Maude is so concerned about her life's legacy that she poisons her first husband to death, because he was settling for the bare minimum (Jones 184) . In his attempt to gain an inheritance and essentially a place in society, he lives vicariously through his daughter, Caldonia, and accepts the enslavement of his own race as a means to personal wealth. After the death of Caledonia's husband, Henry, his entire plantation was left to his wife. He now possessed all the elements that made a person rich in the 19th century: land and