The Bondwoman's Narrative (40 page)

In addition, it was also traditional to assert, as Crafts does, the factual nature of fictional narrative. Despite the fact
that her text is so pervaded with gothic themes, Crafts claims that the work “makes no pretensions to romance.” Throughout
her text, Crafts shows an easy familiarity with fictional literary genres, such as the gothic and sentimental novels, both
exceedingly popular forms in the 1850s. Referring to George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788–1824), Crafts writes that truth is “stranger
than fiction.” Ironically, Byron wrote that “truth is always strange—stranger than fiction” in his major work of fiction,
Don Juan
(canto 14, stanza 101).

Chapter 1

p. 5
: Crafts provides biblical citations as a preface for almost all of her chapters. These are often slightly inaccurate
or contain spelling errors. Crafts was very familiar with the King James Bible and is drawing from memory. The full verse
of The Song of Solomon 1:6, which begins the first chapter, is as follows:

Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me: my mother’s children were angry with me; they made
me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept.

p. 5
: The narrator’s claim to have been reared without parents is a common theme in slave narratives. As in
Narrative of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
(1845), Crafts’s childhood as a slave is marked by “no training, no cultivation.” Similarly, her reference to animals such
as the “birds of the air” and “beasts of the feild [sic]” as comparisons for the status of a slave was a common feature of
the slave narratives, again as in Douglass. Distinctly unlike the slave narratives, however, Crafts’s text rarely uses verisimilitude—
specific names, places, or dates—to authenticate her text, signaling early on that
The Bondwoman’s Narrative
is a fictionalized text, even if based on a slave’s actual experiences.

p. 6
: Crafts refers to her African heritage ironically as “the obnoxious descent,” parodying commonly held racist views of
black ancestry. Despite the protagonist’s light complexion and European features, she is influenced by her “obnoxious descent”
to prefer “flaming colors.” Throughout the text, this supposed preference for bright colors by African Americans is a source
of fascination for the narrator. Her claim that her black genetic heritage was also responsible for “a rotundity to my person,
a wave and curl to my hair,” and “fancy pictorial illustrations” as well as a fondness for “flaming colors” reflects commonly
held pseudoscientific beliefs about the dominant role of genetics in both physical and metaphysical characteristics, and preferences
of taste.

p. 6
: Crafts’s observation that her master felt that education made slaves “less subservient to their superiors” echoes Douglass’s
claim that his master said that “learning would
spoil
the best nigger in the world…. It would forever unfree him to be a slave.”

p. 6
: Crafts’s reference to her master’s opinion of the status of slaves as similar to that of “horses or other domestic animals”
reflects Douglass’s use of the same comparison.

p. 6
: Echoing the passionate desire for literacy that is a structural principle in many slave narratives, Crafts yearns for
“knowledge and the means of mental improvement” despite fear of punishment from her master. Although she concedes that her
owner was “generally easy and good-tempered,” he insists upon ignorance and subservience rather than literacy training among
his slaves. Like Douglass, Crafts decides to teach herself by examining old books or newspapers.

How a slave learned to read and write—and hence eventually gained the wherewithal to write his or her own narrative—is a standard
feature of several slave narratives, the signal scene of instruction that sets the text’s plot “from slavery to freedom” in
motion.

p. 7
: The narrator’s plan for literacy is aided when she meets a kindly, old northern woman. In explaining why she intends
to defy the ban on teaching slaves to read, the pious woman answers that she was thinking of Christ’s admonition to Peter
to “feed my lambs” (John 21:15). Douglass’s first literacy teacher was also a white woman, his master’s wife, who initially
is free of racial prejudice.

p. 8
: Hannah’s description of herself during this first encounter with literacy as “a being to whom a new world with all its
mysteries and marvels was opening” again echoes Douglass’s observation that literacy was “the pathway from slavery to freedom.”

p. 8
: Describing her desire to share her feelings, Crafts writes, “I had no mother, no friend.” Douglass says, in his 1845
Narrative,
that he saw his mother only “four or five times,” and only “at night.” He “received the tidings of her death with much the
same emotions [as] I should have probably felt at the death of a stranger.”

