fail,” proves hypocritical since she prioritizes her own romantic interests over her

sisters’ needs.309 Though Beartrice and Agnès were relentless and cruel in their pursuit of financial

stability, they walk into an uncertain future as spiritual axis Maude Lynn leaves the house “to seek

[her] own soul’s salvation.”310 Even when their families and financial means are devastated, these

women refuse to follow the path of the nineteenth-century tragic mulatta; they do not commit

suicide. Instead, Beartrice and her daughters resign themselves to be “tough” and seek opportunity

despite their uncertain fates.311

Yet Beartrice’s mulatta privilege required dependency on a wealthy White partner and

ultimately proved detrimental to her family as it was ineffectively emulated by Agnès, damaged

Odette, and caused Maude Lynn to abandon them. The conflicts between Beartrice and her three

308 Gardley, 35.

309 Gardley, 10.
310 Gardley, 66.
311 Ibid.

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daughters illustrate how “plaçage pits women against one another [and] creates a false sense of

privilege and self-worth related to their value for white men; they literally enslave one

another.”312 These circumstances reiterate that despite the form and characteristics mulatta figures

take, they rarely achieve success or lasting happiness.

The tragic conclusion of The House That Will Not Stand illustrates both economic

disadvantage for people of color and how a mulatta woman during slavery — even in New

Orleans— was worth no more than her skin tone and sponsor. Beatrice’s pursuit of superficial

means rendered her cruel and though she attributes her demeanor to the desire to save her children

from the same fate, her uncompromising attitude alienated her from her family. Agnès abuses her

sisters as she attempts to imitate her mother’s success by establishing a financially beneficial

relationship with Ràmon. Maude Lynn is the most depressed about her father’s passing and

distances herself after being betrayed by her sisters. And though Odette finds romance with

Ràmon, her skin tone will prohibit their marriage. Since colorist behaviors were not confined to the

nineteenth-century, Gardley utilizes the identity struggles of mixed-race female characters to reveal

lingering hegemonic attitudes that continue to self-inflict the Black community and demonstrate the

pertinence of mulatta representation in the present day. Thus, Agnès’ horrible statement that

Odette’s “dark skin is a stain” unfortunately represents the toxic mindset of colorism and self-

hatred within the Black community. As Gardley illustrates, racism and consequently colorism

have a real-life impact on women of color which holds true today.

The House That Will Not Stand Brings Colorism into the Contemporary

The female characters in The House That Will Not Stand demonstrate colorism in ways

that persist in the contemporary United States and affect the way mixed-race people view

312 Chirico, 620.

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themselves against societal perceptions. Harmful discrimination within the Black community

did not end with paper-bag tests in the nineteenth-century ballrooms of New Orleans. Partiality

for light skin and “good” hair illustrates how the history of slavery and plaçage continues to

haunt perceptions of beauty and privilege that disproportionately affect Black women of

darker hues. Despite Beartrice’s greatest efforts to separate her daughters from a lifestyle of

male dependence, they allow colorism, lust, and monetary gain to fracture their bond.

Nevertheless, they characterize a unique era of women who began to challenge the sullen and

suicidal mulatta stereotype in subtle ways as they strategize to formulate relationships and

exercise agency and voice within their environment.

In film Dear White People, contemporary mulatta Sam White embraces the philosophical

approach that her mixed-race makes her Black. Though she grapples some with self-identity,

her radio show directs most of her racial frustration at White people and she socially aligns

herself with Black people. Through film, she exposes racism on campus and beyond,

progressively considering various methods of activism to encourage diversity efforts on

campus. While her interracial relationships complicate her Black persona, she navigates how to

convey an authentic appreciation for her complete and multifaceted identity as a mixed-race

woman. Sam learns to simultaneously critique and embrace her Black and White heritage in

constructive and creative ways.

The Mixed-Race Millennial: Sam Self-Defines, Explores Love, and Starts a Race Riot

in Justin Simien’s Dear White People

Contemporary Mixed-Race Representation Addressed to a White Audience

Like its predecessor School Daze (1988), Dear White People portrays racism within a university,

though it certainly transcends this setting to reveal how issues like enduring stereotypes and racially

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motivated violence are often mishandled or silenced in American society. As evidenced by the

students’ racial divisive eruption at blackface party of the film’s conclusion. Dear White People is

narrated by Sam, a mixed-race film student and radio host for whom race is always a present

factor since living arrangements and many aspects of her university experience are segregated.

Though Sam’s inner conflict about her bi-racial identity is not traditionally tragic, she

demonstrates undeniable characteristics of a mixed-race outsider by struggling to choose a

side, but mostly deprivileges her Whiteness to relate with the Black community at her

university. Her radio show is known for beginning its provocative statements of unapologetic

Blackness about race and stereotypes with the phrase “Dear White People…” Similarly, her

films, which are often self-indulgent and unpopular amongst her classmates, attempt to

challenge representation and disrupt the status quo. Typical of a mulatta character, Sam

struggles with whom to date and how to consistently present herself. She has a very private

physical relationship with Gabe, a White graduate student from her film class and a public one

with Reggie, a Black radical and leader of the Black Student Union. Sam intermittently has

sensitive phone conversations with and about her White father, whose health is suffering, and

purposefully keeps her interracial family origin as lowkey as her interracial relationship since

both would disrupt her public persona as a Black revolutionary. As a mixed-race millennial in

the present day, Sam adheres to the mulatta stereotype in struggling to cope with her racial

identity and romantic partnerships, but uses radio, film, and activism as well as her work to

own and define her Blackness.

An independent film developed by screenwriter and director Justin Simien , Dear White

People (2014) was among the top three highest-grossing films that premiered at the 2014

Sundance Film Festival and won other collective and individual awards.313 The film received

313 “Sundance 2014,” Box Office Mojo, 2014.

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“generally favorable reviews” from critics and is noted for its introspective tale of about racial

identity.314 Variety reporter Justin Chang claims that Dear White People “provokes admiration

for having been bothered to ask some of the hard questions without pretending to know any

of the answers,” while IndieWire’s Zeba Blay says that “the movie doesn’t presume to

encompass the entirety of what it means to be black, but it does give one of the most

entertaining and honest depictions of black life in a so-called ‘white’ world in years.” 315

Through Sam, the atypical mulatta protagonist, the film shares a perspective about mixed-race

identity that is often missing in dominant racial discourse. Dear White People depicts a

contemporary mixed-race woman’s path to self-identity through relationships and activism as she

challenges many of the characteristics typically associated with the mulatta stereotype. As Sam

confronts racial issues at her university, she exerts autonomy over her representation,

discovers her ideal romantic relationship, and exposes the need for change in the racial politics

of popular culture.

In Defense of Her Race: Sam Self-Defines Her Racial Identity

One of the most obvious mulatta characteristics is Sam’s complexion and physical

appearance in which she emphasizes her Black features. Though the country still grapples with

race issues, embracing mixed-race and/or non-White attributes without legal discrimination is

a privilege that was unavailable to mulatta slaves and White passing figures of previous eras.

The film script itself describes Sam as follows, “Despite her light skin, the Afro pic in her fro

pompadour leaves little doubt she identifies as Black.” 316 While her skin tone and hair texture

314 “Dear White People (2014), “Rotten Tomatoes; “Dear White People (2014),” Metacritic.
315 Justin Chang, “Sundance Film Review: ‘Dear White People’” Variety, 19 January 2014; Zeba Blay, “Sundance Film Review: ‘Dear
White People’ (A Cinematic Answer To The Year of The ‘Race-Themed’ Film),” IndieWire, 18 January, 2014.
316 Justin Simien, Dear White People, np.

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suggest that she may be mixed-race, she manipulates her hair into natural updos and uses

strategic clothes and accessories like a camo jacket, pyramid eye t-shirt, Egyptian ankh

necklace, and various hats and head scarfs to present herself as a Black radical. In terms of

overall style, Sam “wears clothes from the fifties and hairstyles from the sixties”— prevalent

eras of civil rights activism featuring revolutionary figures like Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm

X, and Huey P. Newton— and presents as a woman of color who feels comfortable among

both her artistic community among other film students and her socially conscious friend

group from the Black student union. 317 Since her skin tone, hair, and other visible markers

could potentially lead people to question her identity, Sam’s physical presentation honors

Black history and culture, hoping to mask the fact that she is also internally struggling to

define herself. When she accuses her White boyfriend Gabe of wanting to be “down” and

prove his knowledge of Black culture, he even asks her, “How long does it take you to get

your hair like that,” calling her own motives of representation into question. 318 Though she is

more mentally stable and assertive than Negro Sarah of Funnyhouse of a Negro (1964), Sam

characterizes the identity conflict light skinned mixed-race women endure in the present day

amidst persistent colorism and racism.

Sam opposes the historical tradition that critiques light skinned women about their

racial identity and representation by aligning herself with other Black students through her

film and radio work. Her radio broadcast titled “Dear White People” challenges dominant

White culture and White privilege. She opens the show with provocative political assertions,

stating, “Dear White People, apparently Morgan Freeman in ‘Deep Impact’ wasn’t enough.

Despite two terms, Obama could cure cancer and somewhere White folks will be embroiled in

317 Simien, np.

318 Ibid.

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protest. And he’s only half Black.” 319 This statement also engages with Sam’s mixed-race

identity and suggests that people of Black and White heritage will never please or completely

fit into either race. When Sam’s White boyfriend Gabe calls in and poses the question, “What

would you say if someone started a ‘Dear Black People,’” to which she responds, “No need.

