Reading Post: Our Nig: Sketches from the Life of a Free Black by Harriet E. Wilson

Another reading post; skip if you're not interested.

Our Nig: Sketches from the Life of a Free Black by Harriet E. Wilson is the fifth book I've read for the Classics Challenge, and I read it for the category of "Classic by a Person of Color." The novel, published in 1859, is Harriet Wilson's life story, and like the last few books I've read, it was depressing. Unlike the other books, it had a very realistic feel. Since Wilson wrote it to support herself, she may have exaggerated her story to make it more marketable. But I felt as though I were reading someone's truth and that made it especially sad. Our Nig is believed to be either the first or second novel written by an African-American woman in the U.S., with the term "novel" used loosely, since this is mainly autobiography.

The main character (based on Wilson) is sometimes called Frado, but often just "Nig," which in itself was enough to make me sad. Frado is the daughter of a white woman, Mag Smith, who marries a kind "African" man, Jim, after her family rejects her for bearing a child out of wedlock and she nearly starves. That child dies soon after birth, but Mag has two more children (Frado and a son) with Jim before he dies, after which she takes up with his partner, Seth. Facing financial difficulties, Mag and Seth eventually decide to move on.

"It's no use," said Seth one day; "we must give the children away, and try to get work in some other place."

After discussing who would want "the black devils," they decide to give six-year-old Frado to the Bellmonts, a white family who live nearby. They don't actually arrange anything, just leave Frado there one day and promise to pick her up that evening. That's the last Frado sees of them.

The section of the book about Mag is a part of Frado's (and Wilson's) history that she would have been too young to have known or remembered. Perhaps she learned her mother's history from others. She portrays her mother as a victim at first, but eventually becomes more critical. Her description of how Mag might have felt about marrying Jim, Frado's father, is chilling:

He prevailed; they married. You can philosophize, gentle reader, upon the impropriety of such unions, and preach dozens of sermons on the evils of amalgamation. Want is a more powerful philosopher and preacher. Poor Mag. She has sundered another bond which held her to her fellows. She has descended another step down the ladder of infamy.

Remember, this is Frado trying to put herself in her mother's shoes. By describing her parents' marriage as "another step down the ladder of infamy," Frado implies that Mag held society's view of interracial marriage. And perhaps she did, since she later abandoned her daughter of that marriage. Or perhaps Mag was just a bad person, which is also implied.

Most of the rest of the book is devoted to Frado's subsequent miserable life with the Bellmonts. Wilson was born in New Hampshire in 1825, so this is a portrayal of antebellum life in New England, not the slave states. Frado is "free," but she is now an indentured servant, essentially a slave to the Bellmonts until she is 18. However, because she lives in a free state, she is allowed to attend school. On her first day of school the other children are mean to her because of her color, but her kind teacher rescues her:

"She looks like a good girl; I think I shall love her, so lay aside all prejudice, and vie with each other in shewing kindness and good-will to one who seems different from you," were the closing remarks of the kind lady.

When Frado is 9, Mrs. Bellmont decides that "such privileges should cease." Still, Frado has learned to read and write, legally, quite a contrast with people of African descent in the slave states.

Mr. Bellmont, his sister Aunt Abby who lives with the Bellmonts, two of the Bellmont sons (Jack and James), later their wives (Jenny and Susan), and one of the Bellmont daughters (Jane) are all kind to Frado and view her as a human being and a lonely, abandoned child.

So, who isn't kind? Primarily Mrs. Bellmont, who is described as

self-willed, haughty, undisciplined, arbitrary and severe. In common parlance, she was a scold, a thorough one.

Frado's other abuser is the younger daughter, Mary, who "was indeed the idol of her mother, and more nearly resembled her in disposition and manner than the others."

The two, but especially Mrs. Bellmont, torment and torture Frado for nearly 12 years. The puzzling thing is why this abuse is allowed to go on, when most of the family object to it, strongly and repeatedly. I felt as though I were reading a story not so much of racial prejudice but of sadism. Many horrible incidents are related in the book, and in the introduction Wilson notes,

My mistress was wholly imbued with southern principles. I do not pretend to divulge every transaction in my own life, which the unprejudiced would declare unfavorable in comparison with treatment of legal bondmen; I have purposely omitted what would most provoke shame in our good anti-slavery friends at home.

So, apparently, Frado's/Wilson's life was even worse than she describes. Supposedly the book did not sell well because it showed Northerners in a bad light, but it's not clear to me that it does, exactly. It paints a clear picture of a sadistic woman, Mrs. Bellmont, who is cruel not only to Frado but to anyone she dislikes, including her son Jack's wife. But many of the Northerners in the book are more reasonable. Maybe the key is that no one would have been able to get away with this cruelty had slavery and racial prejudice not existed. If the other Bellmonts had not been part of a discriminatory society they might have tried harder to change Mrs. Bellmont's behavior.

Frado eventually turns 18 and leaves the Bellmonts, but her life does not improve much. She is too sick (from years of beatings) to work hard, marries a man who turns out to be a bounder, and is unable to support her one son who dies in a care home. Wilson's own life seems to have improved after the publication of this book -- she married again and later became a Spiritualist, known in the Boston area as "the colored medium." She died in 1900.

A book like this is a sad little window into someone's life, a free Black woman's life, long ago. I'm glad I read it, but now every time I think of it I feel sorrow for Frado, wish she could have had a better life.