Leaving the Good Mother: Frances E. W. Harper, Lydia Maria Child, and the Literary Politics of Reconstruction

Abstract

African American activist and poet Frances E. W. Harper gained attention in 1850s with her passionate antislavery poetry; end of war saw Harper publishing anew. But for a poet who carefully shaped responses to her work by unambiguously referencing current events, some of Harper's postwar publications seemed inscrutable. In 1869, Harper published Moses: A Story of Nile, a book containing two items: a forty-one-page eponymous poem that elaborately revises Exodus, and a four-page prose allegory, of Flowers, in which a rose tree magically transforms a garden's other flowers into roses. By 1870, book was in its third edition, and, according to William Still, Harper often read from when she spoke in public, to warmly positive reviews (779). Contemporary editions of Harper's work offer no context for understanding this seemingly strange pair of texts. has been reprinted in two anthologies, Complete Poems of Frances E. W. Harper and A Brighter Coming Day: A Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Reader, in both cases separated from of Flowers. In former, two pieces are separated by genre, and in Complete Poems, Mission is simply and silently excised. Critical readings have been equally puzzling. When is granted any attention, (1) most critics focus on identifying Moses--as Abraham Lincoln, John Brown, Harriet Tubman, or even as Harper herself. (2) What these divergent interpretations have in common is that they read poem as backward-looking. Harper's other writings intervene vigorously in here and now. Why, then, four years after legal emancipation, would Harper choose to adapt story of Moses leading Hebrews out of slavery? Consider that while name often serves as shorthand for leader, not all allusions to Moses make use of fact that he was adopted and that he became a great leader only after leaving his adoptive home. In other words, original biblical story inverts standard rags-to-riches narrative. Brevard S. Childs writes of Moses from Exodus, He is not an unknown child who becomes king. ... Moses is first 'exalted' and later returns to a position of humility by identifying with his people (The Book of Exodus 12). Moses chooses to leave Pharaoh's household to lead Hebrews because he is Hebrew. Harper's poem foregrounds this leave-taking: It takes up nearly half text. So while Harper is certainly making use of longstanding analogy between ancient Hebrews and American blacks, this choice suggests that Harper's subject is Reconstruction, historical moment in which she is writing. For newly freed slaves, a crucial question was whether their quest for civil, political, and social equality would receive white assistance. Many whites were not simply unhelpful--they stood defiantly in way. Eric Foner details wave of violence that raged almost unchecked in large parts of postwar South. ... [I]n vast majority of cases freedmen were victims and whites aggressors (119). Thus, I read Harper's as a declaration of independence not only from paternalistic former owners, but also from former friends and allies. Closely reading and clearly understanding its pairing with Mission suggests that Harper's interests lie not simply with figure of Moses, but with his two mothers. The mother whom Harper has Moses reject is a woman of a different race who sheltered him during infancy and childhood. If figure of Moses can be said to stand for oppressed blacks in an American context, analogue to Pharaoh's daughter is radical antislavery white woman, long a powerful voice for voiceless and suffering slave. Beginning in 1830s, many white feminists wholeheartedly adopted abolitionist cause. Indeed, as Ellen Carol DuBois writes, the development of American feminism was inseparable from unfolding of antislavery drama (31). …