Puneet Varma (Editor)

The Sins of the Father: A Romance of the South

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Authors
  
Thomas Dixon, Jr.

Publisher
  
D. Appleton and Co.

Pages
  
462

Author
  
Thomas Dixon Jr.

Language
  
English

Publication date
  
1912

Originally published
  
1912

Page count
  
462

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Similar
  
The Leopard's Spots, TRAITOR A STORY OF THE FAL, The Life Worth Living: A, The Clansman (Volume, The Southerner: A Roman

The Sins of the Father: A Romance of the South is a 1912 novel by Thomas Dixon, Jr..

Contents

Plot summary

Dan Norton, a Confederate veteran, Ku Klux Klan leader and newspaper publisher, hires a quadroon called Cleo Peeler as a caretaker for his son and his ailing wife, Jean Norton, a descendant of Southern planters. They sleep together and have a daughter, whom he sends to an orphanage. Shortly after, Cleo attempts to blackmail him to regain her position as caretaker.

Norton runs for office as a pro-segregation politician. Meanwhile, his son has a relationship with the octoroon daughter Norton had with Cleo. His wife Jean commits suicide. As he kills his son to put an end to the relationship, he also commits suicide.

Main themes

The main theme is miscegenation. A second theme is the white male's sexual desire for the black woman. A consubstantial theme is "the need for complete racial separation."

Critical reception

Academic Joseph B. Keener has argued that Dixon "reverses the stereotyped figure of the tragic mulatto, making her the tyrannical aggressor and the cause of the South's degradation." Instead of being a "victim of white sexual exploitation," she becomes "the sexual aggressor."

According to Sandra Gunning, an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Michigan, the book may have been less successful than The Clansman or The Leopard's Spots because it was too fatalistic. She went on to characterize the plot as the "repetition of antebellum white traditions of breaking sexual and familial taboos." She added that Dixon was "forced to kill his hero to cleanze the novel's idealized white world." In contrast, she added that the other two aforementioned novels had provided "a more palatable fantasy of a white male rescue based on disciplining of unruly body."

Theatrical performances

Dixon had first written a three-act play in 1909, which he turned into a novel published in 1912. The play was first performed on September 21, 1910 at the Academy of Music in Norfolk, Virginia. According to Dixon, after the lead actor was killed by a shark at Wrightsville Beach, off the coast of Wilmington, North Carolina, Dixon took over the role and acted in the play for a year. However, biographer Anthony Slide disagrees with this story, suggesting the lead actor was dismissed at the end of that month.

References

The Sins of the Father: A Romance of the South Wikipedia