America's First Daughter

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2016

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Epigraph-Part 1, Chapter 4

Part 1, Chapters 5-9

Part 1, Chapters 10-14

Part 1, Chapters 15-18

Part 2, Chapters 19-24

Part 2, Chapters 25-31

Part 3, Chapters 32-37

Part 3, Chapter 38-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Monticello and Its Owner

Jefferson’s Monticello plantation comes to symbolize Jefferson himself: He invests much of his personality in its design and conducts his various agricultural and mechanical experiments there. Most of the major events of Jefferson’s adult life take place within its walls. Losing Monticello may be the reason that Jefferson loses the will to live.

Patsy, too, sees Monticello as more than a simple property. It gives her the same sense of security that her father provides. Even after her marriage, she still sees Monticello as her home. Her attachment to the property parallels her allegiance to her father above all other ties; Patsy equates Monticello with her father.

The novel doesn’t end when Jefferson dies; it ends when Patsy finally breaks her attachment to Monticello. As William points out, “He’s gone. This isn’t his home anymore. And it’s not your home, either. It’s a set of chains” (571). William’s words imply that Patsy is the last of the great man’s slaves to be freed from Monticello.

Letters Meant for Posterity

Letters are a prominent motif in the novel, as each chapter begins with an extract from Jefferson’s correspondence. The letters represent Jefferson’s public persona and act as a counterpoint to the actual events that occasioned the letters: Frequently, the letters don’t tell the whole story and may even contradict the facts.

Some of the letters in question are destroyed, and Patsy explains the events that prompted her decision. The surviving letters are meant to cast Jefferson in a favorable light. The great man’s behavior is sometimes at cross-purposes with Patsy’s mission to preserve his reputation. Patsy tells the reader how much pruning she has done:

For years now—sometimes for eight or ten hours a day—I’ve scoured every letter, every record book, every receipt and scrap of paper in my father’s possession. I’ve burned some. In other instances, I took a razor to cut words away, just as my father once cut away what he believed to be untrue in the Bible (569).

Land as Wealth

Southern planters feel disdain for the merchants of the North: “Good southern Republicans were planters. Northern Federalists were stock jobbers and paper men” (373). Land recurs as a motif throughout the novel, but its meaning changes. Initially, Virginia planters are proud of the acreage they possess. By the end of the novel, land is a burden that only grudgingly yields cash crops; its loss of value devastates the planters.

Tom embodies the southern attitude toward land, identifying it as a source of wealth, masculinity, and self-esteem. He is all but destroyed when his son is forced to sell off his holdings to cover debts: “Only men who owned fifty acres could vote or hold political office. Without property, Tom would lose even the fig leaf of status” (505). Jefferson holds a similar view, as the loss of Monticello destroys his will to live.