Free Enterprise by Michelle Cliff
"Free Enterprise" by Michelle Cliff is a historical novel that explores the intertwined lives of two women, Annie Christmas and Mary Ellen Pleasant (M.E.P.), who are deeply engaged in the abolition of slavery. Set primarily in the early 20th century, the narrative begins in Carville, Mississippi, where Annie reflects on her past in the Caribbean while grappling with her present circumstances, including her tumultuous experiences during the Civil War. The novel juxtaposes Annie's passive resistance and her friendships with marginalized individuals, like those in a leper colony, against M.E.P.'s dynamic, proactive role as an African American businesswoman who uses her resources to support the abolitionist cause.
Through their stories, Cliff addresses themes of freedom, resistance, and the complexity of women's roles within historical narratives. The novel also critiques the official histories surrounding slavery and the intersections of race and gender, giving voice to the oral histories that challenge dominant accounts. As Cliff rewrites the legacy of M.E.P. and her connections to historical events, she highlights the struggles of various characters, including the Hooper cousins, who seek their own forms of liberation in a society that often silences them. "Free Enterprise" stands as a significant contribution to African American and feminist literature, reclaiming narratives of resistance that have been overlooked.
Free Enterprise by Michelle Cliff
First published: 1993
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Historical realism; social criticism; feminist
Time of work: 1858-1920
Locale: The Caribbean; Carville, Mississippi; Boston, Massachusetts
Principal Characters:
Mary Ellen Pleasant , a successful black businesswoman who finances efforts to abolish slaveryAnnie Christmas , an abolitionist and resister who fled her privileged situation in Jamaica to fight for freedomAlice Hooper , an upper-class Boston woman who opposes slavery yet is afraid to express her beliefs in societyClover Hooper Adams , Alice’s cousin, a photographer with artistic aspirations who commits suicide
The Novel
Free Enterprise recounts the lives and interactions of two women dedicated to the abolition of slavery and the very different outcomes of their involvement in the antislavery movement. The novel begins near Carville, Mississippi, in 1920. Annie Christmas lives near the riverbank in a house that appears to be slipping into the river. The trees in front of her house are decorated with an odd assortment of ordinary bottles whose lingering aromas reawaken the past for Annie. She remembers her girlhood in the Caribbean, the first time she met Mary Ellen Pleasant (M.E.P.), and how she came to be named Annie Christmas.
The novel recounts the meeting of the two women at a lecture given in Boston. M.E.P. invites Annie to supper at a restaurant called Free Enterprise that is owned by a black fisherman and his wife. During the meal, M.E.P. suggests she take the name of Annie Christmas, a woman who had worked barges on the Mississippi River.
The story returns to Carville, Mississippi, and Annie’s involvement with a leper colony. The lepers of the colony join Annie in telling stories. These stories are oral histories that conflict with the official versions of history: They present historical events from different perspectives and with different facts than do standard accounts.
The novel then reproduces a letter sent by M.E.P. to Annie. M.E.P.’s letter recounts an unpleasant evening at Alice Hooper’s home. The occasion is the unveiling of a painting by the English artist Joseph Turner entitled “Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On.” M.E.P., upset by the subject of the painting and the comments of other guests, abruptly leaves. The next morning, she receives a letter of apology from Miss Hooper. M.E.P. accepts the apology.
The incident at Alice Hooper’s home shifts the story line away from both M.E.P. and Annie, as the novel concentrates instead on Alice Hooper’s trip to Washington, D.C. She travels to the nation’s capital with her cousin Clover Hooper to see the Civil War victory celebrations and to visit places of historical importance. There, they meet a mysterious multiracial woman in the alley behind Ford’s Theatre. Clover asks to take her picture; the woman agrees. During preparations for the photograph, the women engage in a conversation in which the alley woman reveals that she is contraband and discloses details of her life. She knows how to read and has read many books. Clover and the woman talk of books and of women’s ability to escape into them.
The narrative shifts once more to M.E.P. and her journey to Martha’s Vineyard. It then digresses into M.E.P.’s life as a successful businesswoman in San Francisco and her ability to use the free enterprise system to save runaway slaves and fund abolitionist causes. Her parents’ lives are also detailed. M.E.P.’s father, Captain Parsons, was a dark-skinned boat captain who successfully transported contraband slaves, and her mother, Quasheba, was a gunsmith. M.E.P. recalls her involvement with John Brown and her sorrow over the failure of the raid on Harpers Ferry.
