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Harriet Wilson, Our Nig
1. What effect is created by the blending of fiction and autobiography? How is this double effect created? Can you discern a progression?
2. What practical or political considerations might have motivated Harriet Wilson to cast her autobiography as fiction? What were some advantages of the fictional form which she exploits?
3. What may have been some reasons for the book's limited contemporary success on its appearance in 1859?
4. What are features of the book's style? Do you find it readable? Which aspects of the protagonist's experiences are given relatively full or limited treatment?
5. What seem to have been some of its author's motivations for writing this book? What social message does it convey?
6. What are some unusual features of the gender roles in the book, as exemplified by the Bellmont family? Does the author portray male characters more favorably than women?
7. Are aspects of her story surprising? What does it indicate about the treatment of poor orphans in the New England of the time? The treatment of free black persons?
8. How is Meg Smith represented? Do you think the author presents the mother who had deserted her in an objective manner? How may racial attitudes have affected her parents' actions? How does Wilson portray her father?
9. What seem to have been the Bellmont's motives in keeping Frado? Why do you think Mr. Bellmont and his sons were unwilling/unable to protect Frado from repeated beatings? What effect do the latter seem to have had on their victim?
10. How is religion presented in this book? Can you see parallels between its role here and in other accounts we have read, such as the Narrative of Mary Prince? How is Frado's religious conversion related to other aspects of her development and attachments?
11. What may have been unconventional aspects of Frado's character and attitudes, as the author presents them? On what occasions, for example, does she permit herself the expression of hostility? What violent act did she consider committing?
12. In what contexts does Wilson use African-American vernacular English, and what effect does this have?
13. What is added to our knowledge of the circumstances of publication by the appended letters and documents? Why may these have been needed for her contemporary audience?
14. What purpose is served by the novel's blunt title? Why does the title describe its subject as "a Free Black," and do you think this title is partly ironic? Do you think Our Nig is an appropriate title for this text?
15. How does the author convey Frado's beliefs about racism and its effects on her?
16. What is added to the novel by its final chapter? What form of closure does this add to the narrative? Why do you think the account of her life after escaping the Bellmonts may have been rushed? What are some of the sad features of her life after leaving the Bellmonts?
17. How would you compare Wilson's account with those of Wedderburn, Prince, Douglass or Jacob? Did their authors have any common experiences? What depths of psychology do their accounts probe? How do nineteenth-century men's and women's accounts of oppression seem to differ?