Review of the new ending of "The Octoroon," featuring Zoe's survival, "Happy Endings," Saturday Review: Politics, Literature, Science and Art, 1861
Title
Review of the new ending of "The Octoroon," featuring Zoe's survival, "Happy Endings," Saturday Review: Politics, Literature, Science and Art, 1861
Date
December 21, 1861
Description
Once had Boucicault adapted the play for London audiences that ended with the promise of George and Zoe united in matrimony, the December 21 issue of the Saturday Review attempted an interpretation (“Happy Endings,” Saturday Review (December 21, 1861); 634. They commended Boucicault's newly changed “happy” ending on the very grounds that The Octoroon was “not a play that appeals to deep feelings, or that is calculated to awake the emotions of highly-wrought pity and tenderness." And speaking on behalf of the audience, the Saturday Review claimed it "as a kind of right that we shall not be plunged suddenly and wantonly into the region of pain.” The reviewer further claimed “the audience wished for a happy ending, but they never troubled themselves for a moment about the rights or wrongs of slavery.” Therefore, according to this reviewer, the audiences’ audible disapproving reaction to Zoe's death may have been merely a commentary on the dramatic weakness of the suicide scene, rather than compassion for the enslaved mixed-race woman subject to sexual slavery.