Reviewed by Kirsten Fischer | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 61.2

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Reviewed by Kirsten Fischer | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 61.2 | The History Cooperative

Reviews of Books

Notorious in the Neighborhood: Sex and Families across the Color Line in Virginia, 1787–1861. By Joshua D. Rothman. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. Pp. xvii, 341. $49.95 cloth; $ 19.95 paper.)

Reviewed by Kirsten Fischer , University of Minnesota

This engaging study of interracial sex in Virginia before the Civil War shows "the astonishing degree of flexibility and fluidity Virginians built into their seemingly rigid system of race and interracial relations" (pp. 6–7). Rothman argues that "the relationship between law and custom regarding racial intermixture was always shifting, which in turn forced Virginians ... into constant negotiation and renegotiation of the meaning and significance of racial boundaries, racial hierarchy, and ultimately race itself " (p.7). The racial status of an individual, Rothman demonstrates, depended to a remarkable degree on local context, specific social and economic circumstances, and agreement within the white community. Rothman investigates a broad array of interracial relationships, from voluntary liaisons to coerced sex, and he ventures thoughtful and nuanced speculations about their psychological dimension: what the individual relationships might have meant for those involved, and why they received the treatment they did from spouses, neighbors, and courts. Building on the work of Victoria Bynum, Peter Bardaglio, Martha Hodes, and others, Rothman advances our understanding of how white and black Virginians understood interracial relations in their own lives and communities. Beautifully written, with carefully presented arguments, Notorious in the Neighborhood is a significant scholarly contribution to the study of race in America.

Rothman begins by investigating the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings "in terms of the larger patterns of master-slave sexual associations," and he finds "a complicated, evolving, and sometimes contradictory set of power relationships—a concatenation of calculation and trust, practicality and affection, coercion and consent" (p.15). Jefferson and Hemings were not unusual in this regard, nor was the fact of their relationship, which raised more eyebrows than ire among Jefferson's peers. After all, interracial sex was "ubiquitous" in Virginia before the Civil War, and "knowledge of precisely who participated in it was widely shared" (p. 4). But such knowledge was hushed up for more than a century, and the shock of exposure after that lengthy silence is reflected in recent studies that view Jefferson—the equality-touting slaveholder, the avowed opponent of interracial sex who kept an enslaved concubine—as a mystery, a conundrum, an "American sphinx."¹ Rothman does not take refuge in paradox to explain Jefferson; instead, he suggests that Jefferson's situation differed from that of other slavemasters. First, Rothman proposes that Jefferson might not have viewed Hemings as black, given that her mother was half-black and her father (Jefferson's father-in-law) was white. In that case, Jefferson did not compromise the distaste for interracial sex he expressed in his writings. Furthermore, as the half-sister of Jefferson's wife, Hemings might have had a family resemblance that, Rothman implies, makes the affair more explicable. But, more than her appearance, Jefferson placed Hemings's "mental capacity at an even higher premium." "Aside, therefore, from any sexual feelings Jefferson had for her, the most important assets Sally Hemings had were that she was a Hemings and that she was intelligent. Her family affiliation and her personal characteristics would have to have been central to her having a sexual relationship with Jefferson and enhanced her appeal as both a sexual partner and companion" (p. 23). Rothman describes Jefferson as circumspect throughout: "Discretion guided Jefferson's every interaction with Hemings and her children" (p.51).

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