48 pages • 1 hour read
America's First Daughter
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BetaPart 1, Chapters 15-18Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “The Dutiful Daughter”
Part 1, Chapter 15 Summary
In July of 1789, the Bastille falls. Paris is in chaos, and the Jefferson family must flee back to Virginia. William begs Patsy to stay with him in Europe. He fears that once she’s home, Jefferson will never let her go. Patsy protests that she only needs a little time to get her father settled. William says, “You can be a wife and mother or you can be a devoted daughter all your life. You can’t be both. Not when Thomas Jefferson is your father” (213). Patsy insists she’s going to Virginia. William tells her he won’t wait for her return.
Patsy is surprised to learn that James and Sally are going back to America too. Jefferson has offered them an incentive. James will be freed once he’s taught another slave all he knows about French cooking. Sally will be provided for as long as Jefferson lives. Her children will all be freed when they turn 21 years old. Patsy is furious because her own sacrifice is in vain. Her father would never be alone even if she married. After they all return to a dilapidated Monticello, Patsy finds no letter from William waiting for her.
Part 1, Chapter 16 Summary
Thomas Randolph, Jr. pays a visit to the Jefferson family at Monticello. Patsy recalls him as the arrogant teenager she’d met years earlier. He’s grown into a very handsome man. Despite her attraction toward him, Patsy is put off by his predatory intensity: “There was something wrong with Tom Randolph. Something reckless and inappropriate and unguarded” (228).
Much to Patsy’s dismay, Jefferson encourages Tom’s courtship. Patsy, herself, succumbs to his kisses because they help her to forget William. Tom abruptly proposes marriage. Patsy is thoroughly confused and doesn’t know how to respond.
Part 1, Chapter 17 Summary
Because of Jefferson’s financial difficulties, Patsy realizes she must marry for money, and so she accepts Tom’s proposal. Shortly after the wedding, the couple pays a honeymoon visit to Tuckahoe—Tom’s father’s plantation. Polly, Sally, and her newborn son accompany them on the trip.
Colonel Randolph is a demanding tyrant and seems displeased with all his children. During their visit, Sally’s son dies unexpectedly. Sally is upset that he will be buried at Tuckahoe, so far from his family. Tom tries to comfort her by saying that he and Patsy will inherit the plantation one day, so the child will still be buried among people he knows. Colonel Randolph interprets this comment as a greedy wish to take over. He insults Tom, who then wants to leave immediately. Patsy says, “I was only starting to understand the Randolphs; I wasn’t privy to the thousands of injuries they’d done one another, real or imagined” (248).
Part 1, Chapter 18 Summary
Tom and Patsy begin working his plantation at Varina. The labor is back-breaking, and Patsy is now pregnant. Tom’s father has married a new, much younger, wife. There may be no inheritance left for Tom because of her. Tom asks his father to sell him a plantation called Edgehill but hasn’t received an answer yet.
Now that Jefferson has briefly returned to Monticello, Tom and Patsy pay him a visit. He says that he must return to Washington’s cabinet soon. In the meantime, he needs someone to look after Monticello. In return, he offers to negotiate the sale of Edgehill to Tom.
Patsy is happy to be the mistress of Monticello and begins to set the house in order. She finds her affection for Tom growing: “William had been pleasure and principles—in the end, he had never understood the inexorable pull of family. Tom Randolph understood it, and because he did, a very real tenderness for him took root inside me” (258).
Part 1, Chapters 15-18 Analysis
Patsy’s sense of duty prevails as she makes choices that will serve her father’s needs but not her own. The family returns to Virginia along with two slaves. Patsy realizes that her father’s appeal to her own pity was a sham. He previously expressed to Patsy that if she married William, Jefferson would be alone. However, Sally is always by Jefferson’s side and continues to accompany him back to America.
Even though Patsy is beginning to realize her father’s faults, she is still governed by her sense of responsibility toward him. When Jefferson encourages a match with Tom, Patsy consents. Her feelings toward Tom are ambivalent, but she wants to marry for money to save Monticello and therefore appease her father.
These chapters highlight Monticello as a representation of Jefferson himself. By saving the dilapidated plantation, Patsy believes that she’s also saving her father. This motive drives her willingness to marry Tom, a man with known character flaws. Tuckahoe and Varina are part of the Randolph inheritance that Tom expects to receive. Because Jefferson views land as wealth, Tom and Patsy work themselves nearly to death trying to make Varina profitable. Once Jefferson appoints Tom as the manager of Monticello in Jefferson’s absence, Jefferson can also orchestrate greater access to his daughter.
The Virginian attachment to land has greater implications than as a source of wealth. Land also represents deep-rooted traditions and family. Patsy notes this association: Because William isn’t a planter, he doesn’t understand the connection between land and family. Like Patsy, Tom understands the value of both.
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