54 pages • 1 hour read
Hannah Crafts, Henry Louis Gates Jr., ed.The Bondwoman's Narrative
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2002A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “In Childhood”
Hannah Crafts, the author and narrator, confesses to the reader that she has never been trained or educated and that she’s not inherently talented. No one cared about her until she was able to work, at which point she began doing chores. She doesn’t know her family, but she quickly learns that the “African blood in [her] veins would forever exclude [her] from the higher walks of life” (66), even though she has a light complexion. At the risk of punishment, she prioritizes her self-education.
Hannah is enslaved in the house. As a child, a white woman from Hannah’s enslaver’s house decides to teach Hannah to read. The woman, Aunt Hetty, explains that, because she is from the North, she is not prejudiced. Aunt Hetty and her husband, Uncle Siah, lost their money due to “misfortunes” and lean on their Christian faith. Aunt Hetty can’t buy Hannah, but she teaches her to read and introduces her to Christianity.
One evening, as Hannah is reading the Bible in Aunt Hetty’s house, the overseer of the enslaver’s estate enters. He shouts, and Hannah flees; while she escapes punishment, the old couple must leave their home. Hannah is distraught and blames herself.
A year later, the owner of the estate is preparing to marry. As the enslaved people clean the house in preparation, Hannah glimpses inside many rooms for the first time and sees the incredible wealth and luxury within.
The evening before the bridal party arrives, Hannah goes to close a window in her enslaver’s favorite room upstairs, which contains a set of allegedly cursed portraits. The painted faces seem to come alive in the light of the setting sun. As Hannah looks at the portrait of her enslaver and considers the portrait of her new female enslaver that will accompany it, she becomes aware of a dreadful aura, “the foreboding of some great calamity” (75). When Hannah finally closes the window, the head servant, Mrs. Bry, appears behind her, having grown worried at Hannah’s “prolonged absence.” Mrs. Bry calls Hannah ignorant, a charge which Hannah quietly rebukes.
Chapter 2 Summary: “The Bride and the Bridal Company”
Hannah relates the story of a linden tree on the grounds. It was planted by Sir Clifford, an enslaver who took particular pleasure in torturing the people whom he enslaved. On one occasion, he ordered an elderly enslaved woman, his son’s former nursemaid, to drown her dog. The dog belonged to the woman’s daughter, whom Sir Clifford had sold, and the woman loved the dog like a grandchild. She refused to kill it. Sir Clifford had the old woman bound to the tree with an iron hoop, and the dog was suspended from the tree nearby. The woman and the dog were left there without food or water for five days, despite the pleadings for mercy from Sir Clifford’s wife and son. On the last night, a storm roused the woman, and her screams woke the entire household. The next day, the dog was dead, but the woman was still alive. Sir Clifford ordered her to be taken down, but the woman placed a curse on the house, then died.
Back in the present, the bridal party arrives after sunset. Mrs. Bry is dismayed to find that the lack of light means that her welcoming party—the enslaved people, carefully arranged—will not be seen. She tasks Hannah with leading the lady to her rooms. Hannah examines the woman; she notices “something indefinable” about the lady, who is “a small brown woman, with a profusion of wavy curly hair, large beautiful eyes, and delicate features with the exception of her lips which were too large, full, and red” (83).
At supper, Hannah waits on the wedding party. She observes one man, an unattractive, “rusty seedy old-fashioned gentleman” who acts strangely toward the lady (84). The lady and the seedy gentleman, Mr. Trappe, seem to be watching each other suspiciously, as though there is a secret between them.
After supper, the guests decide to dance in the room with the cursed portraits. The weather outside darkens, and the wind blows through the linden branches. The rain begins, and Hannah’s enslaver looks worried. While the other enslaved people watch the party dancing, Hannah notices the portrait of Sir Clifford and the creaking of the tree beyond the dancers. There is a sudden crash as Sir Clifford’s portrait falls to the floor, the walls having been rotted by “the invisible hand of time” (85).
Chapter 3 Summary: “Progress in Discovery”
The celebrations last for days. Often, Hannah sees Mr. Trappe lurking around the lady. Even after the celebrations die down, Trappe lingers. Hannah, still the waiting maid of her lady, detects that her lady is unhappy.
Hannah soon meets, Lizzy, the lady’s previous maid. Lizzy has more of an education and has traveled more than Hannah. She is a quarter white and places a lot of value on ancestry. Lizzy has been enslaved by many people and has known both cruelty and kindness. She has been with her present lady for a decade. Lizzy had been at the bedside of the lady’s dying father, as had Trappe. As the executor of the man’s will, Lizzy believes that Trappe has access to “some important secret” (88). Rather than wishing to marry the lady, Lizzy says, she believes that he may have been wishing to sell her. When Hannah presses her on this point, Lizzy falls silent.
The lady treats Hannah and Lizzy like companions, and they talk often. One day in spring, a letter arrives for Trappe, and Hannah delivers it. The next morning, Hannah is secretly reading in her hiding spot in the parlor when her lady enters, closely followed by Trappe.
Trappe accuses the lady of betraying their agreement. The lady was to treat Trappe with respect and pay him a monthly stipend. Because she failed to pay him the latest stipend, Trapp is terminating their agreement. Trappe has “knowledge of [the lady’s] birth” (92), but the enslaver’s property is mortgaged, and Trappe sees little financial benefit in keeping the lady’s secret any longer. Trappe confesses that he once loved the lady, but she rejected him.
Trappe has received a letter summoning him away, but he promises to return soon and reveal everything to the enslaver. The lady contemplates suicide, and Trappe forbids her from harming herself. He insists that they part as friends. Hesitantly, the lady allows Trappe to kiss her fingers.