Mass media from Fox News to reality tv on VH1 makes it clear what White people think of

us.”320 Her use of the term “us” is important in signifying her Black identity and loyalty. She

goes on to note two prominent issues in this exchange: first, that some White people do not

recognize their privilege and attempt to compare their social status to that of Blacks by

demanding things like White history month and grant, scholarship, and job opportunities

specifically for Whites; and second, that mass media represents Black people as stereotypical

caricatures. Though Gabe likely asked his question to spark debate rather than offense, it

disregards three centuries of free labor and horrific abuse Blacks suffered when entering this

country as slaves, the consequences of which many Black people continue to struggle with in

the present day. Sam’s response clearly articulates the ways Black stereotypes and harmful

assumptions manifest in popular culture, like my overall intention for this study on how

character portrayals inform Black female representation. With her radio show, Sam effectively

voices her opinion about misguided media images and formulates her own identity, offering a

new and empowered interpretation of mixed-race womanhood.

Sam’s broadcast allows her to simultaneously claim culturally Black behavior and assess

cultural appropriation, demonstrating her own supposed confidence in her racial identity. Sam’s

critique of White privilege extends beyond mass media into deconstructing the once popular notion

that the United States is/was a “post racial” society. She states, “Dear White People, I am here to

319 Ibid.
320 Ibid.

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burst your post-racial little bubble… Yes, Oprah may have her own network, but Ann Coulter is still

writing best sellers, Black kids are still getting shot for wearing hoodies, and even here the few

vestiges of Black culture are under attack by conservative groups, trustees, and our very own

President Fletcher.”321 Though she has previously had tense conversations with university

administration about her racially charged rhetoric and critique of systematic policies on the radio,

Sam continues her relentless pursuit to expose injustice. She confronts cultural appropriation, such

as White people’s use of Black phrases like “Bye Felisha,” dances like twerking and the nae nae, and

otherwise culturally specific material like greeting handshakes. She states, “When encountering a

Black person, try and stay calm. Don’t say things like ‘what’s up’ and ‘my brotha.’ That’s not how

you normally talk.”322 Though her words may seem like harsh cultural policing, she reveals the

common practice of Whites claiming Black culture as their own and/or making assumptions about

how to interact with Blacks when they are not usually part of their friend group. While the mulatta is

usually made to feel uncomfortable in her own skin, Sam’s dialogue flips the critique to examine

dominant White culture instead.

Though Sam’s radio show makes her seem comfortable in her own skin, the volatility of her

personal relationships suggests that this is not true for much of the film. In traditional stories like

The Octoroon (1859), a White suitor had a White wife or girlfriend and the mulatta was the second (or

third) woman in his life, even if she was portrayed as his true love. In Dear White People, it is Sam—

the mixed-race woman—who has multiple partners. Sam’s physical presentation, personality, and

behavior prove complex facets of her mixed-race identity which make maintaining romantic

321 Ibid.
322 Ibid; Malcolm D. Lee, Erica Rivinoja, Kenya Barris, and Tracy Oliver, Girls Trip, np, In summer 2017’s hit Black female comedy
film Girl’s Trip, TV personality Ryan Pierce similarly approaches her assistant about cultural appropriation, stating: “I say this out of
love. Please refrain from saying things like ‘Preach’ and ‘Go girl,’ ‘Bye Felisha,’ ‘Ratchet,’ and any other colloquialisms that you may
have heard or looked up on Urban Dictionary.”322 Though Ryan’s assistant pretends to understand, she then says, “have fun on
your hashtag black girl magic weekend… girl bye!” Her comical disregard for Ryan’s words reiterates Sam’s point about White
people using culturally Black phrases that they would not otherwise say, and likely ones Sam feels the need to claim as a Black
woman.

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relationships difficult. Sam seemingly epitomizes the mulatta’s dilemma of being caught

between two sides as she is simultaneously dating a Black boyfriend publicly and a White

boyfriend privately. Though she appears to be in a monogamous relationship with the Black radical

Reggie, “the only single eligible brother on campus,” who fits her public persona and radio show’s

militant approach, she also sleeps with White filmmaker Gabe, who seems to be her true match

based on artistic interests and personality.323 With Reggie, Sam pretends to School Daze and is

annoyed that he smokes weed, calling him a stereotype. Though he adores her, Sam’s demeanor is

often cold or hesitant around him and their only real connection seems to be tackling racial activism

on campus. As the teaching assistant for Sam’s film class, Gabe piques her interest by giving her

work constructive criticism and being able to discuss their favorite films. However, Gabe grows

tired of being Sam’s secret and while Reggie is waiting outside her door to attend a housing rally,

Gabe confronts her about feeling like she has to “pick a side.”324 He states “I’m tired of your tragic

mulatto bullshit, Sam… I’m sorry if I can’t be your Nubian prince on my black horse ready to take

you back to fucking Zamunda…”325 Though they briefly laugh at the Coming to America reference,

their largely tense conversation leads Gabe to walk out to Reggie’s surprise. Once Gabe opens the

door, he exposes Sam’s double life and compromises her Black identity and relationship with

Reggie. Sam then has to decide how to move forward and present herself authentically, no

longer the Black revolutionary she has portrayed herself.

Spokeswoman or Revolutionary? Sam Takes on University Racism

Sam is fueled by the acceptance and power she receives within the Black campus community

when proving her dedication to racial issues. Unlike previous mulatta iterations that are trying to

323 Simien, np.

324 Ibid.
325 Ibid.

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prove their worth or belonging amongst Whites, Sam uses activism to critique White people and

establish her allegiance to Blacks. She successfully runs for Head of House (dorm) elections against

the politically inclined Troy, her former boyfriend and son of the university dean. As the newly

appointed president of Armstrong/Parker, the predominately Black dorm, Sam gets into a heated

argument with entitled White fraternity president, Kurt, son of the university president. Annoyed at

his misunderstanding of White privilege, Sam ultimately demands that he and his fraternity are no

longer able to eat in the Black dorm’s dining hall. Feeling empowered by the thunderous applause of

her entourage, she also throws out Black nerd Lionel for good measure since he is a resident at the

predominately White frat dorm with Kurt. Though excluding a Black student simply for his loose

association with her opposers was misguided, Sam is again reversing the typical judgment a mulatta

receives from both Blacks and Whites by setting and enforcing her own rules.

Uncharacteristic of the traditional mulatta, Sam seems fortunate and confident due to her

creative endeavors through film and radio but not everyone is a fan. Her films are constantly

controversial and unpopular amongst her classmates and disappointing to her cinema class

professor; the room is usually silent with disapproval when they end. Similarly, President Fletcher

grows tired of Sam’s criticism of him and the university’s mismanagement of race issues and is likely

unhappy with her dining hall altercation with his son Kurt. He threatens her with probation and

suspension, ends her house representative duties, cancels her radio show, warns her not to hold any

more protests or demonstrations, and claims that the school does not have an intolerance problem

except for her.326 Sam is furious that she is being singled out for expressing what she deems her fair

opinion. She decides to hack Kurt’s fraternity site and sends out an invite for a Black themed

Halloween party. With the impression that it was leaked from his vault of offensive party ideas, Kurt

reads the invite as a voiceover:

326 Simien, np.

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 Dear White People. Are you tired of your hum drum, Wonderbread existence of

accidental racism and wishing you could sip on Henny out yo crunk cup without a

Bitch giving you the side-eye? Course you are.

For all those looking to unleash their inner Negro from years of bondage and

oppression Pastiche proudly presents “Dear White People” our 89th annual Hallow’s

Eve Costume Party - tonight at 10 Pacific Time or 5 Colored People Time. Sorry for

the short notice, but let’s keep it one hun-ed. You’ve had us on your calendar for

weeks.

Dudes must rock FUBU, Ecko, Rocawear, or Sean John. XXXL is the smallest size

T-Shirt you can wear, preferably with a collage of Barack Obama and Tupac on it.

Stunner Shades, chains, and Blue-Tooth devices sticking out yo ears are also

encouraged.

Ladies, we need to see huge hoop earrings, long nails, and cheap tight clothes. A

proper hood rat starts fights, speaks loudly, and when she can't think of the word

she's trying to say just makes one up, such as “edumicated.” Feel free to fry up some

chicken, bring Kool-Aid, Watermelon, 40s, Henny, and of course Dat Purple Drank.

No bougie bitches allowed.

Naturally there will be a freestyle rap competition so bring it, get yo shine on and

join us for the party of the year! Oh and Nigga Nigga Nigga Nigga. Boy that felt

good.

The result is several White students showing up in blackface dressed as famous Black rappers,

celebrities, and icons from Barack Obama to 2 Chainz with gaudy jewelry, urban clothing,

watermelons, and other stereotypical paraphernalia, essentially following the incredibly detailed and

obnoxious instructions laid out for them. This enrages Lionel who alerts other Black students and

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they start a fight. When Dean Fairbanks suggests that Sam is behind the madness, she argues that

the party and the offensive behavior it encouraged would not have happened if race was being

handled and understood effectively. She states, “That invite, whoever sent it should’ve been met

with derision and outrage. Instead, a hundred people showed up and they pulled out posters and

decorations and costumes they’d made just for such an occasion.”327 Though a couple students are

detained by campus police, the school mostly decides on campus reform versus punishment,

including the Black housing dorm for which Sam was advocating. Ultimately, Sam’s manufactured

party created a real-life racially charged environment to film evidence of her arguments about the

injustice taking place at her university as well as many others. Her resultant documentary earned her

a standing ovation in her film class and signified her finding both her artistic groove and

contentment in her racial identity by exploring social issues.

