Novel Bondage: Slavery, Marriage, and Freedom in Nineteenth-Century America

Contents

Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction: The Slave-Marriage Plot 1 1. Between Fiction and Experience: William Wells Brown’s Clotel 15 2. Dred and the Freedom of Marriage: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Fiction of Law 31 3. Free, Black, and Married: Frank J. Webb’s The Garies and Their Friends 47 4. “A Legally Unmarried Race”: Frances Harper’s Marital Mission 64 5. Wedded to Race: Charles Chesnutt’s Stories of the Color Line 83 Conclusion: Reading Hannah Crafts in the Twenty-First Century 107 Notes 113 Selected Bibliography 133 Index 139 i-x_1-150_Chakk.indd 5 5/20/11 2:05 PM i-x_1-150_Chakk.indd 6 5/20/11 2:05 PM ...