Reading Frances Harper’s Iola Leroy as a Romance is Essential
By Christina Sigler (2024)
Iola Leroy or Shadows Uplifted by Frances E.W. Harper is undoubtedly a social commentary and was in fact the first novel by a black woman author to be read in its own time.[1] While tackling the inseparable issues of race and gender that the tragic mulatta heroine experienced, Harper chose to use romance, in conjunction with other genre tactics, to aid the social commentary she deemed necessary for this moment in American history after government-sponsored Reconstruction in 1877.[2] I will be using the text of Iola Leroy as my primary source to examine romance as a conduit for social commentary, namely the relationship between Iola, the titular tragic mulatta heroine, and Dr. Gresham, a white field doctor for the Union army that Iola works with as a nurse post-Emancipation Proclamation through the end of the Civil War. Iola Leroy or Shadows Uplifted uses a tragic mulatta character to address the issues of interracial marriage and love, redrawing a color line with a character who had involuntarily crossed it. First, I will introduce the character of the tragic mulatta, a popular archetype used to elicit sympathy in white audiences as well as black. Then I will analyze the progression of the romance between Iola and Dr. Gresham to determine that the novel cannot exist as a social commentary without romance as key parts of the social commentary depend on the romantic plot. As a contrast, the romance between Iola and Dr. Latimer demonstrates that Iola creates her own Happily Ever After (HEA) out of duty and love together, sticking staunchly to her principles of right and wrong as determined by her race and gender.
When this book was first published in 1892 it garnered immediate acclaim, earning the honor of being displayed at the 1893 World’s Fair.[3] It was reprinted until 1895, and then went through a period of obscurity until its next reprint in 1971.[4] In the early 20th century this work was largely forgotten until it was deemed worthy of study again in the 1980s.[5] Since this works’ reemergence there has been lively discussion about Iola’s worthiness as a figure for black advancement since her connection to the African-American race is “an imperceptible infusion of negro blood”[6] into her ancestry. However, scholars such as Johnson-Roullier and Elkins have worked to prove the essential nature of the tragic mulatta character in bringing this story to a wider audience.
The tragic mulatta trope is conventionally written as a mixed-race heroine who overtly struggles with the cards she has been dealt in life because of her race, and eventually succumbs to death in some form because she has no assigned place in a society so strictly divided by color.[7] This is compelling to both black and white audiences because she suffers on account of her race and class, and cannot overcome the barriers of either as her very existence is illegal due to anti-miscegenation laws.[8] The tragic mulatta identifies as both black and female, two experiences that have their own inherent tragedies, but because this character is portrayed as close to white as possible, her situation is one of “such utter powerlessness that it is nearly impossible to comprehend.”[9] Harper differentiates her tragic mulatta heroine by giving her the agency to overcome the difficulties of race and gender that she was dealt.[10] Iola as a tragic mulatta goes through the hardship, but also exemplifies goodness and loyalty to her family and community[11] instead of suffering alone. Harper’s revision of this trope makes Iola’s HEA against all odds all the more poignant.
The romance between Dr. Gresham and Iola begins in the field hospital where they are thrown together often as doctor and nurse. Gresham notices the natural affinity and tenacity Iola has for the job, treating all patients as tenderly as she would her own family. In this admiration for Iola’s nursing aptitude Dr. Gresham reveals his interest in Iola, “A faint flush rose to the cheek of Dr. Gresham as he smiled and said, ‘Oh! Come now, Colonel, can’t a man praise a woman without being in love with her?”[12] However his attitude changes very quickly once the issue of Iola’s race comes to his attention via the Colonel with whom he is discussing Iola. Gresham’s attitude goes from “beginning to think seriously of her”[13] to trying to put her out of his mind.[14]
The race issue puts Gresham in a difficult position considering the laws and public sentiment against interracial marriage at this time. From 1715 until the decision of Loving v. Virginia in 1967, North Carolina, where the romantic plot between Gresham and Iola takes place,[15] has “either discouraged or banned marriage between whites and non-whites” by law, and even prohibited domestic relaationships.[16] Harper makes clear the general white southern sentiment surrounding interracial relationships earlier in the novel while discussing Iola’s parents’ story (“But has not society the right to guard the purity of its blood by the rigid exclusion of an alien race?”[17]). However, these considerations are not enough to deter Dr. Gresham, as on the same page, “without any effort or consciousness on her part, his friendship ripened to love.”[18] Harper’s distinction that Dr. Gresham, a white man, falling in love with Iola, a mulatta woman was not intentional on Iola’s part rewrites the stereotype of interracial relationships at that time. The tragic mulatta stereotype and stereotypes of interracial relationships in general create a harmful narrative that the nonwhite party to the relationship is always at fault. There is always an element of temptation or seduction in the case of black and mixed-race women.[19] Other instances occur earlier in the novel where Iola is mentioned as virtuous because she did not allow herself to be taken advantage of while she was enslaved.[20] But this romantic plot, one where the characters are on equal footing and have developed a friendship, is what Harper uses to create a new narrative about how formerly enslaved women behave with white men. There are no notions of seduction, temptation, or even intentionality on Iola’s part, yet Dr. Gresham falls in love with her anyway.
Another teaching moment Harper creates with this romance comes when Dr. Gresham decides that his supposed duty to Iola supersedes the hardships an interracial marriage will put on them both. Gresham makes his decision, “after carefully revolving around the matter, he resolved to win her for his bride, bury her secret in his Northern home, and hide from his aristocratic relations all knowledge of her mournful past.”[21] Gresham’s proposed life would be almost an exact replica of the life Iola’s mother had lived before getting remanded to slavery.[22] For Iola, as an innocent child of an interracial marriage, this kind of relationship resulted in being sold into slavery. So, when Iola turns down Gresham’s proposal, citing the “barriers” between them that she “cannot pass”[23], she does it not only because of their difference in race, but because of his inability to understand the potential consequences of their union. Even though slavery had been abolished at this point, Iola brings up that one of their children could “show unmistakable signs of color,”[24] a reality which none of Gresham’s notions of “love, like faith” laughing “at impossibilities”[25] can overcome. At this point Harper draws a color line not based on the people’s merit, but on their ability to understand a traumatic experience. Gresham is not a suitable partner not only because he is white, but because his whiteness prevents him from understanding the defining period of her life thus far.
In this way Harper intertwines the one-sided romance of Dr. Gresham for Iola into the broader social commentary she makes in Iola Leroy. The points about interracial marriage are reinforced from Iola’s parents’ story, but the discussion of white people’s inability to understand the black experience at this time is essential to the overall point of the novel. Because of Iola’s experience being subjected to slavery even though by all accounts in the novel, she passes as white[26], this is not a situation where love can conquer all. This romance is an essential part of Harper’s statement of intersectionality as Iola’s experience as a woman allied with the black race informs her romantic prospects, as well as every other facet of her life.
Dr. Latimer, on the other hand, the one who ends up marrying Iola, is someone who shares similar experiences with her. Dr. Latimer is introduced to the story as a friend of Dr. Gresham’s[27] and to Iola as the doctor who will treat her mother.[28] Their romance begins with stirring intellectual conversation about the fate of their people, both having the shared experience of passing for white but choosing out of a sense of duty to live as black.[29][30] Both Iola and Latimer admire each other for their strong characters and dedication to black advancement. They share similar ideals of uplifting the race through education, want to improve public opinion about the potential of black people if given the proper resources, and strive to be those resources themselves. Dr. Latimer encourages Iola to do this by writing a book detailing her experiences,[31] and Iola vows to make the hero character based on Latimer.[32] Out of this mutual respect comes an opportunity for romance between them.
Harper is very clear in her description that Latimer and Iola’s budding romance is mutual, and the feelings of love grow with, not despite their sense of duty: “In their desire to help the race their hearts beat in loving unison. One grand and noble purpose was giving tone and color to their lives and strengthening the bonds of affection between them.”[33] Dr. Latimer is the right partner for Iola because the work and passions of their lives are the same, but this does not mean that their romance is borne out of convenience or duty to their race. Harper creates a narrative in which their shared duty to black advancement enhances their romance, and where Latimer actively courts Iola. Not only does he win her heart with poetry,[34] but he presents himself as someone who will care for her well-being in the long-term, prescribing for her “change of air, change of scene, and change of name.”[35] His declarations of love (“am I presumptuous in hoping that your love will become the crowning joy of my life?”[36]) are met with her plain confession, (“Frank, I love you.”[37]) In both work and affection for each other, Harper confirms that Dr. Latimer and Iola match. Through Iola’s second romantic prospect, Harper defies the tragic mulatta trope and creates a narrative where the tragic mulatta can have it all, pursuing her life’s work with a loving partner who has similar goals and understands her experience of giving up white privilege to work for black advancement post-slavery.
Harper uses the contrasting romantic plots of Gresham and Latimer to prove how integral Iola’s experience as a tragic mulatta heroine is to the outcome of her life, while rewriting the narrative that the tragic mulatta has to stay tragic. Even though Dr. Gresham is filled with admiration for Iola and is willing to suffer socially to be with her, he is wrong for Iola because “there were depths in her nature that Dr. Gresham had never fathomed; aspiration in her soul with which he had never mingled.”[38] This part of the social commentary, that the experiences of slavery cannot be assuaged with empathy, cannot be highlighted without the romantic plot of Dr. Gresham and Iola. This plot drives home the insurmountable differences that Harper perceives between white and newly freed black people at this time. The romance involving Dr. Latimer, however, is nurtured by the synergies between himself and Iola, as Harper writes “kindred hopes and tastes had knit their hearts.”[39] The same sense of duty that pushed Iola away from Gresham is the foundation for her HEA with Latimer, which she pursues in defiance of the prevailing tragic mulatta trope. Harper uses romance as a powerful tool in her social commentary, one that strengthens her position on intersectionality while also providing evidence about the limits of empathy.
Bibliography
Ammons, Elizabeth, and Frances Ellen Watkins [Harper]. “Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
(1825–1911).” Legacy 2, no. 2 (1985): 61–66. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25678939.
Brundage, W. Fitzhugh. “Reconstruction in the South.” The Journal of Civil War Era (2017): 7. Gale Academic OneFile (accessed April 30, 2024). https://link-gale-com.proxy.lib.duke.edu/apps/doc/A478698540/AONE?u=duke_perkins&sid=summon&xid=897c1b56.
Charlton, Jennie Sue. “Passing Fancies from the Victorian Age: Revisionary African American Romances in the Works of Harper, Chesnutt, Fauset, and Hurston.” Order No. 3040795, Howard University, 2001, https://login.proxy.lib.duke.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.proxy.lib.duke.edu/dissertations-theses/passing-fancies-victorian-age-revisionary-african/docview/304694780/se-2.
Elkins, Marilyn. “Reading Beyond the Conventions: A Look at Frances E. W. Harper’s ‘Iola
Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted.’” American Literary Realism, 1870-1910 22, no. 2 (1990): 44–53. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27746393.
Harper, Frances E. W. Iola Leroy or Shadows Uplifted. 2nd ed. Philadelphia, PA: Garrigues
Brothers, 1893.
“Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted by Frances E. W. Harper on Whitmore Rare Books.”
Whitmore Rare Books. Accessed March 21, 2024. https://www.whitmorerarebooks.com/pages/books/4027/frances-e-w-harper/iola-leroy-or-shadows-uplifted?soldItem=true.
Johnson-Roullier, Cyraina. “A Grammar of Modern Silence.” Angelaki 27, no. 3–4
(July 4, 2022): 49–74. https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2022.2093940.
Milteer, Warren E. “The Strategies of Forbidden Love: Family across Racial Boundaries in
Nineteenth-Century North Carolina.” Journal of Social History 47, no. 3 (2014): 612–26. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43305952.
Rosenthal, Debra J. “The White Blackbird: Miscegenation, Genre, and the Tragic Mulatta in
Howells, Harper, and the ‘Babes of Romance.’” Nineteenth-Century Literature 56, no. 4 (2002): 495–517. https://doi.org/10.1525/ncl.2002.56.4.495.
Siddiqa, A. Reimagining Black Womanhood: Frances E. W. Harper’s “New Negro
Woman”. Journal of African American Studies 26, 37–52 (2022).
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12111-022-09575-5.
Young, Elizabeth. “Warring Fictions: Iola Leroy and the Color of Gender.” American Literature
64, no. 2 (1992): 273–97. https://doi.org/10.2307/2927836.
[1] Ammons, Elizabeth, and Frances Ellen Watkins [Harper]. “Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825–1911).” Legacy 2, no. 2 (1985): 63. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25678939.
[2] W. Fitzhugh Brundage. “Reconstruction in the South.” The Journal of Civil War Era (2017): 7. Gale Academic OneFile (accessed April 30, 2024). https://link-gale-com.proxy.lib.duke.edu/apps/doc/A478698540/AONE?u=duke_perkins&sid=summon&xid=897c1b56.
[3] “Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted by Frances E. W. Harper on Whitmore Rare Books.” Whitmore Rare Books. https://www.whitmorerarebooks.com/pages/books/4027/frances-e-w-harper/iola-leroy-or-shadows-uplifted?soldItem=true.
[4] Marilyn Elkins “Reading Beyond the Conventions: A Look at Frances E. W. Harper’s ‘Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted.’” American Literary Realism, 1870-1910 22, no. 2 (1990): 45. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27746393.
[5] Ayesha Siddiqa. Reimagining Black Womanhood: Frances E. W. Harper’s “New Negro Woman”. Journal of African American Studies 26, 37 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12111-022-09575-5.
[6] Frances E. W. Harper, Iola Leroy or Shadows Uplifted. 2nd ed. (Philadelphia, PA: Garrigues Brothers, 1893), 114.
[7] Johnson-Roullier, Cyraina. “A Grammar of Modern Silence.” Angelaki 27, no. 3–4 (July 4, 2022): 57. https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2022.2093940.
[8] Johnson-Roullier, “A Grammar of Modern Silence”, 57.
[9] Johnson-Roullier, “A Grammar of Modern Silence”, 57.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Elkins, “Reading Beyond the Conventions”, 46.
[12] Harper, Iola Leroy, 56.
[13] Harper, Iola Leroy, 58.
[14] Harper, Iola Leroy, 59.
[15] Harper, Iola Leroy, 24.
[16] Warren E. Milteer. “The Strategies of Forbidden Love: Family across Racial Boundaries in Nineteenth-Century North Carolina.” Journal of Social History 47, no. 3 (2014): 612–26. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43305952.
[17] Harper, Iola Leroy, 66. Alfred Lorraine, the cousin of Iola’s father Eugene, discussing Eugene’s decision to manumit and marry a slave.
[18] Harper, Iola Leroy, 59.
[19] Johnson-Roullier, “A Grammar of Modern Silence”, 58.
[20] Harper, Iola Leroy, 38.
[21] Harper, Iola Leroy, 59-60.
[22] Harper, Iola Leroy, 87.
[23] Harper, Iola Leroy, 109.
[24] Harper, Iola Leroy, 117.
[25] Harper, Iola Leroy, 112.
[26] Harper, Iola Leroy, 100.
[27] Harper, Iola Leroy, 221.
[28] Harper, Iola Leroy, 241.
[29] Harper, Iola Leroy, 263.
[30] Harper, Iola Leroy, 265.
[31] Harper, Iola Leroy, 262.
[32] Harper, Iola Leroy, 263.
[33] Harper, Iola Leroy, 266.
[34] Harper, Iola Leroy, 268.
[35] Harper, Iola Leroy, 270.
[36] Harper, Iola Leroy, 271.
[37] Ibid.
[38] Harper, Iola Leroy, 271.
[39] Ibid.
