The Magazine Novels of Pauline Hopkins by Pauline Hopkins

First published: 1988: Hagar’s Daughter: A Story of Southern Caste Prejudice, 1901-1902; Winona: A Tale of Negro Life in the South and Southwest, 1902; Of One Blood: Or, The Hidden Self, 1902-1903

Type of work: Novels

Type of plot: Social criticism

Time of work: The latter half of the nineteenth century

Locale: Eastern United States

Principal Characters:

Hagar’s Daughter: A Story of Southern Caste Prejudice

• Hagar, a beautiful woman first married to Ellis Enson, then to John Bowen
• Jewel, the protagonist, Hagar’s daughter
• Ellis Enson, a southern aristocrat who marries Hagar and is attacked and left for dead
• St. Clair Enson, the major villain who masterminds a scheme to get rich by marrying Jewel
• Cuthbert Sumner, a northern aristocrat framed for the murder of Elise Bradford

Winona: A Tale of Negro Life in the South and Southwest

• Winona, the daughter of White Eagle and a runaway slave
• Judah, a strong, handsome African American who loves Winona
• White Eagle, an English aristocrat who is falsely convicted of murder
• Colonel Titus, the indirect heir to an estate; he kills White Eagle and kidnaps Winona and Judah, forcing them to work as slaves
• Warren Maxwell, a handsome, unprejudiced, twenty-eight-year-old English lawyer
• John Brown, the historical personage known for his abolitionist actions

Of One Blood: Or, The Hidden Self

• Reuel Briggs, a medical student who keeps his African American heritage a secret
• Aubrey Livingston, the false friend of Briggs
• Dianthe Lusk, a beautiful, talented singer with the Fisk University choir who marries Briggs
• Ai, a high priest of the lost civilization of Telassar

The Novels

In Hagar’s Daughter: A Story of Southern Caste Prejudice, Hagar marries Ellis Enson, and they have a child. Shortly after that, St. Clair Enson, Ellis’s cruel, dissolute brother, appears with a slave trader, Walker, to prove that Hagar is of mixed blood. Hagar does not know of her heritage and has been reared as white. After much soul searching, Ellis decides to ignore Hagar’s race and to take her and the child to Europe. Upon learning of this plan, St. Clair beats Ellis severely and leaves him for dead. Hagar and her daughter then become the property of St. Clair, who sells them at a slave market. Believing Ellis to be dead and herself to be beyond help, Hagar jumps into the Potomac, carrying her daughter along with her.

Twenty years later, in Washington, D.C., Cuthbert Sumner is charged with the murder of Elise Bradford. Summer’s fiancée, Jewel Bower, marries him as he awaits trial. Her father dies. At Sumner’s trial, the identities of various characters are revealed. St. Clair Enson, using the name General Benson, and Walker, using the name Madison, have attempted to bilk the Bowen family out of its fortune. St. Clair, who fathered Bradford’s child, murders her to keep her from interfering with his plan to marry Jewel and gain control of her money. Sumner is framed in order to remove him from Jewel’s life. Henson, a detective, admits that he is Ellis Enson, and Mrs. Bowen identifies herself as Hagar.

Sumner is acquitted, and St. Clair and Walker are arrested. Ellis and Hagar are reunited, and soon Hagar finds evidence proving that Jewel is their daughter. Sumner rejects her. He overcomes his prejudice too late and learns that she is dead.

In Winona: A Tale of Negro Life in the South and Southwest, the title character and Judah live with White Eagle, an English aristocrat who is murdered by Colonel Titus. Warren Maxwell, in search of the heir to a fortune, meets Winona and Judah and hopes to take them to England, but Bill Thomson claims he is their owner and takes them to Missouri. Maxwell finds Winona and Judah working as slaves on Titus’s plantation after learning that Titus is the indirect heir to the fortune.

When Winona and Judah are about to be sold, Maxwell helps them to escape to abolitionist John Brown’s camp. Soon thereafter, Maxwell is shot by Thomson and narrowly avoids being burned at the stake by a proslavery mob. Titus stops the mob but arrests Maxwell, who, after a mockery of a trial, is condemned to death. While awaiting execution in prison, Maxwell falls ill and is tended by Allen Pinks, who is actually Winona in disguise. After he recovers, she helps him to escape. In a battle, Judah causes Thomson to fall off a cliff. Before dying, Thomson reveals that White Eagle is the missing heir to the fortune. Winona, Maxwell, and Judah go to England, where Winona marries Maxwell and Judah is knighted.

