We were not sure about the author, Harriet E. Wilson that American literature readers were delayed to catch the precious meaning of the first African-American novel and the autobiography of the antebellum era’s freewoman in North, Forman and Pitts point out in the Introduction. Because she partly selected her life moments as writing and hints that may reveal her identity were not fully exposed, I think we couldn’t say who she was 100%.
To her identity and prestige in 1850s, Foreman (the editor of Our Nig, Penguin Classics) and Flynn suggest one debatable issue in an article on a website. Their new research revealed Hattie was “surprisingly successful entrepreneur”. She became a boss with selling hair-care products which restore and recover hair’s quality. According to the survey 1,500 advertisements were appeared in a score of News papers from New England to New Jersey. This fact made me much harder to follow Hattie’s picture with the novel as an autobiography which should reflect part of her true past and deliver a message for us politically or socially. Whatever it is, I thought the author should be on the same line with the narrator or the character in the autobiographical novel.
To me, Hattie was an image of indentured servant, abandoned human, and a woman couldn’t look the world same as her neighbors in the north and east of the U.S. But it is hard to take she changed her life hugely from the girl depicted in the novel (whipped and starved) to the first generation, black American businessman. She sold the products right after her work about writing the novel and the success at the time was not the literature but the commercial. But If I consider one of the themes in Our Nig, I think I can understand how she wrote before expanding the national level business. The severely damaged and ignored protagonist, Frado didn’t have any basic rights other close characters all had. It had to be same agony on the field of the business at that time as both critics assume in the article. She as an interracial must be hard to overcome the unfair barriers to sell the hair-care to white people.
I venture to guess partly, as an autobiographic novelist, she wrote the novel out of her exigency that could be black people’s limited life which is determined even before they were born, and the clear ceiling rigorously had blocked and distinguished freemen in North and South.
I gained some sources from this web site
www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/02/15/mrs_he_wilson_mogul/
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Not only was Harriet a businesswoman, she also became successful being a part of the Spiritual Movement (p x). She joined the association and participated in conventions and she spoke in front of people with the famous Jackson Davis. Harriet became a well-known activist for the Spiritual Movement. So not only did she become a businesswoman through selling hair products, she also gained respect from fellow members of the Spiritual Movement by devoting her time and energy in this organization. The convention newspaper, Banner of Light, reported Harriet multiple times, recognizing her for various accomplishments within the Movement. This may be hard to fathom, that she was beating and treated horribly as a child, but now she is making herself known and doing what she enjoyed.
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