p. 8
: In what appears to be an appeal for abolitionist support, the narrator states that in the North “the colored race had
so many and such true friends.” On p. 10, she idealizes northern whites as those who implicitly feel “keenly on the subject
of slavery and the degradation and ignorance it imposes on one portion of the human race.” The claim that slaves were members
of “the human race” was meant to counter pro-slavery claims that they were not, that they were subhuman.

p. 10
: Describing her trips to Aunt Hetty and Uncle Siah, Hannah says that she would “steal away” to learn about Christianity.
This invocation of the spiritual titled “Steal Away” is one of the few references to the African American musical tradition
in this text. Hannah’s admirable piety is underscored by the smugness of the contrast between her evening activities and the
other slaves’ enjoyment of “the banjo and the dance.” Frederick Douglass makes similar critiques of white-sanctioned slave
entertainment.

p. 11
: “slaves though they were, … ignorant, and untutored, assimilated thus to the highest and proudest in the land—thus
evinced their equal origin, and immortal destiny.” Pro-slavery ideology held that slaves, as persons of African descent, were
destined
by nature
to be slaves and could not be educated or could not “improve” themselves. Crafts here is countering this argument. With education
and moral training, in other words, slaves were capable of scaling the great chain of being. Crafts’s confession of her earliest
ambition, “to become their teacher,” foreshadows the career she will undertake at the end of the narrative.

p. 13
: Aunt Hetty’s banishment is a restatement of the text’s valorization of white abolitionists and their willingness to
be punished for their defiance of unjust laws on behalf of the slave.

p. 13
: With the marriage of Lindendale’s master, the narrative switches from the style suggestive of the slave narrative and
the sentimental novel to a text heavily influenced by gothic patterns and themes. Conventions of the sentimental novel reappear
throughout the novel, especially at its denouement.

p. 13
: “it was whispered” Douglass uses
whispered
in this sense, describing the slaves’ rumors of their master’s secrets, and more especially of his own paternity.

p. 14
: “whose sweat and blood and unpaid labor had contributed to produce it” Crafts here echoes the economic-justice argument
from abolitionist propaganda for the abolition of slavery.

p. 15
: The description of the long galleries filled with portentous portraits of the family of Sir Clifford De Vincent, the
current master’s ancestor, is reminiscent of the central role played by portraiture in Horace Walpole’s
Castle of Otranto
(1765). Walpole’s novel is considered to begin the gothic novel tradition. In American literature of the nineteenth century,
Edgar Allan Poe is the most important practitioner of this genre, which often involves ancient houses, forlorn brides, and
supernatural occurrences. Even for Virginia (the Old Dominion), Lindendale seems to be exceedingly aristocratic and antique
for a New World setting.

p. 17
: “I was not a slave with these pictured memorials of the past…. In their presence my mind seemed to run riotous and
exult in its freedom as a rational being, and one destined for something higher and better than this world can afford.” Crafts
here argues for the transformative powers of the higher arts—in this case, the visual arts—on even a humble slave. While virtually
all the slave narrators used the mastering of literacy in this way, few slave narrators, if any, used an appreciation of painting
to show the common humanity of the slave and his white masters. Crafts’s mistress’s true identity as the daughter of a slave
mother will be authenticated by a portrait. See p. 47.

Chapter 2

p. 19
: In addition to the author’s modernization of “speaketh” to “speaks,” she changes Proverbs’ seven abominations to “severe”
abominations. Proverbs 26:25:

When he speaketh fair, believe him not: for there are seven abominations in his heart.

p. 20
: “The clear cold sunshine glancing down the long avenue of elms” Crafts, in passages such as these, reveals exceptional
powers of description. See pp. 121–123, and 192.

p. 20
: Stormy weather and the creaking of the old linden tree trigger the narration of the legend of the linden and its “wild
and weird influence.” In much of this text, storms, particularly at night, foreshadow crises, particularly for African Americans.