Chapter 4 Summary: “A Mystery Unlocked”
Hannah waits until half an hour after her lady and Trappe leave, and then she goes to her lady to console her. Hannah drops to the floor and admits to overhearing everything, begging for forgiveness. The lady tells Hannah that she was raised by her father as his white daughter, though she was secretly descended from an enslaved person. When a white woman’s baby girl died, an old enslaved nurse and her lady switched the dead baby to a living enslaved baby. Trappe found the nurse’s account among the lady’s father’s papers. Trappe has extorted her ever since.
The lady asks Hannah for advice, and Hannah tells her to “fly from this house, from this place, from this country” (100). The lady asks Hannah to accompany her, and they begin to plot their self-emancipation, though the lady weeps for hours. The pair decides to leave at midnight.
As night approaches, Hannah thinks about the plan and how her lady will cope. She reflects on her time on the estate and the good times she enjoyed even though she was enslaved. The lights in the house begin to go out. Hannah goes to the lady’s bedroom, where the woman is sitting in the dim light, fully clothed and ready. The linden tree creaks outside; the lady tells Hannah to stay, but Hannah refuses. They creep through the dark house holding hands, and they exit together.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Lost, Lost, Lost”
Hannah and her lady flee through the dark. Thundering hoofbeats pass them by as they crouch in a field, as they can’t explain away their presence there. Several hours pass and the lady needs to rest. Hannah offers to carry her as they must make the boat, though she worries that they are lost. They sit in a nearby wood and fall asleep. When they wake, both are weak from hunger. As the lady begins to show signs of “one of her nervous excited spells” (106), Hannah climbs a hill to try to determine their location.
Hannah decides they should ask for directions at a nearby house, but before they arrive, they meet a group of children who live there with their father, Frederick Hawkins. The boys offer to lead the women to the house and give them food, but Hannah refuses, deciding to head for the village instead. They walk all day, with Hannah frequently comforting and aiding the lady until they reach a farm on the village outskirts. A kindly middle-aged woman meets them and asks her father permission to feed and house the women. The man, who is actually the woman’s husband, acquiesces and the women have a simple meal. When the woman asks their names, they politely refuse, and the woman understands immediately. Later, the woman leads them to a small room, and Hannah looks out through the window, wondering what is happening at her enslaver’s house.
Left alone with the lady, Hannah senses “the shadow of an evil presence” nearby (111). She sees a hand appear at the window and then sees the face of Trappe. While the lady panics, Hannah decides that they should depart the house in the middle of the night. They wait until midnight and then dress and exit through the window. They hide in the woods, worried that Trappe will be waiting in the village or on the boat. The pair sleeps a while then moves deeper into the woods and eats fruits and berries the next morning. Eventually, they arrive at an uninhabited cabin and decide to stay a few weeks.
They remain in the cabin for several days, living off the land. A crime seems to have occurred at the cabin, and they find bloodstains, a hatchet, and a human skeleton. The lady is frightened of the place, and as autumn approaches, they begin to think of moving. The lady blames Hannah for their troubles and slowly develops a mental illness.
One morning, three hunters appear at the cabin. The women hide and listen. The hunters find them; Hannah tells the truth, and one hunter admits to hearing a similar story. They reveal that the enslaver has died since the women’s self-emancipation, and then the men lead away the women “as sheep are led to the slaughter” (118). As they walk, a hunter reveals that the enslaver died by suicide in the room with Sir Clifford’s portrait, and now the estate belongs to someone else.
Chapters 1-5 Analysis
The autobiography begins even before the first line. Crafts prefaces each chapter with an epigraph (typically taken from the Bible), which functions as a thematic synopsis of the chapter. This is a popular literary technique, but its inclusion here reveals Crafts’s own education. Crafts was aware enough of literary conventions that she sought to include them even in this early draft, and she was familiar enough with the Bible to select verses to include before each chapter. The technique highlights her literary credentials; Crafts is well aware of how she may be regarded as a formerly enslaved African American woman, so she seeks to position herself as an author by using literary flourishes employed by other authors. This introduces The Power of Education and Literacy.
Crafts also uses many conventions of the literary Gothic in her narrative. Gothic literature generates “terror”—a dread of what might happen next—by representing a foreboding, claustrophobic environment where the present is haunted by the past, often in a supernatural way. In this case, the plantation is a Gothic environment plagued by stormy weather. Crafts incorporates supernatural elements into the story of the linden tree when she describes the old woman cursing her enslaver. Sir Clifford’s portrait is another significant Gothic symbol in this section. It alludes to the first Gothic novel, Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto (1764), in which a spirit inhabits a portrait and attempts to punish someone who is trying to usurp ownership of a castle. When the portrait crashes to the ground, the narrative suggests the enslavers do not have rightful ownership of the people they enslave. In a period when Gothic novels were popular among white, wealthy readers, Crafts’s use of Gothic elements conveys the point that enslaved African Americans were living in a fearful and claustrophobic environment and denied The Need for a Safe Home. What they had to fear was not the supernatural but white, wealthy people.
While representing the plantation as a Gothic environment, the novel does not shy away from the brutality of slavery. In addition to implications of violence (as in Hannah’s fear that she will be punished if she’s caught reading), numerous passages explicitly depict the cruel torture of enslaved people. The story of the old woman and the dog is particularly galling. This moment of brutal, mindless, and almost whimsical violence demonstrates the viciousness of Sir Clifford, who has no one to stop him from enacting his violent fantasies and avenging petty disputes. The old woman has no avenue of appeal and no way to protect herself from the enslaver’s whims. The only way she can fight back is to lay a curse against Sir Clifford and his family. In life, at least, enslaved people have no recourse to the law and no way to fight back against the brutal institution of slavery.
