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.
Themes
The Effects of Slavery
Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses racism, violence, enslavement, rape, torture, suicide, and abuse.
The dominant theme of the book is slavery and its effect on the people and the society of the United States in the mid-1800s. However, there are several distinct ways in which this theme manifests, and Hannah Crafts’s social critique provides hope for a future in which slavery is no longer an issue.
The primary way in which the theme of slavery appears in the text is the negative effect it has on African Americans. Hannah frequently reiterates the importance of freedom and the yearning to be free. Enslaved people are forced to work without recompense, and they are often separated from their families when they are sold to another enslaver. Enslaved people are at risk of rape and assault from enslavers, and other enslaved people can be beaten and even executed without repercussions, and they lack any means to challenge this system. Crafts shows that slavery is a damaging institution that oppresses and harms African Americans to an extreme extent.
The novel offers a unique perspective on slavery in the mid-1800s, as it is the only known novel written by a formerly enslaved African American woman. The way it depicts the social status of enslaved people is not evident in many other works. Hannah, for instance, is enslaved in the house. She raises children and helps the wives of the enslavers. She does not work in the fields of the plantations, harvesting cotton and other produce. As a result, she considers herself “above” the enslaved people in the field in a social sense. When she sees the conditions in which the enslaved people in the field on Mr. Wheeler’s property work, she is disgusted, and when she tries to work in the fields for a day, the labor takes a physical toll. She decides that she has no choice but to run away.
Even among the enslaved people, there is a sense of social class and distinction. The social structure is not just one of enslaved people and enslavers, of Black and white. Enslaved people in the house consider themselves to be more important or of higher standing than the enslaved people in the field. When Hannah goes to live with the enslaved people in the field, there is a sense of schadenfreude among them: A woman who considered herself above them is now down on their level.
By the close of the novel, Hannah has reached freedom, but the lingering effects of slavery still haunt her—so much so that she feels compelled to write a novel detailing the odious effects of slavery and the various brutalities which she has survived. She teaches a class of African American children, imbuing them with her ideologies. Hannah knows about the horrors of slavery and wants to share these horrors with the world.
Just as Hannah has become a schoolteacher to inform the younger generation of these horrors, her novel serves the same function. The Bondwoman’s Narrative depicts the destructive, vicious, and violent theme of slavery. Its purpose is not only to entertain and to inform but also to educate a society on the horrors of slavery. In that respect, the novel becomes an extension of Hannah’s schoolroom.
The Power of Education and Literacy
In the novel, education is a means of countering slavery’s evil. Hannah spends her entire life striving to educate herself. From a young age, she has taught herself to read, and this education has allowed her to be more perceptive and more sympathetic to the plights of others. Ultimately, it is what allows her to liberate herself from slavery.
Hannah is self-effacing about her education, which is one of her defining traits. Hannah begins the novel by telling readers that she is “neither clever, nor learned, nor talented” (66). As the novel reveals, however, this is untrue. She is a skilled writer and storyteller, able to replicate the success of books written by far more celebrated and well-known authors (notably Charles Dickens, as observed by Henry Louis Gates in the appendix).
Hannah plays on the reader’s expectations of the level of education attainable by an enslaved person. Given that literacy was a skill denied to most enslaved people, she begins the novel by revealing how much effort she put into learning to read. This was an illicit affair, but she had an “instinctive desire for knowledge” (67). From the earliest moment of the novel, Hannah separates herself from other enslaved people by describing herccountn. It imbues her with a unique perspective and ensures that she will document her plight and the plight of others.
Hannah’s education serves as her gateway to religion. Hannah becomes a deeply religious person. When she finds herself in moments of stress or worry, she consoles herself by repeating Bible verses. The Bible informs her views on marriage, and she begins almost every chapter with a carefully selected Bible quote. Hannah is familiar enough with the Bible that she can draw comparisons between her immediate situations and stories from the Bible, and she prays for salvation and tells others to trust in God in times of trouble.
Hannah’s education enables her faith. Given the illicit nature of her education, the implication is that her close relationship with God is not available to all enslaved people. Hence, she meets many who do not have faith as strong as hers. For such a fervent Christian woman, then, education is a blessing as it allows for a closer relationship with God and provides hope in moments of abject misery.
Hannah recognizes the importance of education. She makes a point of describing how Mrs. Hetty taught her to read and the way in which she would sneak into the library of her enslaver and read books in secret. By the time she has reached New Jersey, she has become so sure of the importance of education that she makes a career of it and becomes a schoolteacher. Education guides Hannah throughout her life. It defines her childhood through secret lessons, guides her through her self-emancipation with her biblical knowledge, and becomes her life’s work. In the novel, education is a road to freedom and a way to alleviate the horrible effects of slavery.
The Need for a Safe Home
Throughout her life, Hannah visits several different homes as she constantly seeks a safe place to live. The cursed home of her first enslaver, the naturalistic and beatific home of Mrs. Henry, the slums housing enslaved people in the fields of Mrs. Wheeler’s estate, and the New Jersey home she shares with her husband each chart the course of Hannah’s journey toward freedom. The text suggests that a safe home is synonymous with freedom and that each person has a need to live somewhere safely.
The home where Hannah is born and raised is allegedly under a curse. Not only are the portraits of Sir Clifford’s family said to be auspicious, but there is also the linden tree to which Sir Clifford bound an enslaved woman until she died. The home is the first that Hannah knows. She appreciates having Aunt Hetty nearby and being able to receive an education for a time. As Hannah grows older, the house changes. It becomes more overbearing and oppressive as Hannah begins to comprehend fully the dangers of slavery. The house of the enslaver represents Hannah’s awakening to the horrors of slavery and the need to emancipate herself. Along with her former female enslaver, she moves from this home to one in the woods, which was the site of a brutal murder. Though the shack in the woods is horrifying in its own way, it is still preferable. Neither home is safe, but Crafts immediately suggests that people must live somewhere that shelters them from imminent threats.
Hannah later finds herself nursed back to health by Mrs. Henry. When she is able to explore, she finds that the enslaved people are treated well and Mrs. Henry is kind. The house of Mrs. Henry functions as a juxtaposition. While the Henry home reflects one of the nicest homes Hannah visits in the South, she must leave for the Wheeler household. The Henry home is a short-lived and impossible paradise, conveying what good a safer home can do for people (although it is still not a safe home, since people there are enslaved).
Hannah’s time with Mrs. Wheeler ends with a trip to live with the enslaved people in the field. Hannah is scathing in her descriptions of the way the enslaved people in the field live, which foreshadows the punishment that is doled out to her. While Hannah spends very little time in the homes of the enslaved people in the field, her time there is brutal. A fellow enslaved person beats her, and she works until she bleeds. The home of people enslaved in the fields represents her lowest point as it is the least safe. Very quickly, Hannah realizes that she must emancipate herself.
This brings Hannah, eventually, to her home in New Jersey. The final chapter in the book is short and leaves a great deal to the imagination. What Hannah describes is idyllic. Her mother, her husband, her friends, and her freedom; in the final home, Hannah has everything. A safe home encapsulates the happy ending; it is the reward for the struggles and the fight against slavery. The ending hence reinforces the novel’s point that people need a safe home to thrive.