By the film’s conclusion, Sam transcends her identity insecurities by embracing her mixed-

race, White father, White boyfriend, and creating a well-received film about university racism. Her

decreased defensiveness and vulnerability allow her to wit and creativity to shine. On her way to the

student rally, Sam holds her ground against Dean Fairbanks who challenges her for

“overcompensating,” with her outspokenness on race issues.328 Though he triggered her insecurities,

she leaves the rally without explanation when receiving an urgent call from her mother about her

father’s health. Other than briefly telling her film professor that attending to her father’s illness is a

reason her work is suffering in her class, Gabe is the only person with whom Sam shares personal

details about her father’s condition. Though she initially claims that she is “tired of being

everybody’s angry Black chick,” when Lionel approaches her to help intervene with the campus

Blackface party, Sam seizes the opportunity to film every bit of the debauchery (she staged) to the

327 Simien, np.

328 Ibid.

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administration’s embarrassment and prove that prejudice exists. Her footage becomes fodder for an

honest representation of race issues on campus which is uncharacteristically appreciated by her

professor and her film class. After her successful film debut that Sam is able to be vulnerable and

proudly walk around campus with Gabe, confident in her identity and no longer concerned about

what people think of her. In this way, Sam utilizes her own skills and activism to shed light on

university race issues and self-defines herself as a mixed-race woman in the contemporary era,

representing a strong shift in representations of the mulatta trope.

Sam’s character illustrates a significant shift in the mulatta stereotype as she articulates

agency over her voice and self-identity, defines the terms of her romantic relationships, and

contests racism with art and activism. Even as she grapples with insecurities about her mixed -

race background, Sam challenges the sadness and desperation typically associated with

mulattas by working to replace these sentiments with ambition, strength, and activism in both

her life and her creative endeavors. And just as important, her radio show and film project

challenge the trope of the tragic mulatta by encouraging real-life conversations about race and

identity in America.

Dear White People: How Was the Statement Received?

Dear White People’s success as an independent film spurred a Netflix-produced series (2017—

present) of the same name with episodes directed by prominent Black directors including Moonlight’s

Barry Jenkins. While the lesser-known film received some criticism, its transition to a more

accessible streaming series garnered backlash amongst many White people who subsequently

boycotted, cancelled, or criticized Netflix for hosting a “racist,” “anti-White show that promotes

white genocide.”329 The outpouring of criticism led other social media users to question if these

329 @Baked Alaska™, “Netflix announced a new anti-White show…” Twitter, 8 February 2017; @DofWinning

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people were aware of the 2014 film version, stating, “The people boycotting Dear White People are

sure going to be livid when they find out the movie version came out three whole years ago.”330

Another Twitter user comments that many people are missing the show’s point and taking offense

unnecessarily: “Naturally, those who are backing #BoycottNetflix over ‘Dear White People’ are

those who could learn the most from it. Always the way.”331 Disgruntled White millennials created a

reactionary thread called “Dear Black People,” as if like Sam suggests, it does not already exist in our

largely stereotypical and racially biased culture. Black Twitter users responded with sarcasm: “Dear

Black People… I’m sorry for our history of oppression and genocide,” and “…undermining your

experiences with my racial privilege,” as well as listing issues of systemic oppression like unequal

education, segregated housing, and imprisonment.332 These visceral reactions unveil how race

relations still fester in the present, especially in the rise of White nationalist intimidation and hate

crimes that followed the 2016 election and continue under the Trump administration, which

promotes an agenda of racism and exclusion. Dear White People criticism also reveals the country’s

persistent prejudices and the necessity for deeper conversations about race between races.

Has Time Ended the Mulatta’s Suffering?

Despite how social status has progressed for Blacks since the nineteenth century with

resourceful mulattas like Beartrice, contemporary mixed-race women like Sam continue to define

themselves against their traditional characteristics like indefinite identity and complicated family and

romantic relationships. Gardley and Simien respectively explore these issues in The House that Will

330 @XLNB, “The people boycotting…” Twitter, 10 February 2017.

331 @notwaving, “Naturally, those who are backing…” Twitter, 8 February 2017.
332 @1942bs, “Dear Black People… I’m sorry for our history of oppression and genocide.” Twitter, 30 April 2017; @renatajun, “dear

black people… i’m sorry for undermining your experiences with my racial privilege,” Twitter, 30 April 2017; @sheilae_, “Dear
Black People, sorry for the systematic oppression we caused barring you from systematic oppression, housing, led you into the
prison system,” Twitter, 30 April 2017; Tanya Finley, “‘Dear Black People’ Is The Perfect Show for ‘Dear White People’ Critics.
Spoiler Alert: ‘Dear Black People’ Already Exists,” The Huffington Post, Black Voices, 3 May 2017.

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Not Stand and Dear White People. As Black men, the creators effectively illustrate past and present

struggles light-skinned and mixed-race women endure in their social, professional, and familial

spaces. Their productions contend with previous illustrations that stereotypically portrayed a mulatta

character as a solely selfish and embittered woman who has strained relationships with her partner

and family. As principal characters in each case, these mulattas articulate their own opinions about

their identity, family, and romantic relationships, and achievements.

Beartrice and Sam represent a contemporary approach to mulatta characters who

respectively dwell in past and present time periods. Though Beartrice’s harsh colorist remarks and

competitive demeanor are traits of a traditional mulatta, she reasons that because of the limited

options for mixed-race women in the era, she had to make tough choices for the financial benefit

and livelihood of her family. While slavery era iterations of the mulatta figure are usually rejected by

or isolated from their family, Beartrice does everything in her power to keep hers together.

Unfortunately, her choices tragically affect her three daughters in the form of insecurity, selfishness,

and depression, ruinous qualities of the mulatta stereotype. Even so, Beartrice subverts the helpless

and suicidal tendencies of the mulatta trope, and through her cunning and maternal instincts, tries to

prevent her daughters from relying on plaçage’s patriarchal support system. Sam of Dear White People

fiercely promotes her Blackness through her radio and film projects while struggling to accept her

White identity through her ailing father and concealed boyfriend. As a college student, she defends

her self-identity, particularly when dating someone racially different from her. With her opinions and

activism about race issues, Sam reverses many aspects of established mulatta characterization by

turning the mirror on society rather than herself. Comparatively, these characters’ experiences

elucidate how the self-identity, family, love, and overall misfortune or accomplishments of the

mulatta stereotype endure or have shifted according to period and circumstances. Considering the

current landscape of society in which race and skin tone still largely define perception of individuals,

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it is debatable whether the mulatta has completely escaped the tragic fate of defending her self-

identity. However, there is a palatable difference in how legal racial equality has enabled Sam to

achieve a level of independence Beartrice can only imagine. A noteworthy overlap in stereotypical

characterization of the mulatta and mistress is utilizing a romantic or sexual relationship for

financial freedom and autonomy, a concept I explore in the following chapter.

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 CHAPTER FIVE

THE EVOLUTION OF PROMISCUITY:

FROM TRADITIONAL JEZEBEL TO NEW-AGE MISTRESS

1980s and 90s rap from Black male artists like NWA, Juvenile, Too Short, and Uncle Luke

demoralized Black women in a trend that continues today. Respectively, their hip-hop songs and

music videos for “Findum, Fuckum, and Flee,” “Back That Ass Up,” and “Blowjob Betty”

influenced the vulgarity of modern hip-hop music. Specifically, Uncle Luke and 2 Live Crew’s 1995

track “Hoochie Mama,” includes close-ups of women in revealing swimwear shaking their butts

(twerking) while rappers’ lyrics diminish them to “hood rats” and criticize their status as single

mothers.333 Music from the early 2000s, including R&B group Bell Biv Devoe’s “Poison” lyrics,

similarly encourage men to “Never trust a big butt and a smile.”334 Rappers Ying Yang Twins,

Lil Jon, and Ludacris revert to vulgar lyrics and music videos for “Whistle While You Twurk,”

“Bend Ova,” and “Get Low” that degrade Black women’s character and reduce their bodies to

sexual objects. Likewise, Nelly’s overtly lewd music video for “Tip Drill” focuses on nearly naked

women and includes a credit card swipe between a dancer’s buttocks. Contemporary songs like Juicy

J’s “Bands a Make Her Dance,” French Montana’s “Pop That,” and Big Sean’s “Dance (Ass)”

diminish Black women’s worth to the money or attention thrown at their backsides. Meanwhile,

twerking has been appropriated and attempted by White female pop artists like Miley Cyrus at the

2013 MTV Awards and Taylor Swift in her 2014 “Shake It Off” music video while Black female

dancers shake their behinds in the background. By exploiting these women’s bodies in similar

fashion as rappers have for decades, these singers contribute to and reinforce the stereotype that

oversexualizes Black women.

333 2 Live Crew: Uncle Luke, Fresh Kid Ice, Brother Marquis, and Mr. Mixx. Hoochie Mama (Los Angeles: Priority Records, 1995).
334 Bell Biv Devoe, Poison (Chicago: MCA Records, 2001).

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 In recent years, Black women have articulated conscious reclamation of their bodies and

image. In her “Partition” music video, for example, singer Beyoncé performs a risqué routine

for a male onlooker while rapper Nicki Minaj illustrates several sexual innuendos in her

“Anaconda” music video. Though these mediums promote sexualized images of Black women,

the artists are part of the writing and visual conceptualization that determines how they are

presented in the videos. In this way, Beyoncé and Nicki Minaj articulate their own a ttitudes

about their sexual behavior enabling outside forces to determine it for them. Former porn star

and video vixen Karrine Steffans has capitalized on her image as “Superhead” to provide sexual

advice in books and organized talks. Adult models and former strippers Amber Rose and Blac

Chyna emphasize their butts in photoshoots and social media posts for admiration from

millions of followers. Yet despite utilizing their bodies to promote or revive their careers,

these female celebrities and socialites control their sexual representation themselves instead of

allowing others to force it upon them. Specifically, by emphasizing physical features that once

made them oddities, Black female entertainers are embracing and normalizing public

appreciation for bodies that were once degraded rather than appreciated. And although these

women have maintained relationships with men in the entertainment industry, their

accomplishments as influencers and role models for women’s sexual liberation largely enable

their socioeconomic independence.

