The Bondwoman’s Narrative
Allegedly the first publication of a novelized account of her life by a slave named Hannah Crafts, The Bondwoman’s Narrative is an intriguing puzzle. Crafts’ text is bulwarked by an erudite introduction by Professor Gates, the Harvard professor who bought the manuscript; there are also several appendixes, including the authentication report by Joe Nickell, the expert who established the manuscript’s nineteenth-century bona fides. These frame a text once described as “a fictionalized biography written in an effusive style,” and it is certainly that.
Hannah, a lovely girl who can pass for white, grows up as a house slave at Lindendale. She does not know her mother, who was sold when Hannah was young; Hannah grows up good-hearted and intelligent, longing for knowledge. She is taught to read by a kindly neighbor. The master marries, and Hannah swiftly realizes the new mistress has a troubled mind, as well she might; she is an octoroon passing as white! But a villainous lawyer knows her secret, so Hannah and her mistress flee. But after months living in the woods, the two women are captured. She faces adversity and cruelty but remains always true to herself.
The Bondwoman’s Narrative is being accepted as a newly-recovered long-lost manuscript, and it is presented as such. Still, it has an oddly playful tone, as if it is meant to be a literary amusement in a past style. For those familiar with that perennial nineteenth-century best-selling plot, “the tragic octoroon,” Hannah’s tale will sound very familiar indeed. Every conceivable cliché of the Gothic novel is invoked, as is every cliché of the “tragic octoroon” novels. So the work lacks a true voice of its own. Perhaps its author–whoever she or he may have been, and whenever the book may have been written–borrowed just a bit too heavily from such popular works as Clotel and The Octoroon?
A fascinating read, and an even more fascinating literary and historical puzzle.
