Harriet E. Wilson: The First African-American Woman Novelist

Historical Context and the Birth of a Writer. After years as a servant, seamstress, and indigent dependent on public assistance, Harriet E. Wilson turned to writing as "some experiment" aimed at "maintaining myself and my child" (Wilson 3). Using her meager funds to publish Our Nig in 1859, Wilson hoped that revenue from the book's sale would help improve her financial condition. As a fund-raising effort, Our Nig failed to earn enough money for her to care for her sickly son, who died within months of the book's publication. But the text that began as Wilson's dire "experiment" resulted in a new form of literary expression among black women: Harriet Wilson became the first African-American woman to publish an autobiographical novel.

Early Life and Parentage. The details of Wilson's early life, which she used as the basis of Our Nig, are, in the estimation of one 19th-century reader, "stranger than fiction" (Wilson 73). Born March 15, 1825, in Milford, New Hampshire, Wilson was the daughter of Joshua Green, a black cooper, and his wife, Margaret, a white washerwoman who married Green after being seduced and abandoned by another suitor. Though interracial unions were socially taboo—and legally prohibited in some parts of the United States well into the 20th century—the couple wed in New Hampshire and possibly had two children. Little is known about the unnamed sibling Wilson depicts in Our Nig. After her husband died, Wilson's mother attempted to lessen her responsibilities by leaving Harriet with a nearby family. She never returned to reclaim her daughter.

The Harsh Realities of Indentured Servitude. For 12 years young Harriet lived as an indentured servant in the household of Nehemiah and Rebecca Hayward, prominent Milford residents who owned a sizable homestead. As practiced throughout the North, the arrangement of indentured servitude bound orphans and poor children to work for a sponsoring family in exchange for room and board. Though servants sometimes were treated almost as members of the family they served, Wilson was subjected to continual physical and mental abuse aimed at reinforcing her subjection to her white employers. At the hands of Rebecca Hayward and her daughter, also named Rebecca, Wilson was so overworked and underfed that she suffered recurrent exhaustion and sickness. Ironically Mrs. Hayward was related to the famed Hutchinson Family Singers, a Milford quartet who toured the United States in the 1840s and 1850s to protest slavery (White xxvi). Unfortunately her cousins' songs of freedom seemed to have had little influence on Rebecca Hayward's treatment of her young biracial servant.

Education and Isolation. Despite harsh living conditions and her mistress's hostility, Wilson developed enduring relationships with other members of the family, some of whom encouraged her to go to school, read the Bible, and attend the local church. As the only student of color in her class, Wilson went to public school three months of the year—the minimum time that poor families were expected to provide schooling for their bound servants (Dudden 21). After three years Rebecca Hayward resentfully withdrew Wilson from classes. Yet Wilson informally continued her educational and religious instruction with the help of Sally Hayward Blanchard, Nehemiah Hayward's widowed sister, who shared the house with the family, and George Hayward, one of the family's adult sons. As Wilson would describe in Our Nig, she was deeply grieved when George passed away in April 1840. His death was one in a series of disturbing events that left Wilson isolated during her youth and young adulthood.

Post-Servitude Struggles. Wilson remained with the Haywards until she was 18, the legal age at which bound servants usually dissolved their relationships with their employers. The years after her release were physically, emotionally, and financially difficult for her. She attempted to support herself by working for other families in the Milford area, but her frequent illnesses often left her bedridden, unemployed, and, finally, dependent on the aid of local residents. After regaining her health, Wilson moved to Ware, Massachusetts, in 1850 to sew for a living. Her new friends in Massachusetts read the Bible and shared works of literature and history with her. Perhaps it was during this period that Wilson gained exposure to the kinds of literary works to which she later would allude in her own writing. The epigraphs that appear in Our Nig suggest that Wilson was well acquainted with classical fiction, Scripture, and popular 19th-century British and American poetry.

