The Octoroon

Zoe is the play’s titular octoroon, a woman who is one-eighth black. She is the illegitimate child of Mrs. Peyton’s late husband, Judge Peyton, but we’re told that Mrs. Peyton “loves [her] as if she’d been her own child” (26). She lives at Terrebonne and is believed to be a free woman. However, M’Closky discovers the judge did not actually free her, due to his debts, and she is, in fact, a slave. Her character falls into the type of the “tragic mulatto,” which was popular in stories from that time.

Zoe’s character is defined by her good heart, which the other characters constantly refer to throughout the play. “When she goes along, she just leaves a streak of love behind her,” Scudder says, describing her as “worth her weight in sunshine” (24). She is also aware of her tragic lot in life as an octoroon, which prevents her from marrying George due to the laws against interracial marriage and drives her to her death. Upon dying, she tells George that when she is dead, “no laws will stand between us,” adding that George may finally “without a blush, confess your love for the Octoroon” (75). Zoe is a tragic figure depicting the horrors of slavery as an institution and how the system imprisons black people—even when they are “good” and educated as Zoe is.