In The Known World, Jones’ technique, which attempts to reinvent the novel form, is just as subversive as the side of slavery he presents. This is the crux of the novel: Slavery pollutes everyone who participates in it and warps their concepts of justice and humanity. Jones leaves it purposefully unclear what the white people will do when they come to realize that Fern’s students naively believe they will finally live free, but more likely they will meet the brunt of those whites’ insecurities and rationalizations. They were much better than the majority of white people, and it was only a matter of time before those white people came to realize that.” Several of her young students - including Henry and two of William Robbins’ children by a former slave - aspire to own human property, and they constitute “a free Negro class that, while not having the power of some whites, had been brought up to believe that they were rulers waiting in the wings. As Jones points out: “In 1855 in Manchester County, Virginia, there were 34 free black families… and eight of those free families owned slaves.” This number does not include individual free black slave owners like Fern Elston, a teacher who can pass as white. The Known World opens with Henry’s death, and Jones proceeds to show how the event affects every citizen of Manchester County, Virginia. Under the tutelage of William Robbins, who once owned him and now has a fatherly affection for the former slave, Henry adopted the lifestyle of the county’s upper-class whites, which, of course, meant owning slaves.
When he was a teenager, Henry distinguished himself as a fine leather worker and boot maker, and once he was free, he earned enough money over the years to start a farm and build himself a house. The archetypal images of the cruel, complacent white master and the noble slave yearning for freedom no longer apply: Jones has located new complications in the issue and in doing so had come closer to truth.Īt the novel’s center is Henry Townsend, who was born into slavery and whose father eventually bought his freedom. Beginning with this strange idea, The Known World - nominated for the National Book Award and named a New York Times Editor’s Choice pick - reveals a new side of slavery that subverts our historical and literary preconceptions and conventions. Jones confronts a phenomenon that some might find unthinkable: in the years before the Civil War, many free blacks owned slaves. In what is likely the best and most important novel about slavery since Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Edward P.
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