The Known World by Edward P. Jones

First published: 2003

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Historical, Magical Realism, and social criticism

Time of plot: 1830-1861

Locale: Manchester County, Virginia

Principal characters

• Henry Townsend, a slave owner, and also a former slave
• Augustus and Mildred Townsend, Henry’s parents, former slaves
• William Robbins, a white plantation owner
• Philomela, Robbins’s black mistress
• Moses, slave foreman of Henry’s farm
• Caldonia Townsend, Henry’s wife
• John Skiffington, county sheriff
• Minerva, his slave, raised as a daughter
• Counsel Skiffington, Skiffington’s cousin
• Elias Freeman, ,
• Celeste Freeman, ,
• Stamford Crow Blueberry, and
• Alice Night, slaves on the Townsend farm
• Fern Elston, a light-skinned black schoolteacher
• Oden Peoples, ,
• Harry Travis, and
• Barnum Kinsey, sheriff’s deputies

The Story:

Moses, the favorite slave of Henry Townsend—a former slave himself—remembers his life as a foreman on Henry’s farm. Moses especially remembers how he had shared Henry’s ambitions and aspirations. Moses had deliberately disaffiliated with the other slaves with whom he had been forced to share quarters, including his son and his son’s mother, and after Henry’s untimely death, Moses had hoped to replace his boss as the new husband of Henry’s wife, Caldonia. Even though Moses had been more than able to run the entire farm, he could not convince Caldonia, the new boss, that he could do so.

It is now years earlier. Henry’s high status is the outcome of his relationship with William Robbins, a white plantation owner. Robbins and Henry develop a father-son relationship rather than a master-slave relationship; appreciating Henry’s potential, Robbins makes it possible for Henry to achieve freedom and acquire his own farm and his own slaves. Robbins also has a black mistress, Philomela, a slave with whom he has two children. Although Robbins loves Philomela, he fails to understand that his life with her is corrupted by her status as a slave; Philomela’s goal is to escape to freedom.

Similarly, Henry fails to understand that he is replicating the evils of slavery on his own farm, even as he assumes his regime will be a significant improvement over the regime of any white slaveholder. In reality, Henry is just as neglectful, punitive, and insensitive to the human rights of his slaves. In one case, Henry had one of the sheriff’s deputies, the Cherokee Oden Peoples, slice his slave Elias Freeman’s ear as discipline after Elias had tried to run away; Henry also allows one of his young black slaves to be worked to death in a neighboring field.

Fern Elston, a former slave who is so light skinned she could pass as white, is also a slaveholder, impervious to the ironies of her situation; Fern, however, never attempts to pass for white. She makes her living as a teacher of the local black children, including Henry when he was a boy. When she forms an erotic bond with one of her slaves, however, the power she enjoys as a slaveholder makes it impossible for this love to be truly reciprocated.

Henry dies, and Moses expects to take his place as farm owner; he is unable to do so because Henry’s high status had been dismantled upon his death. Henry’s father, Augustus Townsend, who had assumed that his own freedom would be honored and that his son’s success would continue to afford protection, is sold back into slavery through the machinations of Deputy Harry Travis, who delivers him to illegal slave traders. Deputy Peoples, whose wife also is a slave, had helped to sell Augustus back into slavery. Only a third deputy, the alcoholic Barnum Kinsey, had retained an uncorrupted conscience, but he had been overruled by the others.

Unlike his deputies Travis and Peoples, Sheriff John Skiffington is a high-minded, educated man who refuses to own slaves on principle. He and his wife receive a little black girl named Minerva as a wedding present, but they raise her as their daughter instead. The mind-set of Manchester County, however, affects their relationship with Minerva. Although they love her, and although she loves them, her status as their “property” is such that she chooses to break for freedom. While Skiffington is unsuccessful in his attempts to recover Minerva, he does capture Moses, who has run away to the house of Henry’s mother, Mildred Townsend.

Although he tries to distance himself from the institution of slavery, Skiffington eventually becomes indistinguishable from his own racist deputies. Suffering from a toothache and feeling overwhelmed by the first rumblings of a changing society, Skiffington insults Mildred with racial slurs, then guns her down. The downfall of the once noble Skiffington shocks even his far less ethical cousin, Counsel Skiffington, who, having lost his wife and his land, had just returned from a long, strange trip outside the county. Counsel Skiffington’s journey through the Deep South had been an education in the nature of evil, and it culminated in his witnessing of his own cousin’s fall from grace. Counsel himself had by this time gone bad; now, he is certain that he will reap monetary profit by murdering his cousin and arranging it to look as if the murdered Mildred had been responsible. Also by this time, Augustus has died while enslaved in the Deep South.

One of the Townsend-farm slaves, however, the clever Alice Night, whose addled demeanor allows her to wander the countryside unhindered, has made a successful break for freedom. Other slaves, such as the mystical Stamford Crow Blueberry and the devoted couple Elias and Celeste Freeman, also successfully escape the farm. In the meantime, Moses, back on the Townsend farm, is humiliated and hobbled, and his hopes are thoroughly dashed. The system in which he had hoped to succeed is destined for destruction.

Bibliography

Beasley, Conger, Jr. “A Luminous Look at an Obscure World: Much-Praised Novel Focuses on Black Slave Owners in America.” National Catholic Reporter, March 12, 2004, p. 15. Beasley, in this secular publication, praises The Known World both for its depiction of character and for its visionary power.

King, Richard H. “The Known World.” Rethinking History, June, 2005, 355-380. A major discussion of the way in which The Known World fits into the post-1960’s genre of the slave novel. Examines and discusses what the novel teaches about slavery in the American South.

Maslin, Janet. “His Brother’s Keeper in Antebellum Virginia.” Review of The Known World, by Edward P. Jones. The New York Times, August 14, 2003. This brief, perceptive article praises Jones for his wisdom, effective understatement, and wide range of perspective in his writing.

Mason, Wyatt. “Ballad for Americans: The Stories of Edward P. Jones.” Harpers Magazine, September, 2006, pp. 87-92. A thoughtful, thorough, and appreciative analysis of a number of Jones’s stories, including those in the novel The Known World.

Pinckney, Darryl. “Gone with the Wind.” The New York Review of Books, October 21, 2004, pp. 14-18. A brief but perceptive discussion of The Known World as a revisioned and intimate kind of historical novel.

Ryan, Tim A. “Mapping the Unrepresentable: Slavery Fiction in the New Millennium.” In Calls and Responses: The American Novel of Slavery Since “Gone with the Wind.” Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008. The Known World is discussed in a chapter on slavery fiction in the twenty-first century, with special reference to the novel’s depiction of racial codes as both fixed and fluid.

Vida, Vendela, ed. “ZZ Packer Talks with Edward P. Jones.” In The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers. San Francisco: McSweeney’s, 2008. African American writer ZZ Packer interviews Jones in this collection of conversations between writers and their mentors.