Maryland-1801

During the year 1801 an article was published in an American magazine telling the story of a woman in Maryland.  This article, published in the American Magazine of Wonders & Marvelous Chronicles gives account of a “Negro Woman Who Became White.”  Despite the title, the article discusses this woman, who’s identity remains unknown (apart from the identification of her employer to whom she was a kitchen-maid, Colonel Barnes of Maryland), as a black woman who appears white, not as a woman who has in fact become white.  Published in 1801 this article speaks to the conceptions of whiteness at the time, namely the “one drop rule.’  Since race is perceived as something biological, not just socially perceptible, this woman is conceived of as black still, despite the transition of the color of her skin.  Unlike a white woman, this woman’s pale skin is scrutinized with the obscurest judgment-even down to explaining the phenomenon that is her blushing due to excitement or shame.  This view represented in the magazine, chronicles the fact that society at the time, in America specifically, perceived any black heritage to be a marker of one’s race.  In Jane Eyre and Sketches of the Life of a Free Black, this definition of whiteness, or non whiteness, permeates their novels.  Bertha is perceived to be a Creole woman, despite being able, due to her socioeconomic standing, to live a life far beyond many others within her Victorian conceived race.  However, she is still treated differently.  Similarly, Frado, though technically free and arguably white due to her mother, is still essentially enslaved to Mrs. Belmont and treated as less than.  White was not so much identifiable, as anything non-white was in this time.  Being defined as white in the victorian era was a result of your heritage and your class.  Being non-white was assigned to anyone that did not quite fit the mold, no matter how favorable certain social attributues.  However, what this article also highlights, is the confusion which occurred during this time as a result of this woman’s skin condition.  Race was very much an undefined term, something malleable.  It was not until the 1870s that there was a more wide range definition of the term, a time which took place approximately thirty years after the publishing of Jane Eyre.