Mark Twain--The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)

The first American novel to be published in the vernacular, it is an exemplar of local color and regionalism.  Narrated by Huck, it begins where Tom Sawyer left off, and follows Huck as he fakes his own death in order to escape his physically abusive, drunken father, as he and the escaped slave Jim (at times known as N----- Jim) travel down the Mississippi, escaping the fictional town of St. Petersburg, Missouri. Over the course of the novel, Huck adopts many different personas at the spur of the moment, at one point even trying to pass as a girl.  This scene in particular is a good example of the kind of social insight the novel excels at, as Huck’s real gender is found out through a series of “tests”—threading a needle, throwing, and catching.  Huck’s conditioned reflexes give him away.  Huck and Jim travel part of the way with two conmen who refer to themselves as the Duke and the King; though Huck is willing to go along with their shams to a certain extent, his realization of their effect on other people coupled with the realization that they have no sense of loyalty to him or Jim makes Huck eager to get loose of them.  Finally, in the end section of the book, Tom Sawyer reappears, and joins Huck’s campaign to free the captured Jim.  Tom makes the escape needlessly difficult, informed by his own adventure-story-fed-overactive-imagination.  Huck’s surprise at Tom’s eagerness to help a slave escape is finally explained by Tom’s delayed explanation that the Widow Douglas has died, leaving directions in her will that Jim should be freed.  Huck and Tom, then, go to great lengths to try to free a technically free slave.

It satirizes antebellum society,  from the feuding Grangerfords and Shepherdsons to the more subtle subplot of Huck’s overcoming his own racism.  While there have been debates about Twain’s use of the word n------ in the novel, his use of the words is not only historically accurate, but also helps illuminate the transformation in Huck’s thinking.  After realizing the extent of Jim’s loyalty and recognizing Jim’s humanity, Huck rejects the advice of his "conscience", which continues to tell him that in helping Jim escape to freedom, he is stealing Miss Watson's property. Accepting that "All right, then, I'll go to hell!", Huck resolves to free Jim.  By the end of the novel, Tom’s Aunt Polly appears to set everyone straight about Tom’s and Huck’s real identities (they had fooled his Aunt Sally and Uncle Silas that they were Sid and Tom Sawyer), and sets everyone to rights.  Jim’s freedom is announced, and he is commended for his care of Tom and Huck. 

Harriet Jacobs--Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861)

First published in 1861 under the pen name “Linda Brent,” Harriet wrote Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl to appeal to a northern audience for the abolitionist cause.  It follows her escape from slavery in 1842 to her legal emancipation in 1852.  Jacobs was born to relatively well-off slaves and had a relatively happy childhood with them and then her grandmother, a slave with a somewhat independent income through her baking who wields a strong sense of moral power throughout the text.  Once her parents die, she is sold to the evil Dr. Flint, who pursues and threatens her sexually.  Jacobs calls upon the values of nineteenth century True Womanhood as she appeals to her audience of northern women, calling their attention to her inability to uphold these shared values, instilled in her by her grandmother, as a slave. 

Dr. Flint is a frightening threat: her “master, whose restless, craving, vicious nature roved about day and night, seeking whom to devour” who informs Jacobs that she “was made for his use, made to obey his command in every thing” (459).  In addition to her surprising frankness about the sexual dangers which Dr. Flint threatened, Jacobs is equally frank about the sexual relationship she has with Mr. Sands, a white man with whom she has two children.  In a candid aside to the reader, Jacobs admits that she chooses a sexual relationship with him, explaining that, “It seems less degrading to give one’s self, that to submit to compulsion” (501).  She asks for forgiveness, explaining that slaves should be judged differently, as slavery is an inherently corrupting system, which made her “prematurely knowing, concerning the evil ways of the world” (500). 

When Dr. Flint becomes too dangerous, Jacobs goes into hiding, staying in a secret compartment in a porch roof which was 9’x3’x7’ (at its highest part).  She stayed seven years in hiding, during which time Mr. Sands is able to take their daughter Ellen to Brooklyn.  Jacobs eventually is able to escape to Philadelphia by boat.  However, even after her escape north, she lives in fear of the Fugitive Slave Act and Dr. Flint’s relentless pursuit of her.  She works for Mrs. Bruce, even spending a year in London, caring for Mrs. Bruce’s daughter, where she experiences a more general freedom from racism than she has ever had.  Eventually, Jacobs’ freedom is bought by her new mistress Mrs. Bruce, despite Jacobs’ complete unwillingness to being purchased.  The text ends with her unfulfilled desires to have her children with her in their own home, and two more truth claims from white authors.

