Redemption and Home in the African American City upon a Hill: Hannah Crafts’s "The Bondwoman’s Narrative"

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The Bondwoman’s Narrative (1857) is a novel in which the black female slave Hannah Crafts aims at the remodeling of her society and to gain self–assertion through a deeply Christian commitment and a total and honest respect to the values it impinges drawing broadly on the Bible and reshaping biblical imagery to convey her message and to submit her subjectivity and her Americanness. By using the national continuum of jeremiad rhetoric and her attachment to the values of the Christian creed, the novel partakes and yet takes a different direction from slave narratives by cagily forerunning Du Bois’s praised theory of the double consciousness. In so doing, it positions its protagonist as the first black female that absorbs and displays an identity that eventually becomes successful for it installs herself within the realm of home premised on the longed Puritan myth of the (African) American City upon a Hill which allows her to be a proper (African) American citizen.

RESUMEN: The Bondwoman’s Narrative (1857) es una novela en la que la esclava negra Hannah Crafts se propone remodelar su sociedad y redefinirse a través de una férrea adhesión cristiana y un absoluto respeto a los valores que de ella se coligen basándose en la Biblia y remodelando el imaginario cristiano para vehicular su mensaje y propugnar su subjetividad y su americanidad. Al utilizar el resorte nacional de la jeremiada y su adhesión a los valores del credo cristiano, la novela se basa en, y a la vez diverge de, las narraciones de esclavos adelantándose subrepticiamente a la aclamada teoría de la doble conciencia de Du Bois. De este modo, sitúa a la protagonista como la primera esclava negra que absorbe y presenta una identidad que, al final, deviene en triunfo puesto que la instala en la esfera del hogar dentro de su anhelada Ciudad sobre la Colina (afro)americana y le permite ser una ciudadana americana per se.