A series of letters concludes the story of the Hooper cousins. Clover commits suicide, and Alice dies a natural death. Annie recounts her years on a Confederate chain gang during the Civil War and her subsequent retreat to the seclusion of the riverbank. M.E.P. returned to San Francisco and the fight for freedom until she herself became a victim of prejudice.
The Characters
Through the four principal characters of the novel, Michelle Cliff considers the question of slavery, as well as the denial of freedom in a broader sense and the importance of resistance by the disenfranchised. M.E.P. is a fictionalization of an actual historical figure who participated in the fight to abolish slavery. Cliff emphasizes her independence and success as an African American businesswoman. She utilizes the many stereotypes that surround M.E.P. in official histories to create a character who is powerful, determined, and feared by the white society to which she caters.
Cliff proves willing to alter Mary Ellen Pleasant’s life to suit the needs of her narrative. For example, she adds fortuitous incidents, as when M.E.P. slips away and returns to San Francisco after the failure of John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry. M.E.P. is a strong, disciplined individual who refuses to let her disappointment at the failure of Brown’s attempted slave revolt defeat her. Back in San Francisco, she continues to work for abolition, and after the Civil War she fights for the rights of African American citizens.
In contrast to Pleasant, Annie Christmas, christened Regina, retreats into an almost hermetic existence after her capture and servitude on the chain gang. Annie’s life in a sense comes full circle. She left the Caribbean to avoid a rich white man’s bed; on the chain gang, her sex is discovered. She is fitted out with a collar and leash and led from one prisoner to another. They are made to engage in sexual intercourse for the entertainment of the guards. One day a woman friend of one of the guards comes to enjoy the entertainment as well.
When she is finally freed, Annie is broken in both body and spirit. Circumstances bring Annie to a point of no return. She can no longer actively resist and feels she has given up. She maintains a passive resistance, however, through her friendship with the lepers: She encourages them to keep alive their oral histories in resistance to the official history.
Alice and Clover Hooper, although not victims of slavery, are not free. They dream of setting off together for the West to challenge the male-dominated society in which they live. Alice does not merely refrain from expressing her opinions at social gatherings: She does not even permit “unacceptable” thoughts to come to her. It is only at night, when she is alone with her pet bat, Atthis, that she allows herself to have ideas. Even then, she rarely voices them. She is ridden by feelings of guilt and cowardice, because she does not have the courage to speak up, to resist.
Clover also feels a need to resist. She is not either physically or mentally what her society insists that a woman should be. She is intensely driven to record in photographs the history of the fight to end slavery. She has pretensions to be an artist, but Clover feels unreal, as though she does not physically exist. Clover goes beyond a point of no return: She commits suicide by drinking potassium cyanide, the chemical she uses to develop her photographs.
Critical Context
Free Enterprise is a rewriting of the history of M.E.P. and the raid on Harpers Ferry. Cliff sought to reclaim the history neglected by the official history. The novel has been recognized as a novel of resistance that belongs in the canon of African American literature and of feminist literature.
Bibliography
Cliff, Michelle. “History as Fiction, Fiction as History.” Ploughshares 20, nos. 2/3 (1994): 196-202. Cliff explicates her goals in writing Free Enterprise.
Cliff, Michelle. “Journey into Speech—A Writer Between Two Worlds: An Interview with Michelle Cliff.” Interview by Opal Palmer Adisa. African American Review 28, no. 2 (1994): 273+. Cliff discusses race, oppression in Jamaica, resistance as a form of community, and the importance of women in the history of resistance.
Edmonson, Belinda. “Race, Writing, and the Politics of (Re)Writing History: An Analysis of the Novels of Michelle Cliff.” Callaloo 16, no. 1 (Winter, 1993): 180-191. Useful analysis of Cliff’s propensity to seek out obscure events from history and her ability to work with multiple perspectives.
Elia, Nada. Trances, Dances, and Vociferations: Agency and Resistance in Africana Women’s Narratives. New York: Garland, 2001. Elucidates Cliff’s use of alternative and oral histories, and her representation of sexual and racial passing. Chapter 3 provides an analysis of Annie Christmas. Useful bibliography.
Hudson, Lynn M. The Making of Mammy Pleasant: A Black Entrepreneur in Nineteenth-Century SanFrancisco. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003. Contrasts Cliff’s portrayal of M.E.P. with her portrayal in Mammy Pleasant (1953), Devilseed (1984), Pale Truth (2000), and Sister Noon (2001). Illustrated.