This is made evident especially in Zoe's speech patterns. .
Compared to the other black characters, even the white characters, such as Scudder and M'Closky, Zoe displays a usage of language superior to that of theirs, showing she received an extensive education. Zoe's first entrance in play begins with "Am I late, Ah! Mr. Scudder, good morning."(Act I, pg. 8) The formality expressed in Zoe's first line, is only expressed the play's white characters, with the other black characters addressing the white characters with titles of "Masr" or "Missey". The slaves even address Zoe as "Missey Zoe" comparable to Zoe's romantic rival, Dora Sunnyside, who is also addressed as "Missey Dora". The title given to Zoe elevates her position above that of the other black characters. Zoe's "'[black] one drop in eight'" roots have been trained and thoroughly tamed so that she is virtually a white woman. Thus Zoe plays to the trope of the female "tragic octoroon", a light-skinned woman raised as if a white woman in her father's household, until his bankruptcy or death has her reduced to a menial position and sold. (Gross, What Blood Won't)The octoroon, desires a white lover above all else, and must therefore go down to a tragic end. (Brown, Negro Poetry and.) She is a woman who has all the social graces that come along with being a middle-class or upper-class white woman and yet Zoe is nonetheless subjected to slavery. .
The mulatto is also highly sexualized. "In some slave markets, mulattoes and quadroons brought higher prices, because of their use as sexual objects. The mulatto approached the white ideal of female attractiveness the mulatto afforded the slave owner the opportunity to rape, with impunity, a woman who was physically white (or near-white) but legally black." (Furnas, Goodbye Uncle Tom) This is evident as M'Closky eyes Zoe in Act I, " 'Dam that girl; she makes me quiver when I think of her; she's took me for all I'm worth.