In Of One Blood: Or, the Hidden Self, Reuel Briggs, passing as white, goes to a Halloween party, where he sees the supernatural image of Dianthe Lusk. Soon after, Dianthe is involved in an accident and is declared dead. The extraordinary skill of Briggs, a medical student, revives her. She has lost her memory, and he lets her believe that she is white. They fall in love, but Aubrey Livingston, a false friend of Briggs who knows his secret, blocks all professional opportunities for Briggs, except for one that will take him to Africa. Dianthe and Briggs get married the night before he leaves. Briggs leaves Dianthe in Livingston’s care.

Livingston, lusting after Dianthe, drowns his own fiancée and withholds Briggs’s letters to Dianthe. Briggs never receives her letters. Livingston blackmails Dianthe into marrying him by telling her of her heritage and threatening to tell Briggs.

In Africa, Briggs is part of an expedition looking for treasure hidden in a lost city. Briggs finds the city, Telassar, which turns out to be inhabited. He learns that he is King Ergamenes, whom the civilization has awaited. A birthmark that all members of the royal family have proves this identity. Briggs also learns that Africa was the cradle of civilization. The hidden people of Telassar are highly advanced. Through their technology, he learns the depths of Livingston’s depravity. He returns to the United States in time to hold Dianthe for a moment before she succumbs to the poison she had prepared for Livingston but that he had forced her to drink.

Aunt Hannah, an old former slave, explains that Briggs, Livingston, and Dianthe are brothers and sister, all born to her daughter Mira. Hannah had switched Mira’s son Aubrey with the dead infant of the master. Under hypnotic suggestion, Livingston kills himself. Briggs returns to Telassar to rule with Queen Candace.

The Characters

In Hagar’s Daughter, the major female characters all pass for white for part of their lifetimes. Hagar and Jewel do it unknowingly and are at first appalled when they learn of their African American blood. Both are portrayed as the epitome of gracious womanhood, both before and after they become aware of their backgrounds. Submissive, pious, pure, and domestic, they represent the nineteenth century values of true womanhood and femininity.

Aurelia Madison, the sexually vibrant and manipulative daughter of the slave trader Walker and a slave, has none of the above qualities. Although she is an adventuress, the author seems to approve of her actions—she is never punished for her part in the scheme to defraud the Bowens.

The central male characters do not always fare well in Hagar’s Daughter. Walker and St. Clair Enson are villains, representing greed and inhumanity. The white men who espouse abolitionism, the young Ellis Enson and Cuthbert Sumner, demonstrate the limitations of their liberalism when each initially disavows his wife upon learning of her African American heritage. They do eventually reject their racist views.

Because Winona contains so many adventures and life-and-death struggles, its characters are delineated more by their actions and speech than by particular stylistic devices. Winona, of mixed heritage, evinces personality traits associated with nineteenth century concepts of both masculine and feminine roles. Courageous and determined, she risks her life to care for the imprisoned Maxwell. She also fondly remembers the happiness she experienced in her childhood home and dreams of becoming Maxwell’s wife.

Judah, Winona’s childhood companion, embodies strength, intelligence, and vengefulness. Through his forebearance, however, the identity of the missing heir is uncovered. Winona’s eventual husband, Maxwell, is characterized as a principled man whose English birth accounts for his lack of racial prejudice. The villains, Colonel Titus and Bill Thomson, display no redeeming traits.

All the major characters in Of One Blood pass for white at some point in their lives. Briggs keeps his African American heritage a secret; Dianthe, after losing her memory, believes she is white until Livingston tells her; and Livingston believes he is white until near the end of the novel, when he learns that Briggs and Dianthe are his brother and sister.

Briggs, the scientific genius, trusts Livingston, who is in truth a villain. Livingston’s evil character is hidden behind a mask of kindness and geniality. Briggs only learns of Livingston’s cruel and murderous behavior by using the technology at Telassar. All the characters from the United States suffer from racial prejudice. Only in Africa is the value of African American heritage recognized.

