The Octoroon (Masterplots II: Drama, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Dionysius Lardner Boursiquot
- First Published: 1953
- Type of Plot: Social realism
- Time of Work: Prior to the American Civil War
- Setting: A plantation in Louisiana
- Principal Characters: Zoe, George Peyton, Mrs. Peyton, Dora Sunnyside, Jacob M’Closky, Salem Scudder, Paul, Wahnotee
- Genres: Social realism, Drama, Melodrama, History play
- Subjects: Freedom, United States or Americans, Racism, Love or romance, Abused persons, South or Southerners, Slavery or slaves, Interracial relationships, Marriage, Prejudices or antipathies, Plantations or plantation life, Violence, Letter writing, Letters, Materialism, Louisiana
- Locales: Louisiana
The Play
The Octoroon is a drama of plantation life and miscegenation in antebellum America, written by an Irishman who visited the South. As act 1 begins, the selling of Terrebonne Plantation, the Peyton estate, is imminent. Various liens have been placed on the property, and the most substantial is the one held by Jacob M’Closky, Terrebonne’s former overseer. He tricked the late Judge Peyton into mortgaging one thousand acres, the plantation’s richest half, to him. After the judge’s death, Salem Scudder, who replaced M’Closky as overseer, plummeted Terrebonne...
[The entire page is 2014 words long]
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