An Octoroon

During the centuries of American slavery and the post-Reconstruction era of Jim Crow segregation laws, status as an enslaved or Black person was a matter of blood quantum. As white enslavers began raping and impregnating enslaved women, the resulting children inherited enslaved status from their mother, a legal caveat to prevent these children from staking any claim on their father’s position or estate. Reportedly, Thomas Jefferson fathered about six children with Sally Hemmings, an enslaved woman who worked on his estate. Mixed-race children might appear to be white, but bloodlines determined their status over skin color.

The concept of “blood” as a symbol of inherited status goes beyond race. When McClosky is plotting to buy Terrebonne out from under the Peytons, Dora replies that with the promise of money coming in, any of the Peytons’ rich neighbors wouldn’t hesitate to loan them what they needed “to keep their name and blood amongst us” (25). This leads McClosky to an angry aside about his own blood: Because he has become wealthy relatively recently, rather than inheriting his wealth from his ancestors, his blood isn’t good enough for the Peytons to consider him an equal, making his “blood so hot [he] hears [his] heart hiss” (25)—an expression that moves from one conventional