A Traumatic Marriage and Literary Determination. In October 1851 she wed Thomas Wilson, an African-American antislavery lecturer who claimed to be a fugitive slave. As she discovered after their marriage, however, her new husband never had been enslaved; he merely posed for "hungry abolitionists" who were eager to hear former slaves' first-person accounts (Wilson 71). Within months of her marriage, Wilson was again in financial trouble, as her husband proved an unstable provider who often left his wife to fend for herself. A poem published in Milford's local newspaper, the Farmer's Cabinet, seems to express Wilson's pitiable condition. In the poem "Fading Away," attributed to "Hattie"—the name by which Harriet Wilson was known for much of her adult life—the speaker attests to being in such poor health and emotional deterioration that she expects to die (Foreman xxiii). Appearing on December 6, 1851, the poem probably corresponds to the period of Wilson's pregnancy. During her husband's absence, she delivered her son, George Mason Wilson, in mid-1852 while living on a farm maintained for the homeless, just outside Milford.

After her husband died in 1853, Wilson was left as a single parent in a predicament similar to her own mother's. But rather than abandon her child, as her mother had, Wilson attempted to provide for her son by working as a seamstress, relying on charity, and selling hair care products. Finally, Wilson determined to write and sell a book that would allow her to capitalize on her traumatic life experiences: Our Nig; or, Sketches of a Free Black, in a Two-Story White House, North. Showing That Slavery's Shadows Fall Even There.

The Publication of Our Nig. Published in 1859, Our Nig appeared at the end of a decade of prolific production among black authors in the United States. African Americans had been penning poetry, essays, and autobiographies since the 18th century, but black fiction first flourished in the mid-19th century. In 1853 William Wells Brown's Clotel, or the President's Daughter became the first novel by an African American; Martin Delany, Frederick Douglass, and Frank J. Webb all published novels within the next six years after Brown. In 1859, the year that Wilson's novel saw print, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper's "The Two Offers" became one of the first black-authored short stories. It is unclear whether Wilson realized how her autobiographical novel fit among other African-American literary "firsts" during the decade. But her preface does address Our Nig to "my colored brethren universally," suggesting that she may have expected a black readership, especially among abolitionist circles. Wilson's novel seems not to have gained a large circulation, however, perhaps in part because many American readers were more engrossed with debates over slavery than they were with the concerns of freeborn blacks.

A New Chapter in Boston's Spiritualist Movement. Because of the dearth of information about Wilson, scholars long believed that she died in the 1860s, shortly after her book was published. However, recent research reveals that a few years after her seven-year-old son died in Milford in 1860, Wilson relocated to Boston, where she thrived as part of the growing spiritualist movement in the Northeast. Spiritualists believed in communicating with the dead through mesmerism, séances, and spiritual mediums. Practiced by a number of intellectuals and activists, spiritualism often challenged the American social order by promoting medical reform, women's rights, egalitarian marriages, and abolition (Carroll 4). Given her previous disappointments with her health, marriage, and racist treatment, Wilson may have been attracted to the spiritualist community because of its progressive beliefs. By 1867 Wilson was advertising her services as a spiritualist medium and lecturing throughout the Northeast and Midwest. Wilson married for a second time in 1870, making a short-lived match with John Gallatin Robinson, a young white man she met through their religious and professional affiliation. Often called "Dr. Hattie E. Wilson" by her listeners and clients, Wilson lived most of the rest of her life in Boston, where she found a welcoming community that shared with her the affection and respect she had lacked in her early life.

Later Life and Death. During the last three decades of her life, Wilson's status as a famed spiritualist eclipsed her role as an author. The Banner of Light, a spiritualist newspaper that regularly heralded Wilson as the famed "colored medium," makes no mention of Our Nig. She seems not to have returned to writing after publishing her single book. She did, however, lecture on the themes and social concerns, such as labor issues and child welfare, that she had raised previously in her autobiographical novel (Foreman xii). Wilson continued to appear at religious meetings well into her seventies. She was 75 when she died on June 28, 1900; she is buried in Quincy, Massachusetts.

Rediscovery and Literary Legacy. For over a century, both Harriet E. Wilson and Our Nig remained obscure names in American literary history. Early 20th-century critics who noticed Our Nig at all conjectured that its author, listed on the copyright as "Mrs. H. E. Wilson," was white. Only in the 1980s did the scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., verify Wilson's racial identity and confirm that she was one of the earliest African-American female autobiographical novelists. Wilson and her text have resurfaced to a welcoming revival, due in part to the increasing study of 19th-century American women's writing. Addressing issues of labor, class, single parenthood, Northern racism, and spiritual resilience, Wilson's work is an important contribution to 19th-century American prose.