Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, born in 1825, enjoyed a prolific career in the
public spotlight until her death in 1911. Harper’s Iola Leroy; or, Shadows
Uplifted, published in 1892, is arguably the first
novel written by an African-American woman. There is some speculation among literary
critics that perhaps Amelia Johnson’s In God’s Way or Emma Dunham
Kelly’s Megda may have been published in 1891. However, it is
fairly undisputed that Harper was the first African-American woman to publish a
short story, “The Two Offers,” written in 1859. Also well known as a poet, Harper
published nine volumes of poetry, mostly organized around the theme of equal rights
for blacks.
Harper’s career was not limited to writing essays and literature. An
influential orator, Harper was particularly active in reform movements that
advocated for women’s rights, suffrage, temperance, and the abolition of slavery,
and her lectures sometime seeped into her literature. For instance, among other
commitments to social causes, Harper was active in establishing Sunday school for
black children, helping to launch the National Association for Colored Women, and
promoting voting rights for blacks and women with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B.
Anthony, and Frederick Douglas. Harper’s vision for social reform likely began when
she was a child, as she was raised by her uncle, the prominent abolitionist William
J. Watkins, and his wife. Before becoming active in the Underground Railroad and
other abolitionist movements, Harper taught at the Union Seminary for freed blacks
in Ohio as its first female instructor. Accompanied by her daughter, Harper lectured
in the South for several years following a short marriage that ended upon the death
of her husband, Fenton Harper. In her speeches, she focused on the issue of
reshaping the nation via social reform and civil rights for blacks and elaborated on
the condition of black women laborers. Harper emphasized religious and family values
that countered the ideological impulses of the Gilded Age during which she
published—a period of intense political, economic, and industrial upheaval. Harper
later resided in Philadelphia, where she published Iola Leroy.
Harper wrote Iola Leroy during “the women’s era,” a period
from 1890–1910 in which women writers produced volumes of work. In the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the ideology of the Cult of True
Womanhood pervaded American culture and enforced the idea that a virtuous woman’s
civic duty was to nurture her husband and children and to remain within the confines
of the home. Iola Leroy challenges this social and cultural norm,
often the topic of previous literary works. The protagonist, Iola, works as a nurse,
an accountant, and a teacher, and she is an outspoken intellectual. Iola
Leroy also counters the idea that women should be meek and docile, as
dictated by a male-dominated society. Several critics also note that Iola
Leroy resists the literary convention of the tragic mulatta character
that was popular in writings of the 1850s and 1860s. These texts often portrayed
miscegenation, or racial mixing, as a catalyst to a female character’s demise.
Iola Leroy explores the nineteenth-century ideology that the degree
of blackness of one’s skin determined one’s social class and civil rights. The
emphasis on biology, or genetic composition, fixed one’s place in society and
determined one’s worth. This ideology stemmed from scientific principles of the
eighteenth century, the Age of Enlightenment, which valued the importance of keeping
the white race pure and therefore condemned racial mixing. Western science promoted
the idea that life forms were arranged according to a hierarchy. Plants and animals
were at the bottom of this “great chain of being,” and angels, saints, and God
ranked at the top. Whites fell between animals and deities. Blacks’ status fell
between animals and whites, thus rendering them subhuman. This ideology fueled
misperceptions of blacks and rendered miscegenation unacceptable. Iola Leroy
responds to this ideology and emphasizes the need to elevate the black race
by demonstrating its equality with the white race.
The novel is set during Civil War, 1861–1865, and Reconstruction, 1865–1877.
Although slavery ended with the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, racist sentiment
against blacks persisted. Harper wrote the novel just after the Supreme Court
condoned the Jim Crow laws, which segregated blacks and whites. This continued
racial strife influenced the text’s genre as a novel of protest, particularly
notable in its characterization, plot, and theme. The author’s “Note” explains that
the novel seeks to inspire blacks to empower or uplift themselves and to move whites
to amend the oppression of blacks. For Harper, Christianity provides the means for
attaining these goals. Other prominent authors of the period also echoed the
importance of religion in ameliorating the racially divided nation, particularly
Harriet Beecher Stowe in her widely read novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Iola Leroy was a form of popular literature that therefore had
a mass readership, but critics disagree over Harper’s intended audience. Some
critics contend that Harper wrote for a white Christian audience, while others
recognize that her audience was the black Christian population. Iola
Leroy was largely overlooked as part of the African-American literary canon
until the 1970s and 1980s, probably due to dawning of the black feminist literary
movement.
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