Contending Forces

Book 0: Rediscovered Classics

by Pauline E. Hopkins

Genres: American Romance; Romance

Synopsis

Sappho Clark—beautiful, mysterious, Southern—arrives in Boston to earn her living as a stenographer. She lodges with the Smith family and immediately becomes a source of fascination to the them: Ma Smith is impressed by Sappho’s financial independence; Dora Smith admires Sappho’s quiet self-possession; and Will Smith, Dora’s brother, falls madly in love with Sappho. But as Sappho enters the Smiths’ community, it becomes clear that her beauty is a lure to bad actors, including someone who entertains dark suspicions about her past. . .
 
A murder mystery, the story of a friendship, and a romance set in Boston’s thriving, politically active middle-class Black community, Contending Forces is an unjustly forgotten American classic.
 
 

Release date: October 3, 2023

Publisher: Union Square & Co.

Print pages: 464

Sample

Alyssa Cole

When asked by a white reader of Colored American Magazine why she wrote so many stories that involved miscegenation, Pauline E. Hopkins responded, “My stories are definitely planned to show the obstacles persistently placed in our paths by a dominant race to subjugate us spiritually.” This quote is key to understanding this brilliant, complicated author and the reason for her early triumphs, the tragic conclusion of her career, and her current omission from discussions of pioneering Black authors.

As one of several turn of the century African American literary successes, Hopkins used both her writing and her hard-won position of power to focus on the preservation of Black American history and the cultivation of Black literary talent. Yet despite her status as a celebrated playwright, actor, singer, journalist, historian, fiction author, and editor in chief, her legacy has been a decent into obscurity. When her work is remembered, there remains a tension between praise for all she achieved and critique of how her work depicted the Black experience.

I was unfamiliar with Hopkins’s oeuvre before writing this introduction but fascinated by the woman; as I learned more about her, I felt a budding sense of kinship. Her interests in American history and social justice mirrored my own, as did her belief that popular fiction, especially genres such as mystery and romance, were fertile ground for discussion of difficult societal topics. However, when I finally started reading Contending Forces, I was met with a novel that put forth ideas that were completely at odds with what I had expected; I felt deceived. Many of the characters are white-passing or presenting; Hopkins’s characters and narrator espouse prescriptivist ideas of women’s roles in the community; and ideas of assimilation and respectability are placed alongside those of resistance in the face of white supremacy, as if both are viable options.

I wasn’t alone in thinking so. In her piece “‘So Strangely Interwoven’: The Property of Inheritance, Race, and Sexual Morality in Pauline E. Hopkins’s Contending Forces” Julie Cary Nerad states that “Critics also read the novel as implicitly arguing an assimilationist politics because her Black characters—many of whom are ‘mulatto’—are too physically and socially ‘white.’” In the afterword to the 1968 reprint of Contending Forces, Gwendolyn Brooks writes a harsher rebuke: “Pauline Hopkins consistently proves herself a continuing slave, despite little bursts of righteous heat.”

I understand Brooks’s assessment—Contending Forces is a contradictory novel that is at odds with itself from paragraph to paragraph, at times praising assimilation and tepid response to racism, while at other times uplifting ideas of Black militancy and resistance. It depicts white people as avaricious and doomed to destroy themselves through the innate violence they dole out to others and amongst themselves, while also presenting proximity to whiteness, in both looks and social mores and through family or romance, as something praiseworthy. The novel is also marked by firm ideas about the role of the Black woman as a symbol of virtue in her community. A women’s meeting held in Contending Forces covers the subject “The place which the virtuous woman occupies in upbuilding a race,” a topic Hopkins touched on in many of her works of fiction, touting the belief that women should stay away from politics and business, and that a husband, children, and well-kept home being the pinnacle of success.

Hopkins’s legacy becomes more complex when you realize her own story was the exact opposite of the most criticized aspects of her own work. She, through her work as Editor-in-Chief of Colored American Magazine, was deeply involved in both politics and business. She never married, and instead devoted her life to her literary work and community uplift. She directly told Black readers that though they might find love anywhere, they should marry within the Black community, and her refusal to defer to white people killed her career.

Her fiction was completely unlike her own lived experience, and from that knowledge we can dig deeper into her motivations in this novel and her other works.

Despite its flaws, Contending Forces provides both an elegant example of how early Black women writers used their art as protest to stake their claim, and their worth, in a world that would deny them even the concept of womanhood.

Though it isn’t a romance like those found on the shelves today, it’s in the style of the sentimental novel, the hugely popular books that were more akin to women’s fiction. Like their modern equivalents, the books sold extremely well, with their dedicated readers expecting certain plot devices, character archetypes, and plot beats, which may also explain and reframe some of Hopkins’s choices.

The publishing market, then as now, was majority white works marketed to majority white readers. Black readers of the time would have of course been reading the same books, and Hopkins’s novel is a multi-leveled response to the publishing landscape, and the landscape of an America in the midst of a failing Reconstruction era.

Her characters’ proximity to, or actual, whiteness is a slight of the hand and, occasionally, a thumb of the nose to both her white readership and those who opposed her activism. These white-passing characters, who looked like the typical sentimental novel character and were placed in similar, highly dramatic situations, tricked a white populace used to reading only about themselves to sympathize with Black characters, while also underlining the fact that many of said readers were “one drop”—or one accusation—away from life as a Black person. Black readers, who were her target audience, would inherently understand the Black dynamics and experiences she wrote of, even if the characters didn’t look like them.

Sentimental novels, as a genre, upheld the ideals of the Victorian cult of femininity: purity, piety, submissiveness, and domesticity. There is an emphasis on women’s place being in the home, on the importance of marriage, and family being of the utmost importance, in a way that is decidedly retrograde when read now. At the time—and lingering today in the form of misogynoir—Black women were not cloaked by the “protection” of womanhood, but were seen as “jezebels” with loose sexual morals. Femininity was not a virtue bestowed upon us. Though the cult of womanhood is, by today’s standards, counterintuitive to the idea of feminism, Hopkins uses it to subvert widespread, and dangerous, stereotypes about Black women; the kinds of ideas that meant assault against a Black woman by a white man was normal and even encouraged, but a Black man who looked at a white woman the wrong way might encounter a lynch mob. By presenting Black women as akin to white women in her fiction—sometimes so much so as to be indiscernible from them—Hopkins could ease readers into the realities of Black American life, and white American evils.

This same slights of hand make Hopkins’s repudiation of white supremacy difficult to discern. There is a constant marveling over the beauty and handsomeness of fair-skinned Black characters, and those with “regular” (aka white) features, but, as is typical of her work, there is also an underlying critique. Whiteness is presented not only as an aspirational level of power and success, but a vicious self-policing social class that requires lockstep thinking and violently ejects, or eradicates, those who they even suspect of making a misstep. The “villain” in Contending Forces resembles a white man, which is presented as a good trait, but he also displays the reckless greed that she straightforwardly lays out as a marker of that race—which in her stories, always leads to a character’s downfall. Hopkins puts forth that if miscegenation/amalgamation “betters” the Black race by diluting it with whiteness, as some earnestly proposed, it also imparts the wickedness of slave owners as well. This idea, like many of the things I found frustrating while reading the book, seems to be responsive rather than prescriptive.

Contending Forces originally appeared in a serialized format within the pages of the Colored American Magazine, tucked between historical biographies of detailing Black excellence and Reconstruction era discussions of Black life in America. The debates and arguments of the day, such as whether Black Americans should participate in politics and invoke the wrath of white people or lead quiet, separate, and unequal lives provide nuance to decisions she made in her fiction. Hopkins was in conversation with specific aspects of her time, and, if not always aligning with modern sensibilities or even her contemporaries, was seemingly more progressive than appears at first glance. Although she did have strong leanings toward respectability politics, she was also a fierce advocate for preserving Black history, fostering Black literature, and speaking out against injustice. She was ousted from her position as editor-in-chief, in part, because she was not conciliatory enough to the white readers and funders of the magazine who preferred she move on from discussions of inequality.

Her career never recovered.

By the time of her tragic death by fire, she was working as a stenographer, relatively unknown despite her rich literary legacy. Forty-two years would pass before her contributions to Black literature were reintroduced to the world by Ann Allen Shockley’s 1972 biographical essay “Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins: A Biographical Excursion into Obscurity.” It isn’t lost on me that Hopkins’s achievements were resurrected and preserved by the exact type of effort she herself put forth to chronicle and preserve Black history.

Hopkins will always be a fascinating and contentious literary figure, and because so much of her history has been lost, we may never truly know her in the same way we do other literary greats. Perhaps the most accurate description of her can be found in this short biography, presumably written by her own hand:

Pauline Hopkins has struggled to the position she now holds in the same fashion that all Northern colored women have to struggle—through hardships, disappointments, and with very little encouragement. What she has accomplished has been done by a grim determination to “stick at it,” even though failure might await her at the end.

ALYSSA COLE is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of romance, thrillers, and graphic novels. Her Civil War-set espionage romance An Extraordinary Union was the American Library Association’s RUSA Best Romance for 2018; her contemporary rom-com A Princess in Theory was one of the New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2018; and her debut thriller When No One Is Watching was the winner of the 2021 Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original. Her books have received critical acclaim from the Washington Post, Library Journal, Kirkus, BuzzFeed, Book Riot, Entertainment Weekly, and various other outlets. She lives in France with her husband and their menagerie of animals.

In giving this little romance expression in print, I am not actuated by a desire for notoriety or for profit, but to do all that I can in an humble way to raise the stigma of degradation from my race.

While I make no apology for my somewhat abrupt and daring venture within the wide field of romantic literature, I ask the kind indulgence of the generous public for the many crudities which I know appear in the work, and their approval of whatever may impress them as being of value to the Negro race and to the world at large.

The colored race has historians, lecturers, ministers, poets, judges and lawyers—men of brilliant intellects who have arrested the favorable attention of this busy, energetic nation. But, after all, it is the simple, homely tale, unassumingly told, which cements the bond of brotherhood among all classes and all complexions.

Fiction is of great value to any people as a preserver of manners and customs—religious, political and social. It is a record of growth and development from generation to generation. No one will do this for us; we must ourselves develop the men and women who will faithfully portray the inmost thoughts and feelings of the Negro with all the fire and romance which lie dormant in our history, and, as yet, unrecognized by writers of the Anglo-Saxon race.

The incidents portrayed in the early chapters of the book actually occurred. Ample proof of this may be found in the archives of the courthouse at Newberne, N. C., and at the national seat of government, Washington, D. C.

In these days of mob violence, when lynch-law is raising its head like a venomous monster, more particularly in the southern portion of the great American republic, the retrospective mind will dwell upon the history of the past, seeking there a solution of these monstrous outbreaks under a government founded upon the greatest and brightest of principles for the elevation of mankind. While we ponder the philosophy of cause and effect, the world is horrified by a fresh outbreak, and the shocked mind wonders that in this—the brightest epoch of the Christian era—such things are.

Mob-law is nothing new. Southern sentiment has not been changed; the old ideas close in analogy to the spirit of the buccaneers, who formed in many instances the first settlers of the Southland, still prevail, and break forth clothed in new forms to force the whole republic to an acceptance of its principles.

“Rule or ruin” is the motto which is committing the most beautiful portion of our glorious country to a cruel revival of piratical methods; and, finally, to the introduction of Anarchy. Is this not so? Let us compare the happenings of one hundred—two hundred years ago, with those of today. The difference between then and now, if any there be, is so slight as to be scarcely worth mentioning. The atrocity of the acts committed one hundred years ago are duplicated today, when slavery is supposed no longer to exist.

I have tried to tell an impartial story, leaving it to the reader to draw conclusions. I have tried to portray our hard struggles here in the North to obtain a respectable living and a partial education. I have presented both sides of the dark picture—lynching and concubinage—truthfully and without vituperation, pleading for that justice of heart and mind for my people which the Anglo-Saxon in America never withholds from suffering humanity.

In Chapter XIII. I have used for the address of the Hon. Herbert Clapp the statements and accusations made against the Negro by ex-Governor Northen of Georgia, in his memorable address before the Congregational Club at Tremont Temple, Boston, Mass., May 22, 1899. In Chapter XV. I have made Will Smith’s argument in answer to the Hon. Herbert Clapp a combination of the best points made by well-known public speakers in the United States—white and black—in defense of the Negro. I feel my own deficiencies too strongly to attempt original composition on this subject at this crisis in the history of the Negro in the United States. I have introduced enough of the exquisitely droll humor peculiar to the Negro (a work like this would not be complete without it) to give a bright touch to an otherwise gruesome subject.

The Author.

We wait beneath the furnace-blast

The pangs of transformation;

Not painlessly doth God recast

And mould anew the nation.

Hot burns the fire

Where wrongs expire;

Nor spares the hand

That from the land

Uproots the ancient evil.

—Whittier.

In the early part of the year 1800 the agitation of the inhabitants of Great Britain over the increasing horrors of the slave trade carried on in the West Indian possessions of the Empire was about reaching a climax. Every day the terrible things done to slaves were becoming public talk, until the best English humanitarians, searching for light upon the subject, became sick at heart over the discoveries that they made and were led to declare the principle: “The air of England is too pure for any slave to breathe.”