Though contemporary entertainers from Beyoncé to Blac Chyna have helped positively

shift perspectives about female sexuality, Black women remain connected with their historical

humiliation. How did Black women become the objects of such degradation in the first place?

Upon arriving in the United States as slaves, many Black women were forced into sexual

partnerships with slave masters in which their bodies were exhibited and abused. White slave

owning men constructed the myth that African slave women were hypersexual beings to

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disregard their lack of consent and justify raping them.335 Over time, some slave women

utilized this otherwise abusive relationship for potential social and financial benefit as well as

to offset their exploitation. As one historical example of this phenomenon, though her

motivations and perspective on the relationship are not recorded, Sally Hemings lived an

atypically comfortable life as Thomas Jefferson’s mistress and mother to six of his children. 336

However, slavery-era history renders it difficult, if not impossible, for Black women to escape

traditional subjectivity because of figures like Saartjie Baartman, a South African woman who

was exploited by European entertainers and exhibitionists. 337 Saartjie’s supposedly large

posterior was emphasized in a freak show act and made her a scientific curiosity which has

influenced how popular culture represents Black women in disparaging and hypersexualized

ways in the present day. Even the highly educated and respected, former-First Lady Michelle

Obama was diminished to a “fat butt” “baby mama,” by broadcast journalists from FOX News,

though her accolades far outweigh the size of her rear or rearing abilities.338 Unfortunately, a history

of falsehood and disgrace informs even well-intentioned images of Black female sexuality, and these

representations trickle down to haunt Black women as they go about their lives.

Plays and films similarly represent Black women as sexual mistresses despite their occupation

or economic status. Here, I briefly recall dramatic works from chapter two that characterize

stereotypical qualities of the mistress trope. During slavery, the mistress stereotype was

associated with exotic, primitive, and bestial tendencies which made Black women erotic

335 Thelma Jennings, “Us Colored Women Had to Go Though A Plenty:” Sexual Exploitation of African-American Slave Women
Journal of Women's History 1 no. 3 (1990): 45.
336 Joshua D. Rothman, Notorious in the Neighborhood: Sex and Families across the Color Line in Virginia, 1787–1861 (Chapel Hill: University

of North Carolina Press, 2003), 18,19.

337 Nina Cartier, “Black Women On-Screen as Future Texts: A New Look at Black Pop Culture Representations,” Cinema Journal 53,

no. 4 (2014): 155; Clifton C. Crais and Pamela Scully, Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus: A Ghost Story and a Biography (Princeton
University Press, 2009).
338 Krissah Thompson, “Michelle Obama’s Posterior Again the Subject of Public Rant,” The Washington Post, February 4, 2013; David

Bauder, “Fox News Refers to Michelle Obama as ‘Baby Mama,’” The Associated Press, June 12, 2008.

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oddities. Though Black women of all skin tones were privy to the stereotype, this

phenomenon was especially exaggerated when characterized by hypersexual mulatta characters

in early drama like mulatta slaves Cassie and Emmeline of play Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) who

are harassed by their master Simon Legree. They resist his advances by running away to seek

freedom and control over their bodies. In subsequent eras, mistresses were “immoral” beings

whose behavior treaded the fine line between “sexually liberated and sexual object.” 339 In

Porgy and Bess (1935), “loose” woman Bess balances relationships with three men including

Porgy for economic security. 340 Similarly, Carmen Jones (1943) escapes a trip to prison by

charming a engaged army officer Joe who falls in love with her while she entertains other

relationships. 341 These characters also demonstrate how Black women with overt or

unrestrained sexuality appear desperate and money-hungry. In modern representation, the

mistress stereotype retains traits like sexual deviancy, dark-skin, attractive features, and a

physically fit figure. For instance, Nola of She’s Gotta Have It (1986), who has three male suitors

and a lesbian lover, neither conforms to a monogamous or heterosexual relationship .342

Because Black female characters on stage and screen frequently have unusual sexual preferences

and endless availability, my research chiefly addresses how the preservation or progression of

the mistress stereotype influences contemporary Black female representation. I explore how

characters Sara and Saartjie in Voyeurs de Venus and Patsey in 12 Years A Slave reveal enduring and

evolving qualities of the mistress stereotype.

339 Harris-Perry, Sister Citizen; West, “Mammy, Jezebel, Sapphire,” 294-295; Anderson, Mammies No More, 86-87.
340 Ray Allen, “An American Folk Opera? Triangulating Folkness, Blackness, and Americaness in Gershwin and Heyward's Porgy and
Bess,” Journal of American folklore 117, no. 465 (2004): 246.
341 Harry M. Benshoff and Sean Griffin. America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality at the Movies (West Sussex, UK:

John Wiley & Sons, 2011), 87; Ironically, Dorothy Dandridge, played the leading role in the film adaptations for both Porgy and
Bess (1959) and Carmen Jones (1954), and “was promoted as Hollywood’s first African American leading lady” but because she was
“trapped within the old Hollywood formulas and stereotypes,” her career further demonstrates how Black women are typecast in
theatre and in real life. The film version of Carmen Jones (1954) was remade in 2001 as Carmen: A Hip-Hopera with pop singer
Beyoncé Knowles as the lead.
342 Ibid.

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 Considering the trajectory of the mistress stereotype from jezebel slave to non -

committing and conniving vixen, I assess how the principal characters in Lydia Diamond’s

Voyeurs de Venus play (2006) and John Ridley’s 12 Years a Slave film (2013) take ownership of their

relationships and identities and attempt to balance their sexual availability. These characters’

independence, or lack thereof, plays a major role in their attempt to contest their sexual

exploitation. Sarah of Voyeurs de Venus appears conflicted about her marriage and pursues a

sexual relationship with her editor while authoring a text about exploited slave Saartjie . While

Sara has choices about her affairs and sexual partners, Saartjie is forced into one -sided

relationships with cruel handlers who objectify and control her body. In 12 Years a Slave,

Patsey endures ongoing, nonconsensual abuse at the hands of Master Epps, but eventually

learns to navigate his affections for her to find some relief from the other traumas of the

plantation.

As they traverse representation past and present, these dramatic works reveal how

Black women characters are harassed and socially ostracized due to the perception of their sexual

behavior, regardless of income, education, and occupation. While Patsey and Saartjie struggle

with powerlessness in the slavery era, they push the limitation of their time to explore what

options they have beyond exploitation. Though Sarah has much more agency in her life and

relationships as an author in the present day, her sexual behavior likens her to slave

predecessors whose coital encounters were forced upon them. Although all of these characters

are demoralized by and for their sexual encounters, they find ways to utilize their relationships to

either make their victimized existence less painful or employ their bodies for greater personal

benefit.

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 History Repeats Itself: Sara and Saartjie Amalgamate Time in their Representation,

Relationships, and Resistance to Stereotypes

Mistress Characters Sara and Saartjie Conflate Past and Present

Voyeurs de Venus debuted with Chicago Dramatists in 2006 and has since been produced

regionally in cities like Boston, Miami, and Washington, DC. Jenna Scherer of The Boston Herald

regards it an, “ambitious play that covers the historical and the contemporary, the academic and the

obscene, the metaphysical and the mundane, the sweetly funny and the deadly serious.” 343 The play

blends realism and surrealism as it follows anthropologist Sara’s literary study of African captive

Saartjie Baartman, which surprisingly uncovers resemblances to her own life and makes it

challenging to finish the story. Sara is a rising author and academic at odds with her personal

identity, which causes her outbursts and infidelity, typical of a mistress and angry, Black female. Her

subject, Saartjie, is exploited for her supposedly unique body and physical features, thus made into a

sexual object for onlookers and mistress to her employers. Through Sara and Saartjie, Voyeurs de

Venus bridges disparate eras to suggest that representation issues persist for Black women in the

present day.344

During the early nineteenth century, real-life figure Saartjie Baartman was misled into leaving

South Africa for performance opportunities in Europe, but instead became a spectacle called the

“Hottentot Venus” in freak shows and risqué exhibitions. Attracted by her large behind and

genitalia, the Hottentot Venus, White men were her primary audience. In 1810, naturalist William

Bullock entertained including Saartjie in his Museum of Natural Curiosities in Liverpool, England,

before she was acquired by military men, Hendrik Cesars and Alexander Dunlop, and exhibited at

343
Jenna Scherer, “‘Voyeurs’ Makes It Hard to Turn Away,” Boston Herald, November 4, 2008.

344
James T. Wooten, “Compact Set Up for ‘Post‐Racial’ South,” The New York Times. October 5, 1971; “Dobbs Calls on Listeners to
Rise Above ‘Partisan and Racial Element That Dominates Politics,’” Media Matters for America, November 12, 2009.

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the Piccadilly circus in London and throughout Europe.345 By 1814, she was sold to a French animal

trainer and became an artistic muse and scientific curiosity as she posed nearly nude in exhibitions at

the Palais Royal and across France.346 By 1815, in her mid-twenties, the constant abuse and

sexualization of Saartjie’s body led to her poor health and untimely death. After her death, she was

dissected by French doctor Georges Cuvier. Saartjie’s remains and replicas of her body were

subsequently displayed in a French museum until the late 20th century when South African president

Nelson Mandela was successfully granted their return to her homeland. Saartjie’s story is one of

many tales in which African women were enslaved and exploited into their graves.

Suzan-Lori Parks’ Venus (1996) is the predecessor to Voyeurs de Venus. In Parks’s version,

Sarah exposes herself to a large audience and has an affair with a married doctor who sexually

and scientifically abuses her body. The play dramatizes the historical colonization of Saartjie

Baartman’s body as a sexual object controlled by white desire, though the play attempts to reveal

her intricate personality that contrasts with the one-dimensionality she was afforded in her

lifetime.347 Though Parks presents a “reconstructed representation” of Saartjie Baartman and

provides insight on the trajectory of her life, her version of the story focuses on illustrating

Baartman’s degradation.348 Contrastingly, Lydia Diamond’s Voyeurs de Venus utilizes characters from

the past and present to reconcile how to tell Saartjie’s story in a different way.