In all three of Hopkins’s novels, most of the characters are not who they seem to be. Use of outward disguises, along with the practice of passing for white, enables the author to build complex characters.

Critical Context

These three magazine novels fit into African American literature among the work of the novelist William Wells Brown; Victoria Earle Matthews, who wrote for the story papers in the 1890’s; and detective novelist Chester Himes. Hazel V. Carby, a noted scholar of African American literature, views the writings of those three authors and Hopkins as providing the foundation of African American popular fiction in the United States.

As a high school student, Hopkins won a prize for her essay “Evils of Intemperance and Their Remedy” in a contest sponsored by William Wells Brown and the Congregational Publishing Society of Boston. Later, she wrote musical dramas including Colored Aristocracy (1877) and Slaves Escape: Or, The Underground Railroad (1879), which were performed on stage. She published her first novel, the historical romance Contending Forces, in 1900. Between March, 1901, and November, 1903, she published the magazine novels in Colored American Magazine, for which she also served as a strong voice in editorial decisions.

The purpose of Colored American Magazine was clearly to attempt the creation of an African American renaissance in Boston. It provided an outlet for poetry, fiction, and art, along with expository prose. Although the magazine fell short of its aims, it prefigured the Harlem Renaissance of two decades later.

Hopkins believed that fiction could change people’s lives, particularly if the fiction were published in a mass circulation magazine. In a society that condoned lynchings, Jim Crow laws, and general oppression of African Americans, Hopkins hoped to inform her contemporary readers about their heritage and help them learn to value themselves. Hopkins’s work is highly political, and some noted African Americans disapproved of her political stance. When the management of Colored American Magazine changed, her fiction lost its outlet. At the turn of the twentieth century in the United States, it was nearly impossible for African American authors to get their work published on their own. Without the backing of Colored American Magazine, Hopkins’s voice was doomed to silence.

Long out of print, the magazine novels have been collected and published in one volume. This volume has had an important effect on African American studies and on Hopkins’s reputation as well, bringing scholarly attention to a long-neglected author.

Bibliography

Ammons, Elizabeth. Conflicting Stories: American Women Writers at the Turn into the Twentieth Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Discusses all three of Hopkins’ serialized novels, demonstrating that the author became more experimental with each. Concentrating on Of One Blood, Ammons makes the point that the novel centers on the figure of the black female artist. Compares Hopkins’ use of the supernatural with that of Toni Morrison.

Baker, Houston A. Workings of the Spirit: The Poetics of Afro-American Women’s Writing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Situates the work of Pauline Hopkins within the tradition of African American women’s writing. Although concentrating on Contending Forces, Baker’s comments also illuminate the texts of the three magazine novels.

Braxton, Joanne. “Afra-American Culture and the Contemporary Literary Renaissance.” In Wild Women in the Whirlwind: Afra-American Culture and the Contemporary Literary Renaissance, edited by Joanne Braxton and Andrée Nicola McLaughlin. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1990. Discusses the contribution Hopkins made to twentieth century African American literature.

Carby, Hazel V. Introduction to The Magazine Novels of Pauline Hopkins. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Provides a brief biographical sketch, focusing on her contributions to Colored American Magazine. Also examines Hopkins’ three magazine novels, emphasizing their political content.

Carby, Hazel V. Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. This work provides context for the writings of Hopkins. Also discusses her major fiction. Concludes that pan-Africanism informed her later work, particularly Of One Blood.

Otten, Thomas. “Pauline Hopkins and the Hidden Self of Race.” ELH: A Journal of English Literary History 59 (1992): 227-256. Deals with Of One Blood and discusses psychological theories prevalent at the time Hopkins wrote the novel. Often posits that Hopkins adopted William James’s view, that the hidden self was both conscious and personal, in order to link mysticism to long-held African American ideas concerning the mind.

Tate, Claudia. “Allegories of Black Female Desire: Or, Rereading Nineteenth-Century Sentimental Narratives of Black Female Authority.” In Changing Our Own Words: Essays on Criticism, Theory, and Writing by Black Women, edited by Cheryl Wall. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1989. Discusses nineteenth century African American attitudes toward marriage and freedom. Concludes that Hopkins’ texts are liberating.