Reworking classic literary texts to explore the unconventional union of slave-marriageFilling a long-standing gap in our knowledge about slave-marriage, Novel Bondage unravels the interconnections between marriage, slavery, and freedom through renewed readings of canonical nineteenth-century novels and short stories by black and white authors. Tess Chakkalakal expertly mines antislavery and postCivil War fiction to extract literary representations of slave-marriage, revealing how these texts and their public responses took aim not only at the horrors of slavery but also at the legal conventions of marriage.Situating close readings of fiction alongside archival material concerning the actual marriages of authors such as Lydia Maria Child, Harriet Beecher Stowe, William Wells Brown, and Frank J. Webb, Chakkalakal examines how these early novels established literary conventions for describing the domestic lives of American slaves in describing their aspirations for personal and civic freedom. Exploring this theme in postCivil War works by Frances E. W. Harper and Charles Chesnutt, she further reveals how the slave-marriage plot served as a fictional model for reforming marriage laws.As nonlegal unions, slave-marriages departed in crucial ways from the prevailing definition of marriage, and Chakkalakal reveals how these highly unconventional unions constituted an aesthetic and affective bond that challenged the legal definition of marriage in nineteenth-century America. Novel Bondage invites readers to rethink the ''marital work'' of nineteenth-century fiction and the historical role it played in shaping our understanding of the literary and political meaning of marriage, then and now.
Introduction: The Slave-Marriage Plot; Between Fiction and Experience: William Wells Brown's Clotel; Dred and the Freedom of Marriage: Harriet Beecher Stowe's Fiction of Law; Free, Black, and Married: Frank J. Webb's The Garies and their Friends; ''A Legally Unmarried Race'': Frances Harper's Marital Mission; Wedded to Race: Charles Chesnutt's Stories of the Color Line; Conclusion: Reading Hannah Crafts in the 21st Century Selected; Bibliography
''Tess Chakkalakal advances important scholarship on African American marriage during and immediately following the slave era. Her readings of canonical authors are provocative and controversial, but grounded well enough to enliven conversations about these writers and their times.''--Frances Smith Foster, author of 'Til Death or Distance Do Us Part: Love and Marriage in African America''Exploring the paradox represented by slave marriage in nineteenth-century American fiction, Novel Bondage deftly revises our reading of canonical works, offering a clearer understanding of these texts as direct participants in critiquing marriage as a legal institution.''--Kenneth W. Warren, author of What Was African American Literature?
