The Octoroon

George is Mrs. Peyton’s nephew and the heir to the Terrebonne Estate. He is a young, handsome man who has recently returned from Europe, where he was popular with women. Upon returning to Terrebonne, George wins Dora’s affection, even though he is in love with Zoe. He does not care that Zoe is an Octoroon and loves her despite her ethnicity: “This knowledge brings no revolt to my heart, and I can overcome the obstacle” (43).

George is depicted as the story’s kind-hearted “hero” figure, even though he is unable to personally save Terrebonne or Zoe from their tragic fates. He frequently shows kindness and nobility; he buys Pete at the slave auction, even though he is old and lame, and says at the beginning of the play that he has not told Zoe that he thinks she’s beautiful because “it may be considered offensive” (28). Later, as he attempts to propose to Dora in order to use her money to fund Terrebonne, he stops himself and realizes he must be honest about his feelings for Zoe instead, telling her: “I have not learned to lie” (51).

M’Closky, a Yankee from the North who formerly oversaw Terrebonne and now owns one-half of the estate, is the play’s villain. He prevents Mrs. Peyton from keeping the Terrebonne estate by hiding a letter informing her of money she’ll receive and kills the young slave boy Paul to capture said letter. He is in love with Zoe, who does not love him back, and goes to great lengths to capture her for himself, informing the others that she is still a slave and then buying her at auction for $25,000: “If I sink every dollar I’m worth in her purchase, I’ll own that Octoroon” (37). Later, after the other men have discovered his plan and that he killed Paul, he escapes from their clutches by setting fire to a shed and steamship. He is finally murdered by Wahnotee, who avenges Paul’s death.

M’Closky is largely defined by his distastefulness to others; Scudder blames him for Terrebonne’s dire fate and says he’s the “darndest thief that ever escaped a white jail to misrepresent the North to the South” (35). From the moment he first enters, characters express their dislike for him; Dora says in an aside, “I don’t like that man,” while George asks Mrs. Peyton how she can allow such a “vulgar ruffian” (29) at her table. He says in a speech that he feels inadequate in the South because he is not a Southerner, saying: “Just because my grandfather wasn’t some broken-down Virginia transplant, or a stingy old Creole, I ain’t fit to sit down to the same meat with them—it makes my blood so hot I feel my heart hiss” (33). He also wants to sabotage the Peytons because of his own role in bringing about the downfall of their estate (he pressured the judge to sign a mortgage to him), saying the Peytons’ “presence keeps alive the reproach against [him], that [he] ruined them” (33).

Scudder is another Yankee, from Massachusetts, who oversees Terrebonne. The character list describes him as “great on improvements and inventions, once a photographic operator, and been a little of everything generally” (21). Like M’Closky, Scudder has overseen Terrebonne and is also in love with Zoe, admitting to Mrs. Peyton that seeing her with George has been “hollowing [him] out” (50).

Unlike M’Closky, however, Scudder is shown to be a mostly kind man, helping Mrs. Peyton in her efforts to regain control of her house and expressing remorse for the role he has played in its deteriorating condition. He tells M’Closky he’d give “half the balance of [his] life to wipe out [his] part of” Terrebonne’s downfall, adding: “Many a night I’ve laid awake and thought how to pull them through, till I’ve cried like a child over the sum I couldn’t do” (36). He is not afraid to stand up to M’Closky; he tells M’Closky he’d “like to” kill him but is “skeered [scared] to try” (36), and eventually ends up leaving M’Closky to be killed by Wahnotee, giving him his bowie knife for self-defense but telling him: “Providence has chosen your executioner. I shan’t interfere” (72).

Pete is an older slave at Terrebonne who is 72 years old and too old to work. Pete is playful with the others and seemingly happy-go-lucky, serving as the play’s comic relief and filling the stereotype of an “Uncle Tom,” a black character who is excessively subservient to white characters. He tells the other slaves before the slave auction to “look [their] best for de judge’s sake—dat ole man so good to us, and dat ole woman—so dem strangers from New Orleans shall say, dem’s happy darkies” (56). Although a helpful and kind character, the play makes an effort to show Pete’s lack of intellect in comparison to the white characters; he speaks with a broken vocabulary that stands in stark contrast to the white characters’ “proper” English and uses malapropisms like “purpiration of lamentation” instead of “suspiration or sigh of lamentation” (39). The Broadview Anthology of British Literature edition notes that such malapropisms were common in depictions of slave characters at the time to suggest they lacked the “intellectual capacities” (39) of the white characters.

Mrs. Peyton is the older woman who lives at Terrebonne. She is a widow of the late Judge Peyton and is in danger of losing the estate due to her husband’s old debts. Mrs. Peyton is shown to be a kind woman; Zoe was her husband’s illegitimate child with another woman, yet Scudder notes that although “another woman would have hated” Zoe, Mrs. Peyton “loves as if she’d been her own child” (26). Mrs. Peyton cares deeply about Terrebonne and the slaves she owns; she tells George: “Heaven has denied me children, so all the strings of my heart have grown around and amongst [the slaves] like the fibres and roots of an old tree in its native earth” (50).

Dora is a wealthy Southern belle who is in love with George. Her character is largely defined by her crush on him—“I wish he would make love to me” (28), she tells Zoe—and she represents a possible solution to the family’s monetary problems, as her wealth could save Terrebonne. Unlike Zoe’s goodness, however, Dora is at first dismissive toward the slaves and Zoe. One slave, Minnie, fans her throughout her opening scene, and she calls Zoe a “little fool” (40). She also suggests she is not particularly smart, telling George and Zoe that people used to say about her: “She’s pretty, very pretty, but no brains” (51). At the same time, Dora demonstrates kindness throughout the play; even after being upset over the love between Zoe and George, she still directs her father Sunnyside to buy Terrebonne, rather than one of the other plantation owners, and even bids on Zoe herself to keep her from being sold to M’Closky: “Zoe, if all I possess would buy your freedom, I would gladly give it” (73).

Sunnyside is a wealthy plantation owner and the father of Dora. He is shown to be kind-hearted toward Mrs. Peyton; he buys Terrebonne (at Dora’s urging), and, before that, suggests that the other planters will help lend Mrs. Peyton money as she repays her debts, to which she exclaims: “Ah! Sunnyside, how good you are—so like my poor Peyton [the judge]” (33).

Paul is a 13-year-old slave boy who is a quadroon (meaning one-quarter black). M’Closky murders Paul for blocking the letter M’Closky is attempting to steal. Although Paul himself only appears briefly in a few scenes, the audience is repeatedly told how beloved he is: “The child was a favorite of the judge […] I couldn’t bear to see him put to work” (30), Mrs. Peyton says. After his death, Ratts, the steamer captain, says he has “a set of Irish deckhands aboard that just loved that child” (48). Paul is also good friends with Wahnotee, who avenges his death by killing M’Closky.