In Diamond’s Voyeurs de Venus, anthropologist and author Sara is consumed by the parallels

between the life of her subject, Saartjie Baartman, the involuntary African female exhibitionist, and

her own. By blending time and temperament, the play reveals how Sara and Saartjie both grapple

345 Clifton C. Crais; Pamela Scully, Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus: A Ghost Story and a Biography. (Princeton University Press,
2009), 131-134; Sadiah Qureshi, “Displaying Sara Baartman, the ‘Venus Hottentot,’” History of Science. 42, no. 136 (June 2004): 233–
257.
346 Ibid.
347 Sanya Osha, “Venus and White Desire,” Transition 99, no. 1 (2008): 80.
348 Jean Young, “The Re-Objectification and Re-Commodification of Saartjie Baartman in Suzan-Lori Parks's Venus,” African American

Review 31, no. 4 (1997): 702.

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with their representation in their respective eras.349 Diamond describes Saartjie as “a brown-skinned,

voluptuously proportioned African woman… who wisely hides her extremely overlooked

intelligence behind a mask of apparent contentment.”350 Channeling Diamond’s own dilemma, Sara

struggles with how to properly dramatize Saartjie’s life. In the play, Saartjie’s ghost haunts her and

causes her to examine her own life. Bored with her husband, James Bradford, Sarah entertains an

affair with her editor, James Booker; she explores her romantic options in different partners while

multiple partners were forced on Saartjie. Saartjie recalls being abused by three male characters

including English doctor Alexander Dunlop, museum director William Bullock, and French doctor

Georges Cuvier. As both women seek personal fulfillment in their respective eras, they contemplate

how these relationships might benefit them. Though Sara has much more social freedom than

Saartjie and wants to positively shift conversations about Black female sexuality, she finds herself

having to further damage Saartjie’s reputation to advance her career. In this way, the relationship

between Saartjie and Sara reveals enduring qualities of Black mistress characters, demonstrating the

hard choices that these women had to make in the midst of abuse and extraordinary pressure from

the men in their lives, and what it might mean to advance at the expense of other Black women.

Despite Inhabiting Disparate Eras, Saartjie and Sara Lack Agency over Representation

Though Saartjie ultimately embraces a jezebel image in hopes that it will please Cuvier, her

“nonconfrontational demeanor” resolves her to primitive representation and oversexualization.351

Her first White “guardian,” English doctor Alexander Dunlop, reiterates the expectation that she

349 Jenna Scherer, “‘Voyeurs’ Makes It Hard to Turn Away,” Boston Herald, November 4, 2008; James T. Wooten, “Compact Set Up
for ‘Post‐Racial’ South,” The New York Times. October 5, 1971; “Dobbs Calls on Listeners to Rise Above ‘Partisan and Racial
Element That Dominates Politics,’” Media Matters for America, November 12, 2009.
350 Diamond, “Voyeurs de Venus,” (2006) in Contemporary Plays by African American Women, Ten Complete Works edited by Sandra Adell:

309-360 (University of Illinois Press, 2015), 311.

351 Ibid, 311.

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suppress her intellect, stating it’s “Not important that you understand. Only that you do.”352 After

calling Saartjie sorry and savage, Dunlop coaches her to verbally and physically entice onlookers as

she “struggles into a very tight-fitting knee-length dress.”353 Soon afterwards, he interests museum

director William Bullock in buying Saartjie, specifying that she is under his legal contract as a

performer, rather than a slave, though she is caged and repeatedly called “property.”354 Her

supposed ignorance is later parodied when she is dissected by zoologist Cuvier and his assistant

Millicent who is surprised to discover, “She had a brain” and thoughts.”355 Regarded a “well-

behaved species” with an “impressive posterior,” who “can stand erect for long hours and lay on

her back as sufficiently as anyone,” Dunlop, Cuvier, and Bullock’s statements reduce Saartjie to a

sexual creature to be observed and abused.356

Because of her awareness of Saartjie’s representation, Sara constantly compares herself

and contemplates how to represent her heart-wrenching history in a way that will honor her

legacy rather than further exploit her. Sara’s African American present is influenced by Saartjie’s

African past. Throughout the play, Saartjie’s lingering spirit “won’t let [her] sleep” and haunts

Sara’s dreams with images of her dismembered body.357 The dream sequence features a chorus of

Black women “in white ball gowns, all stained with a circle of blood at crotch level… wearing afro

wigs and carrying Venti Starbucks cups,” which bridges past and present symbols of female

degradation.358 Having initially pitched her book about Saartjie’s life as “interesting, entertaining,

disturbing, and fascinating,” the “grotesque” details including her abuse, objectification, and

dissection make Sara question, “How do I write that?”359 Sara’s struggle to represent Saartjie, not

352 Ibid, 311, 313.

353 Ibid, 313-314.
354 Ibid, 320-321.
355 Ibid, 326.
356 Ibid, 320.
357 Ibid, 328.
358 Ibid, 327.
359 Ibid, 322-324.

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just in a flattering way, but in any way at all, shows the difficulty Black women face when attempting

to redefine the sexuality that was violently and fictitiously placed upon them.

Casual Dating or Arranged Partnerships: Saartjie and Sara Question the Status of their Relationships

Saartjie voices her dissatisfaction with her life and abusive sexual relationships.

Saartjie’s life as an exhibitionist implies that she only had physical relationships with the White men

who abused her and that Black men were either in similarly degrading circumstances or not

present.360 Saartjie describes being raped by the brothers of the Cezar family until the oldest got

married because it would be easier to be rid of her. Afterwards, “they made arrangements with

Monsieur Dunlop,” to have her exhibited throughout Europe.361 Though Saartjie deems it affection

and attention, “a condition of [her] existence that was sometimes tolerable,” her first sexual

encounters typify the mistress stereotype that originated from the powerless position slave women

endured under their masters. When Sara asks Saartjie about Cuvier, she defines their interaction as

one of relations rather than a relationship in which she found him attractive to the extent that he

was powerful.362 Though colonized Black women were the involuntary mistresses of their

White slave masters, some had the prowess to utilize that favoritism and sexual relationship to

achieve autonomy within the confines of their environment. Unfortunately, Saartjie’s attempts

at love were unrequited as the married Cuvier led her on, required her to have multiple

abortions, and pursued her solely for exhibition and research purposes.

Sara is “more confident in her professional life than she is in her personal life,” and seems

more interested in intellectual validation than affection from her White academic husband, James

360 bell hooks, “Reconstructing Black Masculinity,” Black Looks: Race and Representation (South End Press, 1992): 115-131; Natasha
Gordon-Chipembere, Representation and Black Womanhood: The Legacy of Sarah Baartman (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011);
Deborah Willis, Black Venus 2010: They Called Her ‘Hottentot’ (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010).
361 Diamond, 323.

362 Ibid, 333.

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Bradsford. Assuming the relationship would remain consensual, Sara has married someone she

could have only seen in secret during Saartjie’s time, but seems unemotionally attached. Sara claims

that she does not have “racial identity issues but lives in a culture that struggles with

contradiction.”363 As if in symbolic resistance to the legacy of mistreatment Saartjie and other Black

women encountered historically from White men, Sara is unfaithful to her White husband by

engaging in a physical relationship with Black book editor James Booker, which she initially deems

“safe,” likely because of their racial sameness compared with her interracial marriage.364 Sara tries to

rationalize the tryst as retribution, Saartjie’s chance to experience a sense of mutual love that she

never received from a type of man to which she never had access. Her sexual encounter with

Booker is portrayed with the inclusion of Saartjie’s ghost and as a likely reckoning for her demeaned

body and character. She explains:

There was no helpless about it. What sickens me is that I had my wits about me. I was not

seduced […] I made a choice. And the choice had been made when I said yes, I will give you

your book, and my soul, and my husband’s loyalty. I will hand it to you on a platter with my

soul, [Saartjie joins in,] “If you will make love to us.”365

However, that safety is threatened when the president of the board at her press party makes the

tasteless remark “I would have paid to see that ass,” seemingly about Saartjie and the material in

Sara’s book. Sara is disgusted that as a bystander to the situation, Booker claims he “only fights the

battles [he] thinks [he] can win,” and asks if he will “think less” of her for not being in the mood for

sex.366 His casual attitude about their relationship is illustrated in his lines like, “I’ll think a little

more of you if you bring that ass over here and give me some,” and like a willing mistress, Sara

363 Diamond, 319.

364 Ibid, 340.
365 Lydia R. Diamond, “Voyeurs de Venus,” 340.
366 Ibid, 341-342.

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succumbs to his advances even after he proves himself unworthy.367 Her seemingly irrational

promiscuity in this moment suggests that her desire for sex is more important than feeling respected

in their relationship. In illustrating the parallels between Saartjie and Sara, Diamond’s play reveals

the stark similarities history bears for Black women in the present whose sexual relationships still

inform their socioeconomic reliance or independence. By linking Saartje and Sara, Diamond’s play

demonstrates how Black women past and present either accept or assert their sexuality in

relationships with men for financial benefit or societal freedom.

Perception Persists: Can Sara Change Saartjie’s History and Improve Her Own Future?

