OUR NIG: Sketches from the Life of a Free Black

Written by Harriet E. Wilson

-Characters: Written by Maggie Creswell

There are several main characters in Our Nig. The first one being Frado. Frado is the main character in the story and obviously the most developed. After Frado's mother decided to give her up, she went to live with the Bellmonts. Frado is a shy young black girl who can have a bit of an attitude when she needs to. There are a few instances in which Frado tries to get even with her master Mrs. Bellmont.

Mrs. Bellmont is the second main character in the book. Mrs. Bellmont is extremely racist toward Frado and makes her do a lot of difficult tasks that would be hard on a grown up, let alone a small child. Some would even call Mrs. Bellmont heartless.

Mrs. Bellmont has a daughter named Mary who is Mrs. Bellmont's little minion when it comes to terrorizing Frado.

There is also James, who is Mary's brother but he is quite the opposite of Mary and Mrs. Bellmont. With the help of his father, Mr. Bellmont, he does what he can to make Frado's life better. Mr. Bellmont and James let Frado come to them when she is sad or hurt and they try to keep Mrs. Bellmont and Mary from doing any harm to Frado.

And the last character is Aunt Abby, who also helps Frado. She takes Frado to weekly church gatherings to help her with religion and her relationship to God as well as helps Frado to learn to read and write. Aunt Abby is one of the good guys in the story, next to James and Mr. Bellmont.

-Plot Outline: Written by Daniel Syme
In Our Nig a young lady, Mag Smith, is pursued by a wealthy gentleman, who later on abandons her. Later Mag bears his child, which dies within a few weeks of birth, and is banished from the community. Mag lives in near isolation until a black man named Jim decides to ask her hand in a courtship which will lead to his proposal. After taking in the initial shock of an inter-racial marriage, Mag decides that she will marry Jim and later bears two of his children. Shortly after the birth of their children Jim dies of consumption. Mag, with the encouragement Jim's work partner Seth Shipley, leaves her oldest daughter Frado at the home of a middle-class white family, known as the Bellmonts’, and she is never heard from again.

As soon as Frado reaches the ripe age of seven, she becomes the Bellmonts' personal servant and is beaten on a daily basis for the most minimal mistake by Mrs. Bellmont. For years Frado suffers physical and mental brutality at the hands of Mrs. Bellmont and her daughter Mary. Frado’s only respite comes from her relationships with the family's male members, especially the oldest son James, who plans to take Frado to Baltimore as his own servant. However James becomes ill and is forced to return to his parents' home, where both James and Frado's health take a turn for the worse. As Frado grows older she puts an end to further abuse from Mrs. Bellmont by threatening her with a labor strike. Still Frado finds herself in a less than admirable situation and turns to books for comfort and once she turns eighteen, she will be freed.

Frado has very little means to support herself and is employed in a number of different professions, but her health condition forces her to accept public charity every now and again. Since Frado is such an independent person, she finds this hard to swallow. Eventually she perfects her needlework skills and makes straw hats with a white woman, who teaches Frado more about sewing and shares her library of books with her. Just as it seems like things are starting to settle down for the better, Frado's life is interrupted when a former slave named Samuel comes to town on the fugitive slave lecture circuit. Frado and Samuel become infatuated with each other and eventually marry, but Samuel often leaves his wife to lecture, and ends up leaving his family to run away to the sea. As soon as Frado gives birth to their son, Samuel returns for a short period of time only to leave them once more. Only this time he will not be back. Samuel ran away to New Orleans were he died of a terrible fever. The novel closes with an abridged account of Frado's adventures of escaping from slave-catchers and kidnappers and being further abused by “abolitionists” who "didn't want slaves at the South, nor niggers in their houses, North."

-Predictions/Outcome/Exposition: Written by Anna Miraglia
After having read the first have of the book we made a couple predictions. Our first prediction was that James would pass away in a chapter to come, considering he was ailing quickly. Our other prediction was that religion was going to play a huge role in her life. Both of our predictions proved to be true in the remaining chapters along with many more events that we hadn't expected to happen.
Sadly James did end up passing away along with another character that we hadn't expected, his younger sister and Frados' enemy Mary. The last chapter ends with the death of almost every character accept a few.
From Chapter 4 on Religion began to play a large part in Frados life. She began reading the bible secretly and even going to meetings with Aunt Abby. Throughout the last half of the book Frado is trying to build her relationship with God, and her attempt sometimes doomed her to punishments bestowed upon her by the ruthless Mrs. Bellmont

-Themes/Conflicts: Written by Colin Boley
It is important to note from the beginning that because this book is a Slave Narrative, it represents the racial conflict of slavery in the American South during the early 1800’s by its very nature. This greater conflict is alluded to and explored in the narrative through the ever-present conflict between Frado and Mrs. Bellmont. Mrs. Bellmont does all she can to ensure that her little slave has no happiness in life as well as in death. Fore another conflict in the story is that of Mrs. Bellmont forbidding Frado’s practice of Christianity; as taught to her by Aunt Abby and the beloved James. Which ties directly into an earlier conflict where Mrs. Bellmont does all she can to prevent Frado from attending Mary’s school with her. Mrs. Bellmont is a particularly nasty Mistress to Frado throughout the poor girl’s 18 year term of enslavement, and if it wasn’t for Aunt Abby, Jane, and the male Bellmonts Frado would never have lived to see her 18 year and therefore we would not have Harriet Wilson’s narrative to read and interpret today. This portrays the true nature of Mrs. Bellmont as a typical harsh Master/Mistress slave owner, and gives the entire story a sentimentality that tugs at the reader’s heart. Another important conflict is that of Frado being an invalid. This is a term that you don’t hear often nowadays that refers to someone who is unable to care for themselves on their own due to illness, weakness, lameness (in the disabled sense) , or injury.

Although Fardo’s invalidity is more of an internal conflict in Frado’s adult life, it is a direct result of her harsh Mistress and overwork as a child. Page 41;”During school time she had rest from Mrs. Bellmont’s tyranny. She was now nine years old; time, her mistress said, such privileges should cease”. This is a good example of Mrs. Bellmont’s overwhelming compassion and humanity towards Frado. Mary is the wicked shadow of her mother and when Frado got attention in school for being kind Mary had to respond; Page 33,”..she was self-willed, domineering; every day reported ‘mad’ by some of her companions. She availed herself of the only alternative, abuse and taunts, as they returned from school. This was not satisfactory; she wanted to use physical force ‘to subdue her,’ to ‘keep her down’”.

These conflicts tie closely into the overall themes of the book. The most notable of which is a battle of good slave master versus bad slave master (if there really can be such a thing as a good slave master). This is personified in the terrible relationship between Mrs. Bellmont and Frado and the endearing relationship Frado has with all the other Bellmonts—aside from Mary of course. Another poignant notion in the book that can be interpreted as a theme is that of Harriet Wilson’s sentimental appeal to the reader’s emotions. This Charges the reader with taking a stand against the indecency and natural crime of slavery. This is something that Wilson has in common with almost all other former slaves who went on to write narratives based on their experiences. We believe that the sentimentalism in this form of American Literature is apart something that is critical in maintaining the powerful ideals of justice, liberty, and truth that the United States is supposed to represent. In a way, this ties into Thoreau’s writings on Civil Disobedience, and how often the only way to ignite necessary change in masses is to force examples of it into their faces and wrench them from their comfort zones.
-Explanation of Writer's Style: Written by Joanna Smith