p. 21
: The beating and torture of “an old woman” echo Douglass’s description of the beating of Aunt Hester.

p. 21
: The curse on the house is earned by a series of cruelties by its first owner, culminating in the torture and death
of a trusted old nurse and a lovable, shaggy, white dog. In the South, it is only the “direst act of cruelty” that could distinguish
this master from other slave owners. Of course, the reason that a tree symbolizes extreme cruelty is partly historical, the
very real use of trees for lynching. Its other connection is to crucifixion imagery, the use of a “tree” during the Passion.

p. 22
: Sir Clifford boasts that his commands are comparable to “the laws of the Medes and Persians.” This classical reference
is to Media, an ancient country of West Asia that extended its rule over Persia circa 700 B.C. This dynasty was not overthrown
until 550 B.C.

p. 26
: The “Madras handkerchiefs” that are worn by many of the slaves for the celebration of their master’s wedding was a
term used from approximately 1833 to 1881 to describe the slaves’ silk-and-cotton kerchiefs used as headdresses.

p. 27
: The true identity of Hannah’s mistress is implied upon her introduction in the text. Physically, she is “small” and
“brown” with a profusion of wavy, curly hair. Although those might be neutral descriptions, her lips, which are “too large,”
signal a warning about hidden ancestry, particularly in the racially charged South. Although the narrator owns to being “superstitious”—“people
of my race and color usually are,” she writes—her fear of her mistress being “haunted by a shadow or phantom” foreshadows
coming disclosures.

p. 27
: “Instead of books I studied faces and characters” Crafts here is reinforcing her authority as a narrator who, though
a slave and uneducated formally, nevertheless possesses “the unerring certainty of animal instinct.”

p. 28
: The “old gentleman in black” who shadows Hannah’s mistress is reminiscent of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “elder person” of
the woods, who is possibly the devil, in “Young Goodman Brown” (1835).

p. 29
: During the wedding party, the groaning of the linden tree signals the invocation of Rose’s curse upon the house’s descendants.
In apparent protest, Sir Clifford’s portrait falls from the wall as the new bride enters the portrait gallery. While this
is not as dramatic as Walpole’s
Castle of Otranto,
in which a ghost steps out of his portrait, the echoes of the first gothic novel can be heard.

Chapter 3

p. 31
: To begin this chapter, Crafts offers a portion of Psalm 39:6:

Surely every man walketh in a vain show: surely they are disquieted in vain: he heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall
gather them.

Immediately following is a line of verse from “Lochiel’s Warning” by Thomas Campbell (1777–1844). This warning, heavy with
supernatural language, is issued by a wizard. The setting and the language of this citation underscore the gothic nature of
the text:

Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore
And coming events cast their shadows before [55–56]

p. 33
: Lizzy’s, a quadroon, pride in the fact that her white ancestors came from “a good family” and her contention “that
good blood was an inheritance,” even to the slave, is a common theme in the African American literary tradition.

p. 34
: “suffered the extremes of a master’s fondness, a mistress’s jealousy and their daughter’s hate” Crafts is unusually
open about discussing sexual relations between masters and their female slaves. See below, p. 172.

p. 36
: “My mistress was very kind, and … she indulged me in reading whenever I desired.” Compare this indulgence with that
of Douglass’s mistress, Sophia Auld. A mistress flouting her husband’s strict prohibitions about literacy training for a slave
is extraordinarily rare in the slave narratives. But so, too, of course, is a mistress who turns out to be black.

pp. 35–42
: Crafts frequently shifts back and forth from past to present tense when she describes action between her characters,
as in “she asks” or “speaks” (p. 35), “Trappe proceeds” or “she remembers” (p. 39), “he interrupts” (p. 41), “she repulses,”
“he inquired” (p. 42).

Chapter 4

p. 43
: In the Pentateuch, the following verse is repeated in two books, inspiring the commonplace saying that Crafts attributes
to Moses, the traditionally recognized author of this part of the Hebrew Bible. Both Deuteronomy 5:9 and Exodus 20:5 use the
same language: