31 pages • 1 hour read
Harriet E. WilsonOur Nig: Sketches from the Life of a Free Black
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1859A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaChapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
The novel begins with the fall of Mag Smith, a poor white woman who had come into disgrace in the village of Singleton, New Hampshire when she had premarital relations with a man and became pregnant with his child. The child died only weeks into her infancy, leading Mag to exclaim in relief, “God be thanked […] no one can taunt her with my ruin” (5). Shunned by the town, Mag is unable to find consistent work.
After several years of toiling through favors from old acquaintances and odd jobs, a kind black man named Jim notices her suffering. He offers to help her if no one else will. This warms Mag’s heart. When Jim thinks about Mag’s situation, he muses aloud, “By golly! I wish she’d marry me” (7). Peter Greene, Jim’s boarder, overhears him thinking aloud and asks if he is thinking about marrying Mag. Jim tells him to mind his own business, but by accidentally disclosing his musing, he becomes more attached to the idea of marrying Mag. When he sees Mag the following weekend, he suggests that they get married so that he could help alleviate some of her suffering from infrequent employment. Mag is shocked at his proposal. Jim insists that as she has been shunned by her own white people, he hopes that she can accept being with a black man who genuinely cares for her. Mag acknowledges that her options are limited, as she can only “beg [her] living, or get it from [Jim]” (9). She agrees to his proposal and they eventually marry.
Chapter 2 Summary
During the first few years of marriage, Jim and Mag are able to sustain a home and each other. Eventually, Mag gives birth to two daughters. However, Jim becomes sick with tuberculosis, leaving Mag to care for him and their two children alone. When Jim passes away, Mag’s struggles to survive returns. She leaves the home that they shared to return to the hovel where she once lived, bringing her two children with her.
Seth Shipley, one of Jim’s former business partners, moves in with Mag. With their combined wages, they manage to sustain the family for a while. However, this does not last, leading Seth to propose that they move, in order look for work elsewhere. He says that it’s too difficult to survive with two children under their care during this move; they will have to give one of the children away. Mag argues that no one will want to take in a mixed-race child. Seth insists that they give away her 6-year old child, Frado. When Seth informs Frado that they will be moving, the young child protests and runs away. Thinking that she will return eventually, Mag and Seth pack their home in preparation for the move. When Frado does not return at night, they worry. The next day, Frado is returned to them. It’s revealed that a kind stranger had found Frado and her young friend lost in a forest, miles away from home. They had taken a walk and lost track of direction. Frado had comforted her friend during the night. Relieved by Frado’s return, Mag decides to proceed ahead with the plan to give her daughter away.
Mag and Seth take Frado to the Bellmonts, an old couple that is notorious for having trouble keeping consistent help. Mag asks Mrs. Bellmont if she can leave Frado with her while she goes to her job for the day. She lies and says that she will return to retrieve Frado by the end of the day. Mrs. Bellmont agrees to take Frado in. Mag and Seth do not return for Frado.
Chapter 3 Summary
When it becomes apparent that Mag has left Frado behind in the Bellmonts’ care, the family argue over what to do about the child. Mrs. Bellmont’s daughter, Mary, insists that Frado be sent to the County House to be dealt with by the state. Jack, the son, suggests they keep her in their care. The other daughter, Jane, offers no opinion. While Frado is too young for performing much of the housework, Mrs. Bellmont reasons that the young girl has time to learn. She believes that grooming Frado for housework at an early age will make her a more reliable servant than the hired help that have failed her before. Mrs. Bellmont decides that Frado can stay in an unfinished small room above the kitchen.
Frado’s work day begins by feeding the hens, followed by the cows in the afternoon. She is not allowed to eat at the dining table with the rest of the family. When she cries or performs her work incorrectly, she is abused by Mrs. Bellmont. Each day, Frado’s responsibilities increase.
Eventually, the Bellmonts talk about sending Frado to school. While Mrs. Bellmont and Mary refuse to allow Frado to attend school, the rest of the family insists on her education. Mr. Bellmont makes the final decision that Frado should be educated. When Frado begins to attend school, Mary is deeply ashamed of being seen with a black girl and keeps her distance. She delights in her classmates’ taunts and abuse towards Frado for her race. Miss Marsh, the schoolteacher, intervenes and reminds students to treat Frado with kindness. This ends their abuse, much to Mary’s discontent. Eventually, Frado’s controversial status as a mixed-race girl endears her to her classmates.
Enraged by Frado’s newfound ease at school, Mary starts to abuse Frado whenever she can. Seeing a plank across a dangerous stream one day, she forces Frado to cross it. When Frado refuses, Mary starts to push her, resulting in her stumbling into the stream herself. When Mary returns home, she lies to Mrs. Bellmont and says that Frado pushed her into the stream. Mr. Bellmont does not agree with Mary’s story but recuses himself from decision over Frado’s punishment by tending to the cows. When Mr. Bellmont leaves, Mrs. Bellmont and Mary beat Frado and fit a block of wood into her mouth as punishment. When Jack returns home to discover what they have done to Frado, he states that there are several student witnesses that saw Mary try to push Frado into the stream. Mrs. Bellmont refuses to believe Jack, leading to an argument where he storms off to comfort Frado and to release the wood block from her mouth.
Back at school, Frado develops a mischievous spirit as a prankster. One day before class, she fills a teacher’s drawer with cigar smoke. When the teacher opens the drawer, he screams, thinking the desk is on fire. The students laugh, having seen Frado set up the prank. She manages to escape getting in trouble for her antics in school.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
The novel opens with the plight of Frado’s mother, Mag Smith, whose poverty and loss of virtue have made her an outcast among her white community. When Jim makes a case for Mag’s hand in marriage, he implies that her ostracization from white society has lowered her social status so that her position is now equal to black people like himself. Their equal status outside of white society suggests that Mag has a choice to either continue to endear herself to white society, which has abandoned her, or be with Jim, who promises to support her. Given the tensions of interracial relationships of the time, Mag’s choice to be with Jim places her further in the social periphery.
As part of Jim’s reasoning as to why Mag should marry him, he employs the racialized rhetoric that correlates blackness with evil and whiteness with good. He argues that “I’s black outside, I know, but I’s got a white heart inside” (9), implying that despite his blackness, he possesses a “white heart” that represents goodness. He further offers her a choice, “Which you rather have, a black heart in a white skin, or a white heart in a black one?” (9). The choice implicates the white community that has abandoned Mag, suggesting that despite their whiteness, they possess a “black heart” that represents ill nature. This assignment of virtue to whiteness and blackness has religious undertones, which reverberates through the social valuation system of race during the antebellum period.
This distribution of social worth becomes especially complicated when it comes to their child Frado’s mixed-race identity. While she is recognizably black, her light complexion offers her the social mobility that a darker-skinned black person would not be afforded. When Mag and Seth try to decide which of the children to leave behind, Seth selects Frado. He tells Mag that Frado is “pretty, if she is yours, and white folks’ll say so” (11). It is suggested here that Frado resembles Mag in complexion and that her fairness will make her more amenable to white society. However, the Bellmonts’ cruel treatment of Frado seems to suggest otherwise. While Jack proposes that the family take Frado into their care because she is “not very black” (16), Mrs. Bellmont uses Frado’s blackness as an excuse to apply arduous standards for the young child’s labor in the household. She knows that she can get away with harsher treatment of Frado due to her blackness, which she has been unable to do with white help in the past. In deciding where Frado will sleep in the house, Mrs. Bellmont insists on a small and dark chamber above the kitchen, claiming that the space is “good enough for a nigger” (16). In these instances, Frado’s light complexion makes her a more socially-acceptable figure in the household, but her blackness serves a reminder to the Bellmonts of the child’s social worth, which helps justify their cruel treatment of her.