Though Saartjie was forced into her mistress role by White captors, she progressively

asserts some independence over her representation as cultured and perceptive. During the early

nineteenth century, Saartjie was exhibited in freak shows and museums in Europe as the “Hottentot

Venus,” and was continually abused and ogled by White men solely interested in her physically and

scientifically. When her “driven, anti-social, and [slightly] sadistic” French owner Georges Cuvier

calls her “an oddity,” she retorts that “at home [she] is only a little better than average,” challenging

the narrative that she was destined to be displayed.368 Because Saartjie is a physical part of Sara’s

life, she continually considers her likeness to Saartjie and how portraying her will affect her

legacy. While Sara was initially secure in a relationship with her White husband, writing Saartjie’s

story made her question her independence and how she may or may not be vastly different from

Saartjie. Sara’s extreme guilt is personified when she helps dissect Saartjie and later receives an

award at the play’s conclusion for her book titled The Search for Venus (57-67).369 Sara’s struggle to

367 Ibid, 342.

368 Ibid, 311, 346.

369 Connie Rapoo, “Venus: The Iconic Black Female Figure of Sacrifice” in Figures of Sacrifice: Africa in the Transnational Imaginary: 57-67
(ProQuest, 2008).

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portray Saartjie’s life mirrors how Lydia Diamond likely grappled with how to challenge stereotypes

with these characters and reconcile her tale of Black female sexuality past and present.

How Has Saartjie’s Image Affected Contemporary Representation?

Diamond’s dance sequences to Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “I Like Big Butts,” “Aint Gonna Bump No

More (With No Big Fat Woman),” “Brick House,” and “Shake Your Booty” throughout Voyeurs de

Venus acknowledge representation’s real-life impact on backside obsession and oversexualization of

Black women in hip-hop and other popular music.370 Simple moments like Sara asking Bradsford if

her outfit “makes [her] ass look big,” simultaneously channel Saartjie’s degradation by White male

owners and revisionist appreciation of Black women’s backsides in hip-hop music by Black male

rappers from Juvenile to Big Sean.371 Though big butts have been reclaimed in popular culture by

female entertainers like Blac Chyna and Nicki Minaj, some social media users voice their irritation

with Black women’s persistent oversexualization with memes such as “Sarah Baartman be like: Stop

letting these devils do you like they did me.” 372 Another utilizes rapper 2 Chainz’s “All I want for

my birthday…” lyrics, substituting “is a big booty ho,” with “is for history to stop repeating itself,”

to express their disgust that disparaging Black female bodies remains socially acceptable.373 Feminist

scholar Mireille Miller-Young contends that instead of further degrading the “Hottentot Venus,”

which historically symbolized “deviant, repulsive, and grotesque black sexuality and black

womanhood, black women’s rear ends became newly fetishized through hip-hop music in ways that

sought to recognize, reclaim, and reify their bodies as desirable, natural, and attractive.”374 She

370 Ibid, 340, 352.

371 Ibid, 322; Juvenile, “Back That Ass Up;” Big Sean, “Dance (Ass).”

372 “Sarah Baartman Be Like: Stop Letting These Devils Do You Like They Did Me,” Facebook via Sizzle, Accessed April 2017.
373 “All I Want for my Birthday… is for History to Stop Repeating Itself,” Instagram via Faan mail, Accessed April 2017; 2 Chainz
and Kanye West. Birthday Song. Sonny Digital, West, BWheezy, Anthony Kilhoffer, Lifted and Mike Dean. Def Jam, 2012.
374 Mireille Miller-Young, “Hip-Hop Honeys and Da Hustlaz: Black Sexualities in the New Hip-Hop Pornography,” Meridians:

Feminism, Race, Transnationalism 8, no. 1 (2007): 261-292.

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implies that these lyrics and images from amorous rappers and gyrating video vixens intend to affirm

rather than degrade Black women or ignore Saartjie’s painful past. Contrastingly, Evan Tobias’s

“Flipping the Misogynist Script,” challenges popular culture’s supposed reappropriation, arguing that

it might negatively influence youth to mimic representations that are eerily like Saartjie. 375 Through

Saartjie, Diamond uncovers the history of Black women’s oversexualization that informs Sara’s

misgivings about her identity and sexual freedom in the future. Therefore, Voyeurs de Venus generates

critical questions about how enduring images of the past inform Black female representation for

better or worse.

The Comfort Girl: Patsey Navigates Sexual and Physical Abuse through Friendships and

Resourcefulness in 12 Years a Slave

Solomon’s Tale of Bondage Provides Perspectives about Black Women’s Sexual Abuse

12 Years a Slave (2013) is a film adapted from Solomon Northrup’s novel of the same

name which primarily focuses on the nineteenth century capture and enslavement of Solomon

Northrup. In 1841, Solomon is living as a free man in New York with his family. While they are

away, two swindlers trick him into slavery by offering him temporary work as a musician in

Washington, D.C. After a lavish dinner, he awakens in chains, is renamed “Platt,” and sent to a

plantation with Eliza, a woman who has been separated from her children. After some time with

sympathetic owner William Ford, who buys Solomon a violin, he has a confrontation with an

overseer and is sold to the cruel Master and Mistress Epps. There he meets Patsey, a young woman

who is the fastest cotton-picker on the plantation. Portrayed by Lupita Nyong’o, who won an

Academy award for the role, Patsey is a central figure in the film and mistress to Master Epps.

375 Evan S. Tobias, “Flipping the Misogynist Script: Gender, Agency, Hip Hop and Music Education,” Action, Criticism, and Theory for
Music Education 13, no. 2 (2014): 54.

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Though their approaches to navigating slavery differ because of their upbringings and experiences,

Patsey and Solomon develop a bond that proves essential to enduring their lives on the plantation.

Because of her role as Master Epps’s mistress, and her representation of the mistress trope in 12

Days a Slave, Patsey will be the focus of my analysis here.

Director Steve McQueen acknowledges the significance of Black women in the slave

narrative by placing emphasis on Black female characters like Patsey having little to no control

over their own bodies.376 Patsey embodies early iterations of the mulatta stereotype who is sexually

abused by her master and powerless to change her circumstances. She is obedient to Master Epps

but maintains her dignity by being sexually unresponsive to his advances. Her friendships allow her

to find brief moments of relief and adjust her reactions to the Epps’s abuse. Elder slave woman

Mistress Shaw offers Patsey advice on how to please Master Epps so that she might benefit from it,

while Solomon intercepts Master Epps’s overt attempts to rape Patsey when possible. Though her

freedom is minimal and largely contingent upon her interactions with Master Epps, Patsey finds

subtle ways to resist the oversexualization of her body. Regardless of being an unwilling victim,

Patsey never allows Epps to break her spirit and maintains a hopeful attitude that she might one day

experience true freedom. As a contemporary iteration of a slave woman, Patsey noticeably recoils at

her White master, and therefore, challenges the submission and powerlessness often attributed with

the mistress stereotype.

Patsey Acknowledges Her Subjugated Status as Master Epps’s Mistress

Although Master Epps is often cruel to Patsey through repeated physical and sexual abuse,

his constant attention to her enrages his wife, Mistress Mary Epps.377 Driven by humiliation and

376 Stephanie Li, “12 Years a Slave as a Neo-Slave Narrative,” American Literary History 26, no. 2 (2014): 326-331.
377 Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (WW Norton & Company, 2009); Patsey’s relationship with
Master Epps is much like that of Thomas Jefferson with his biracial mistress Sally Hemings. Heming’s lineage traces back to a

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jealousy, Mistress Epps strikes Patsey on several separate occasions because she is Master Epps’

preferred partner. Late one night, Master Epps awakens the slaves for the sole purpose of his

entertainment. While Solomon plays the violin, the slaves dance and Master Epps obviously admires

Patsey. Angered by Master Epps’s blatant lust for Patsey, Mistress Epps throws a carafe at her face

and emphatically demands that she be sold. While a sobbing, bloody Patsey is carried away from the

party, Master Epps makes his fondness for her clear to Mistress Epps by stating, “Do not set

yourself up against Patsey, my dear. ‘Cause I will rid myself of yah well before I do away with

her.”378 Though Mistress Epps is granted the socially acceptable title of wife, Master Epps’s biting

words articulate his favoritism and desire for Patsey, despite her not reciprocating those feelings. As

Patsey learns to appease Master Epps to lessen the suffering of his persistent sexual abuse, Mistress

Epps’s jealousy becomes progressively intense. While Patsey has little control over her

circumstances, every time she obeys Master Epps and accepts his advances, she jeopardies the small

semblance of livelihood she has grown accustomed to on the plantation. Caught between the master

and the mistress, Patsey’s situation illustrates the powerlessness of slave women who were desired

by their masters and reveals that may have suffered further abuse from their masters’ bitter wives. In

Patsey’s case, the term mistress is fitting for her status as the other woman who shares Master Epps

with Mistress Epps.

In spite of the impossible situation, Patsey refuses to break. She picks twice as much as the

male slaves and Master Epps takes notice. He calls her a “Queen of the Fields,” and says that “God

give her to me.”379 She refuses to show interest in Epps during their awkward sexual encounters, a

choice that infuriates Epps, who beats and whips her, hoping that will somehow encourage her to

plantation owner, coincidentally named Francis Eppes, that refused to sell Sally’s mother, only allowing her to be inherited amongst
family.
378 John Ridley, “12 Years a Slave,” (Film script, 2013), 66.
379 Ridley, 12 Years a Slave, 63.

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enjoy being raped. Despite his multiple abuses, Patsey simply turns her head and remains still and

responsive. While Master Epps eventually stop raping Patsey and walks away, he is undeterred by

her “vicious passive aggressiveness” in the long run and continues pursuing her on other

occasions.380 Meanwhile, Mistress Epps finds Patsey’s ability to rise above her cruelty highly

offensive and she never lets up on finding ways to punish her. After Patsey is nonchalant about

Mistress Epps offering pastries to all the slaves but her, she “drives her nails into Patsey’s face

leaving five deep and bloody gashes.”381 Though Patsey’s impassive attitude is met with violence, it

demonstrates her strength and ability to resist in some way, and shows her ability to assert some

power by getting under both Mistress and Master Epps’s skin.

Patsey’s Friendships with Solomon and Mistress Shaw Help Her Manage Master Epps’s Abuse

Solomon and Patsey maintain a platonic relationship, undermining the mistress trope that

suggests Black mistresses cannot restrain their unbridled sexual desire, and they support one another

in making their plantation experience less painful when possible. Solomon especially tries to

interfere with instances when Master Epps is planning to rape Patsey. They tend to each other’s

backs after being whipped on separate occasions, Solomon for not picking enough cotton and

Patsey for visiting Mistress Shaw. When escorting Patsey back from the Shaw estate, Solomon

attempts to help Patsey thwart Epps’s advances by strategically placing himself in front of her and

whispering, “Do not look in his direction. Continue on.”382 A drunken Master Epps catches on to

Solomon’s intervention, chases after him, and attempts to stab him. When Mistress Epps emerges

to investigate the chaos, Solomon cleverly tells her that they had a misunderstanding about Patsey,

knowing that it will anger her and increase the chances of Patsey being left alone. In these ways,

380 Ibid, 108.

381 Ibid, 77.
382 Ibid, 105.

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Solomon and Patsey’s friendship helps to sustain them both through their enslavement on the Epps

plantation.

And yet, the friendship with Solomon is also Patsey’s downfall, because it places a Black

man—a slave—between her and the slave masters who are her tormentors. After continual abuse

from both Master and Mistress Epps, Patsey offers a ring she stole from the mistresses to convince

Solomon to kill her and relieve her from a life of degradation and helplessness. “All I ask: End my

life. Take my body to the margin of the swamp— Take me by the throat. Hold me low in the water

until I’s still ‘n without life. Bury me in a lonely place of dying… I thought on it long and hard.”383

Though Patsey begs him to do the “merciful act” that she states, “I ain’t got the strength to do

myself,” Solomon refuses, finding suicide unimaginable even in their circumstances. Solomon’s

dilemma of not wanting to hurt Patsey is played out again when he refuses to whip Patsey for

visiting Mistress Shaw at Master Epps request. Solomon is hesitant to whip her at full force, even

when he is threatened by Master Epps and coerced by Patsey’s cries to “Do it. Don’t stop until I’m

dead,” though he eventually reaches a breaking point and Master Epps takes over.384 Because both

her attempts to enjoy her life and end her life have failed, she hopes this unrelenting whipping will

be her demise. Unfortunately, her beating only destroys her back and prolongs her suffering.

Despite Solomon’s good intentions to thwart Patsey’s sexual victimization, he is powerless to

protect her from Master Epp’s abuse and the cruelty of the plantation. Though they have a long

embrace when Solomon is rescued, he ultimately leaves Patsey to her degraded state as a mistress

slave for which there is no escape.

Patsey develops a companionship with an elder slave woman Mistress Shaw, who suggests

she leverage Master Epps’ sexual advances to lessen the toils of her life on the plantation.

383 Ridley, 114.

384 Ridley, 109.

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Since there is no distinct term for a White slave owner’s partners, Master Epps’ wife and Master

Shaw’s slave woman are both given the title mistress. However, race is an obvious distinction that

typically prevents Black women from being mistaken for a White man’s wife during times of

enslavement. The relationship between Patsey and Mistress Shaw illustrates Black feminine

perspectives during slavery and “emphasizes an important if tenuous bond between the two

women, suggesting a female community that exists apart from Northup’s male subjectivity.” 385

Screenwriter John Ridley describes the importance of Patsey’s scene with Mistress Shaw

because of:

folks likely unfamiliarity with a woman of color in that era being able to elevate

herself to a degree, or the notion that a white master may have felt secure

enough to have a black mistress that he could have a relationship with openly

on that level. 386

Though her screen time is limited, Mistress Shaw proves a complex character who

simultaneously demeans and educates other slaves to authenticate her status as her master’s

wife and sexual partner. Shaw separates herself from other slaves like Solomon when referring

to him as “Nigger Platt” while assuring Patsey that she “know[s] what it like to be the object

of Massa’s predilections and peculiarities [that] can get expressed with kindness or wit

violence.”387 She encourages Patsey to indulge the master with “a lusty visit in the night” to

avoid “a visitation from the whip.” 388 Shaw uses the term “comfort” to address how Patsey

can concurrently please her master and preserve herself. 389 She suggests that while she gives

comfort to Epps to enjoy some comfort of her own on the plantation, she can also take

385 Stephanie Li, “12 Years,” 329.

386 Kyle Buchanan, “The Toughest Scene I Wrote: John Ridley on 12 Years a Slave’s ‘WTF Moment,” Vulture, December 20, 2013.
387 Ridley, “12 Years,” 69-70.
388 Ibid, 70.
389 Ibid.

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comfort in the fact that the Lord will eventually take care of Epps. As Shaw notes, “the curse

of the Pharos is a poor example of all that wait ‘fo the plantation class.” 390 Thus, Mistress

Shaw proves an important role model for teaching Patsey how to survive her circumst ances as

sexual object to a volatile Master Epps. Their friendship is one of few joys for Patsey on the

plantation, and it empowers her to take some control over her situation and her sexuality. 391

Patsey Practices Assertiveness and Resourcefulness at Her Own Risk

Upon her return from visiting Mistress Shaw with soap to clean herself, Patsey appeals

to Master Epps’s affections and discusses her need for personal hygiene to avoid punishment for

wandering off. Since slave women are expected to be submissive mistresses who are readily available

to their masters, advocating for one’s own needs is atypical and risky behavior. Though Patsey

initially lies about having gone to Shaw’s, she later pleads Master Epps’s forgiveness while asserting

that she will keep the soap since Mistress Epps purposefully withholds it. She cries, “Stink so much

I make myself gag. Five hundred pounds ‘a cotton! Day in, day out. More than any man here. And

‘fo that I will be clean; that all I ax. Dis here what I went to Shaw’s ‘fo.”392 This scene illustrates that

despite Patsey conceding to her roles as a hard-working field hand and Master Epps’s mistress, the

soap symbolizes her dignity in the form of literal and figurative cleanliness.

Despite Patsey’s compelling argument, Epps is unconvinced of her story and determined

to punish her with encouragement from a jealous Mistress Epps who watches approvingly, stating

“Strike the life from her.”393 However, he is unable to harm Patsey himself and instead forces a

reluctant Solomon to whip her back until it is raw. Though Patsey says she would “rather it be” him,

390 Ibid.
391 Ibid, 69.
392 Ridley, “12 Years,” 107.
393 Ibid, 108.

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this moment is intensified because of Solomon’s necessarily passive obedience, especially after

refusing Patsey’s request to end her life. Solomon then tends to Patsey’s wounds, ashamed of the

pain that he inflicted, but was powerless to prevent. Though Mistress Epps is pleased to see Patsey

suffer, Patsey acquires the soap she was previously denied and finds brief independence in voicing

her opinions. By actively prioritizing her health and her desires, she restores some ownership of her

body and, unlike most slave mistresses, refuses to be a docile victim of sexual abuse. In this act of

resistance—that of refusing to give up the soap and all that it symbolizes—this representation of the

mistress trope resists the tradition of the deviant, immoral, sexually promiscuous mistress, replacing

it instead with a Black woman struggling to survive an impossible situation.

Patsey’s Characterization Proves Impactful to Popular Culture in the Present Day

Patsey is an example of a sexualized Black female character who strives to survive her

circumstances and forge her own terms for her role as a mistress. Though portraying Black women

as sexual objects can damagingly affect the perception of real-life Black women, Patsey’s resilience is

inspiring and serves as a reminder for how much Black women have socially progressed, despite

persistent sexualization. Though Patsey has limited agency, she utilizes her relationships with

Solomon and Mistress Shaw to find ways to resist her sexual victimization by Master Epps.

Social media has weighed in on 12 Years A Slave as a contemporary film that portrays

nuanced characterization for stereotypical figures like Patsey as a slavery-era mistress. Instagram

posts have been fairly kind to Patsey’s character, mainly including impactful quotes from and about

her, including Master Epps telling Mistress Epps that he prefers Patsey over her. However, one

meme demonstrates investment in the film and concern for Patsey’s well-being by commenting on

her previously described beating and advising her to be more passive in her demand for cleanliness.

In jest, it states, “What if I told you leave the fucking soap Patsey[?],” which insinuates that she

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might not have been punished so severely had she been more obedient.394 Other images

appropriate the movie’s title to liken the timeline of current cultural phenomena with Solomon’s

and Patsey’s lengthy enslavement. Some of the most popular of these include disgust with the

Trump administration, deeming it “12 Years A Slave: The Sequel,” as well as exaggerating the length

of Chris Paul’s career with his former basketball team by calling him: “12 Years A Clipper.”395 A

distasteful meme attempts the cheeky comparison of Patsey’s enduring sexual abuse with that of Bill

Cosby having violated victims for decades, stating: “12 Years A Slave? Try 40 Years of Rape.”396

Though these posts vary widely as daft and inappropriate responses to film, they are evidence of its

impact on popular culture and acknowledge the significance of Patsey’s character and

circumstances.

Must the Show Go On: What Qualities of the Mistress Stereotype Linger?

Voyeurs de Venus and 12 Years A Slave challenge Black women’s continual degradation and

sexual harassment, illustrate Black women resisting these circumstances, and urge audiences to

consider their role in enabling or proliferating stereotypes. Together, these dramatic works trace

how Black women in the present remain beholden to sexualized characterization of previous

eras. As a working professional in the present-day, Sara is making a conscious choice to take

control of her body and explore her sexuality in a way that Saartjie and Patsey were unable to

do due to their subservient positions during colonial captivity. By having an affair, Sara

imbues modern representation of women who resist monogamous relationships. Meanwhile,

Saartjie and Patsey are largely stuck in their subjugated circumstances. While Saartjie and Sara

394 “What If I Told You Leave the Fucking Soap Patsey,” Instagram via Quickmeme, Accessed April 2017.
395 “12 Years A Slave: The Sequel,” Instagram via Me.me, Accessed April 2017; “Chris Paul: 12 Years A Clipper,” Instagram via
Ghetto Red Hot, Accessed April 2017.
396 “12 Years A Slave? Try 40 Years of Rape,” Instagram via Meme Generator, Accessed April 2017.