The narrative follows the typical pattern of the nineteenth century slave narrative: (1) loss of innocence (narrator realizes that she’s a slave); (2) realization of alternatives and formulation of resolve to be free; (3) escape (depending on when the narrative was written, will tell more or fewer details about the escape.  Pre-emancipation, fewer details were given); and (4) freedom.  It is prefaced by a truth claim by Lydia Maria Child, a well-respected white author of domestic guides.  Between 1760 and 1947, more than 200 book-length narratives were written; in total, more than 6,000 total exist.  While they were popular tools of propaganda, Jacobs was one of the first to focus on the dangers of slavery which were unique to female slaves, particularly their vulnerability to sexual abuse and rape.  Jacobs uses tropes of the sentimental novel—moralistic asides to her “Dear Reader,” and evocations of her desire to have her children at her own hearth. 

George Washington Cable--The Grandissimes (1880)

Cable’s first novel, it won him immediate success, including a speaking tour with Samuel Clemens.  It was first serialized in Scribner’s from November 1879 to October 1880.  However, as popular tastes moved to realism and naturalism, what Michael Kreyling refers to as Cable’s “genteel, romantic habits of mind” and local color stories fell out of favor, and Cable never enjoyed any comparable success with his later work.  While contemporary readers enjoyed the romantic aspects of the novel, they were less sympathetic to his outright opposition to slavery and a color-based caste system.  Cable himself was German, which made him an outsider in the Creole society of New Orleans about which he wrote.  After the publication of his 1885 Freedman’s Case in Equity, in which he voiced his objection to the condition of African Americans in the South, he had to move to Massachusetts for his safety.

He was discovered by Edward King from Scribner’s, and was included in his “Great South” series (which many credit with the “invention” of Southern literature).  The novel is an examplar of local color, as it relies heavily on dialect and dramatizes life within the complex racial hierarchy of New Orleans life immediately following the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.  As a local color novel, it uses detail and dialect to present such an unfamiliar world to its readers—and its very unfamiliarity makes it easier to justify  While the local color conventions relies upon an outsider who is won over to the local customs (thinking as far back as even Swallow Barn), Cable is doing something different here. The novel relies heavily on a sense of nostalgia as well as a focus on domestic, every-day problems such as paying bills.  The combination of such mundane details with such deep, resonant feelings, allows for a critique of the system—particularly the role of women in this society, as it shows how their options are limited by societal norms.  Poor women can’t simply go out and get a job. 

The novel follows various members of the Grandissime family—black, white, mixed-race, rich and poor. The story begins when Honoré Grandissime, the scion of the white branch of this powerful New Orleans clan, takes in Joseph Frowenfeld, a young man from Philadelphia whose entire family has died from yellow fever. Honoré's conversations with Joseph about the New Orleans caste system shed light on the dilemmas at the center of the novel. Honoré finds himself caught between an idealistic Joseph, who advocates sweeping social reforms that would end slavery but essentially erase Creole culture, and his prideful uncle Agricola Fusilier, who ostensibly holds onto a racist past in order to preserve the Grandissime way of life—one built on the foundations of slavery. Honoré wants to establish a business partnership with his quadroon half brother (Honoré f.m.c.) and do right by Aurora Nancanou, who was widowed and destitute when Agricola murdered her husband over a gambling dispute. Yet his decisions regarding this tarnished family history are further complicated by his secret love for Aurora.

The story of Bras Coupé, retold several times, connects the novel's divergent strands and is suggestive of Honoré's struggle against his past and a New Orleans society that remains tainted by slavery. Bras Coupé, an enslaved African prince on a Spanish Creole plantation, is engaged to Palmyre, Aurora's maid. Inspired by the indignity of his plight, Bras Coupé attacks his white overseer, and is soon viciously pursued by a mob of Creole aristocrats (including Agricola) through the New Orleans swamps. Honoré tries to prevent the African prince's punishment but to no avail. Upon his capture, Bras Coupé issues a curse on both his master and his plantation. He is summarily beaten to death, though only after his ears are cut off and his hamstrings slashed. Bras Coupé, literally meaning "arm cut off" in French, personifies the cruelty of slavery and the degeneracy that lies at the heart of a so-called genteel southern society.

Character responses to the story are as important as the story itself, through its frequent repetition.  Further, the Bras Coupé story shows that even if you ignore race, another caste system will emerge.  Cable illustrates that tragedy is the preferred genre for societies which stake a lot on nobility, as tragedy requires an inversion of order.  Myths require replacement, and as Americans are a people without a history, then novel dramatizes the necessity of storytelling and myth.  As a nineteenth century novel, it ends with a sort of reconciliation plot, although with a twist of ending, after a final declaration of love, on Aurora saying “No” to M. Grandissime.