Tragic Moulattos: A Film Analysis

A mulatto is an out-of-date term used to define someone with one black parent and one white parent. The tragic mulatto trope dates back to 19th century American literature. The trope almost completely emphases on biracial persons light enough to pass for white. In film, such mulattoes were often aware of their black heritage. Upon others learning of their African lineage, calamity arises because such characters find themselves banded from white society and, thus, the privileges available to whites. Hysterical at their fate as people of African descent, tragic mulattoes in film often turned to suicide. In other illustrations, these characters passing for white end up cutting off their black family members to do so. In addition, such characters

Inappropriately, culture often pressures mixed-race persons to choose just one race because of the outdated one-drop rule which mandated that Americans with any African heritage be classified as black. It wasn’t until 2000 that the U.S. Census Bureau approved citizens to classify as more than one race. That year the Census found that about 4% of children in the U.S. are multiracial. Elizabeth Taylor's character, Susanna, who is a gorgeous, raven-haired exotic looking rich Southern-Belle, is also whispered among her family members and close friends of the family to possibly be the daughter of the now-deceased plantation owner and a free-Mulatto woman who worked in the house as a nanny to the child rather than the daughter of his wife. Eventually Susanna who is fully mindful of the rumors regarding her lineage goes insane, and it's never clear as to whether it's due to the shock of the Civil War taking place or the burden of possibly being of Mulatto-lineage. The man she was married to ends up married to Nell, the blue-eyed, blonde, alabaster-hued woman who everyone in town views as being of full white and who will