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form a bond to negotiate the former’s representation, Patsey enlists the help of fellow slaves

with similar experiences to cope with her regular molestation and abuse from Master and

Mistress Epps. Though Saartjie, Sara, and Patsey grapple with mistress characterization in

unique ways, their representations depart from traditional figures of desperation and

powerlessness to strong, self-defined women who reject expectations about their sexuality.

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 CHAPTER SIX

THE END CREDITS: AN OVERVIEW & EXPECTATIONS FOR

RESEARCH ON BLACK FEMALE REPRESENTATION

I’ve played a lot of characters that could’ve been borderline stereotypical women, but my job as an actress is to make the

audience understand and empathize with the people. Cookie is a lot. She wears me out but I know this woman. I’ve

done my research inside and out. I took Cookie and made her my own… You can say whatever you want about her,

about Luscious, about what they did to get where they are. But at the end of the day, their sons are not statistics. Their

sons are not in jail. They broke a cycle of poverty. That’s why I think they’re kind of heroes, in a very American way.

~Taraji P. Henson, Empire

Tracing Stereotypes Past and Present

My dissertation has focused on the mammy, mulatta, and mistress stereotypes as they

manifest in contemporary films and plays. Together with the frameworks of critical race and Black

feminist theories, I implement scholarship, news, and social media to assess these works’ impact on

popular culture. Even as mediums that reach disparate demographics, I argue that plays and films

affect perspectives about Black female representation. Because of my positionality as a heterosexual,

light-skinned Black woman, I constantly work to define myself against stereotypes. Therefore,

despite my analysis being framed in an academic context, having applied theatre scholar Lisa M.

Anderson’s Mammies No More: The Changing Image of Black Women on Stage and Screen (1997), a study of

the mammy, mulatta, and mistress trope in works through the end of the twentieth century as a

model for my research in the present, much of this process was very personal to me.

The U.S. stereotypes that I wrestle with in this research were formed through harmful

assumptions and hierarchical racial bias embedded in minstrelsy and other forms of early dramatic

representation. Because stereotypes align with a political landscape built on discrimination, they
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continue to reveal themselves as cultural norms in theatre and mainstream society. Together with the

frameworks of critical race and Black feminist theories, I implement scholarship, news media, and

social media to assess how the mammy, mulatta, and mistress stereotypes manifest in contemporary

films and plays and impact popular culture. Even as mediums that reach disparate demographics,

films and plays affect perspectives about Black female representation in both affirming and

destructive ways. As we acknowledge that derogatory iconic Black female representations exist in

contemporary U.S. society, we must also acknowledge that they persist on stage, film as well as

television productions. This analysis of how dramatic representation constructs and propagates the

Black female stereotypes of mammy, mulatta, and mistress (jezebel) in U.S. society deconstructs one

aspect of the multifaceted influences that shape Black female representation. Further analysis on

how the cultural nuances of authors, directors, producers and other artistic contributors shape the

dramatic representations of Black women in media productions is needed. As noted by Taraji

Henson, creative license taken by actors significantly contributes to the performativity of characters

and the influences their embodiment on stage and screen may have on viewers and society in

general. Through these alternative explorations, academic scholarship might further interrogate how

mass media and social media cooperatively influence the perpetuation of negative Black female

stereotypes through dramatic works, including plays, films, and television series.

Some of my case studies show an overt understanding of how stereotypes inform Black

female representation. Through their characters’ recognition of historical figures or media images,

Diamond, Nottage, and Simien articulate a conscious reclamation of significant tropes. Further

study would benefit from exploring how the mammy, mulatta, and mistress overlap with and have

produced other distinguishable Black female stereotypes. In early dramatic works like The Birth of a

Nation, the mulatta and mistress trope overlap in terms of having unrestrained sexuality. Mulatta

character Lydia is portrayed as being a sex-crazed and manipulative influence on her master, Austin

155
Stoneman. Additional overlap of types using sexuality and/or skin tone appear in other tropes

including the sapphire (angry Black woman) and the welfare queen. Cinematic examples include

characters Bernadine of Waiting to Exhale (1995), Felicia of Friday (1995), and Paula, Chiron’s mom

of Moonlight (2016).

Future Considerations

As hinted by actress Taraji P. Henson, who plays Cookie of television series Empire (2015 –),

there are stereotypical qualities within every character. Henson’s character Cookie is a former

convict turned record producer with three sons by her estranged record producer husband, Lucius.

Ingrained cultural assumptions make the image a stereotype and inform how Black women are

represented accordingly. My extended study includes television series with example characters of the

mammy, mulatta, and mistress. Though television shows are certainly ripe with these

representations, their episodic nature distinguished them from the focused and finite nature of films

and plays which I explore. Further study might utilize specific episodes from series that demonstrate

the types including the television portrayals of Aunt Vi in Queen Sugar, Bow in Blackish, and Olivia in

Scandal whose characters embody some of the traditional traits associated with these stereotypes.

Considering their status as professionals in the contemporary era, they are afforded the agency to

defy damaging characterization. Aunt Vi functions as a maternal figure to her deceased brother’s

three grown children; however, she also works as a restaurant manager who is finally embracing her

independence and entrepreneurial goals at the age of 60.

While my study focused on dramatic works that primarily categorized the mammy, mulatta,

and mistress stereotype as distinct figures, other contemporary characters merge all three

stereotypes. Set during slavery, series Underground (2016 – ) illustrates the journey of a small group of

runaway slaves. Likewise, Brendan Jacobs-Jenkins’ An Octoroon is inspired by Dion Boucicault’s The

156
Octoroon (1852) and focuses on subverting stereotypes by staging and complicating them. A brief

honorable mention, Black couple Randall and Beth of television show This Is Us (2016 – ) have a

healthy relationship that is uncommon in contemporary Black representation. The show reveals

them having realistic disagreements about careers and family dynamics, including adoption and

fostering. Despite not always agreeing with Randall’s decisions, we see Beth carry the family after

Randall quits his job and step up to care for their foster daughter Deja and encourage Randall to be

an engaged Black dad. Though Beth proves multidimensional as a wife, mother, and working

professional, she is simply a supporting figure since the series focuses primarily on the relationship

between Randall and his White twin siblings.

Another possible avenue to explore is dramatic genre and how it influences the possibilities

of Black female representation. How does the portrayal of Black women in realism compare to that

of post-apocalyptic, fantasy, and comic inspired works? Though Black-led shows on major networks

and box-office movies have become customary in recent years, fictional storylines have proven

kinder to Black female representation than realism since characterized figures are allowed agency

and positions of power. In the post-apocalyptic world of The Walking Dead (2010 –), Michonne is

simultaneously a sword-yielding leader and maternal figure to Carl, her boyfriend Rick’s son.

Notably, Michonne’s relationship with Rick is not only interracial, but healthy, two factors that rarely

present themselves on television. Meanwhile Tara Thornton of series True Blood (2008-2014) is

surrounded by supernatural beings and stumbles through life in Bon Temps, Louisiana until she

becomes a vampire. Though she initially resists being bitten, her newfound strength expands her

power over her body which was previously controlled by others. African Shuri of film Black Panther

(2018) works and controls the lab which holds vibranium, the country’s lifeforce. As T’Challa’s sister

and a female pilot in the Nigeria community, Shuri provides him strategies and technology to

157
navigate his mission and functions as an emerging leader to her people. Thus, Michonne, Tara, and

Shuri provide positive media representations that their fictional worlds enable.

Ultimately, the goal of this work is to suggest that a wider array of Black female

characterizations exist in fictional worlds to influence the perceptions and beliefs that exist in our

actual world. Building on the work of Anderson, Collins and Williams, the theoretical implications

of this research suggest that challenges remain in the realm of constructing positive notions of Black

femininity and the task of deconstructing the cultural patterns that sustain these negative stereotypes

exists among the analyses emerging from critical race theory. It is my hope that the consumable

images portrayed in multimedia productions significantly contribute toward the amelioration of the

derogatory perceptions associated with the mammy, mulatta and mistress and that more

empowering images will emerge from future productions highlighting the Black female experience.

158
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 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Devair O. Jeffries earned a Bachelor of Arts Cum Laude in Theatre Performance with a

minor in Studio Art from Winthrop University. She initiated her core research interest through her

senior thesis titled, “Deconstructing Stereotypes and Iconic Representations of the African-

American Experience in Three Contemporary Plays.” She received her Master of Arts in Theatre

History and Criticism from the University of South Carolina where she continued to refine her

research interests on African American theatre, specifically representation and racial violence in

which she utilizes critical race and Black feminist theories. Her research has been featured in

TRAUE, Spectrum, Western Journal of Black Studies, Multicultural Perspectives and Multicultural Learning and

Teaching. She has presented at national conferences including the Association for Theatre in Higher

Education, Comparative Drama, Mid-America Theatre Conference, and National Association for

Multicultural Education, as well as international conferences including the Conference of the

International Association for Media and History and Song, Stage, and Screen. She staged and co-

authored the original production, One Hundred Years of Hope, a docudrama addressing racial tension

and police brutality in the United States at the Florida State University Conradi Theatre.

Devair is the recipient of the Wilson-Auzenne Graduate Fellowship, the Full Frame

Documentary Film Fellowship and she is a Philanthropic Educational Organization Award

Nominee. She was awarded the President’s Council on Diversity and Inclusion Mini-Grant as a

member of the Program for Instructional Excellence (PIE) and Fellows Society Diversity &

Inclusion Committee at Florida State University.

180