Eloquent Silence

On April 14, 1818, Virginian Ellen Randolph wrote to her mother and sisters of her intellectual activities. She had recently finished reading Catherine Hutton's satiric novel The Miser Married and commended the "well drawn" character of Lady Winterdale.¹ Ellen was also enjoying texts in other languages. She requested some volumes of Olavide's Experimentas de Sensibilidad and arranged for the return of other Spanish books.² Her letter included detailed instructions for the following week's work of her enslaved maid, Sally:

I left cambric for one pair of sleeves, which Sally can cut out by the paper pattern . . . if muslin and cambric of a proper sort can be got, I wish my cambric frock with the pointed flounce, to have a new plain flounce, and new sleeves with three puffings . . . the cambric dress with the striped flounce to have new plain sleeves with straps to them, and the flounce ripped off—when she has done this and it is not a week's work; she may begin the tail of my striped muslin. . . . I hope she will work steadily for otherwise when I get home I shall meet a great deal of company & have no clothes to wear—³

Seven years later, following her marriage to wealthy Bostonian Joseph Coolidge, Ellen wrote to her mother with further instructions regarding Sally:

Mr Bullfinch the lawyer is drawing up a power of attorney which Joseph will sign empowering Jefferson to dispose of Sally & to protect her. her own wishes you know my dear mother must direct the disposition that is made of her for I would not for the world that after living with me fifteen years any kind of violence should be done to her feelings. if she wishes to be sold let her chuse her own master, if to be hired she should have the same liberty, or at least not be sent any where where she is unwilling to go. but why should I say any thing to you on this subject who are the very soul of gentleness & humanity.⁴

In these exchanges, gender and racial difference are bound up with two distinct divisions of labor, which in turn define Ellen's sense of self. In her first letter, black and white femininities are clearly and obviously divided by manual or intellectual activity, by the business of thinking and that of doing, and by the wearing or making of clothes. The labor of the black woman in her possession is what underwrites the freedom of Ellen's intellectual endeavors which, like her flounces and sleeves, will enable her to shine more brilliantly in the polite and privileged company among which she mingles. Sally's labor frees Ellen from the work of femininity: releases her from the realm of the hearth and the needle into the world of the sentimental novel and fashionable display. Her work means that Ellen has the leisure to enjoy the twin commodities of learning and dress.

The divisions Ellen draws in her second letter are less stark, more complex, and certainly as interesting. The business at hand is Sally's "disposal," but who is responsible? Ellen blithely recognizes that as a married woman, her property rights—and specifically her ownership of Sally—are subsumed under those of her husband.⁵ Her economic part in the business has become invisible, folded away behind the activities of three men: Mr. Bullfinch's document, Joseph Coolidge's signature, and her brother Jefferson's empowered "disposition." While white men act as legal and economic agents, Ellen's gendered division of labor means that white women operate in the realm of private sentiment. Her mother appears a sentinel of feeling, "the very soul of gentleness & humanity." Her moral "direction" seems to smooth the brutal business of human disposal and exchange, softens the hard edges of law and commerce. And when it comes to the matter of Sally's own desires and wishes, Ellen's syntax seems unusually hesitant and strained ("her...