To go back a little way in the romantic history of the emancipation of the slaves in the islands will not take much time, and will, I hope, be as instructive as interesting. Tales of the abuses of the slaves, with all the sickening details, had reached the Quaker community as early as 1783, and that tenderhearted people looked about themselves to see what steps they could take to ameliorate the condition of the Negroes in the West Indies, and to discourage the continuation of the trade along the African coast.

Thomas Clarkson, a student at Cambridge, was drawn into writing a prize essay on the subject, and became so interested that he allied himself with the Quakers and investigated the subject for himself, thereby confirming his own belief, “that Providence had never made that to be wise that was immoral; and that the slave trade was as impolitic as it was unjust.”

After strenuous efforts by Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox, Parliament became interested and instituted an inquiry into the abuses of the slave trade. Finally, Mr. Wilberforce was drawn into the controversy, and for sixteen years waged an incessant warfare against the planters, meeting with defeat in his plans for ten consecutive years; but finally, in 1807, he was successful, and the slave trade was abolished.

These assailants of the slave trade had promised not to try to abolish slavery; but in a short time they learned that the trade was still carried on in ships sailing under the protection of false flags. Tales of the cruelties practiced upon the helpless chattels were continually reaching the ears of the British public, some of them such as to sicken the most cold-hearted and indifferent. For instance: causing a child to whip his mother until the blood ran; if a slave looked his master in the face, his limbs were broken; women in the first stages of their accouchement, upon refusing to work, were placed in the treadmill, where terrible things happened, too dreadful to relate.

Through the efforts of Granville Sharpe, the chairman of the London committee, Lord Stanley, minister of the colonies, introduced into the House of Commons his bill for emancipation.

Lord Stanley’s bill proposed gradual emancipation, and was the best thing those men of wisdom could devise. Earnestly devoted to their task, they sought to wipe from the fair escutcheon of the Empire the awful blot which was upon it. By the adoption of the bill Great Britain not only liberated a people from the cruelties of their masters, but at the same time took an important step forward in the onward march of progress, which the most enlightened nations are unconsciously forced to make by the great law of advancement; “for the civility of no race can be perfect whilst another race is degraded.”

In this bill of gradual emancipation certain conditions were proposed. All slaves were entitled to be known as apprenticed laborers, and to acquire thereby all the rights and privileges of freemen. “These conditions were that praedials should owe three-fourths of the profits of their labors to their masters for six years, and the non-praedials for four years. The other fourth of the apprentice’s time was to be his own, which he might sell to his master or to other persons; and at the end of the term of years fixed, he should be free.”

In the winter of 1790, when these important changes in the life of the Negro in the West Indies were pending, many planters were following the course of events with great anxiety. Many feared that in the end their slaves would be taken from them without recompense, and thereby render them and their families destitute. Among these planters was the family of Charles Montfort, of the island of Bermuda.

Bermuda’s fifteen square miles of area lays six hundred miles from the nearest American coast. Delightful is this land, formed from coral reefs, flat and fertile, which to the eye appears as but a pin point upon the ocean’s broad bosom, one of “a thousand islands in a tropic sea.”

Once Bermuda was second only to Virginia in its importance as a British colony; once it held the carrying trade of the New World; once was known as the “Gibraltar of the Atlantic,” although its history has been that of a simple and peaceful people. Its importance to the mother country as a military and naval station has drawn the paternal bonds of interest closer as the years have flown by. Indeed, Great Britain has been kind to the colonists of this favored island from its infancy, sheltering and shielding them so carefully that the iron hand of the master has never shown beneath the velvet glove. So Bermuda has always been intensely British—intensely loyal. Today, at the beginning of the new century, Bermuda presents itself, outside of its importance as a military station for a great power, as a vast sanatorium for the benefit of invalids. A temperate climate, limpid rivers, the balmy fragrance and freshness of the air, no winter—nature changing only in the tints of its foliage—have contributed to its renown as a health-giving region; and thus Shakespeare’s magic island of Prospero and Miranda has become, indeed, to the traveler

The spot of earth uncursed,

To show how all things were created first.

Mr. Montfort was the owner of about seven hundred slaves. He was well known as an exporter of tobacco, sugar, coffee, onions and other products so easily grown in that salubrious climate, from which he received large returns. He was neither a cruel man, nor an avaricious one; but like all men in commercial life, or traders doing business in their own productions, he lost sight of the individual right or wrong of the matter, or we might say with more truth, that he perverted right to be what was conducive to his own interests, and felt that by owning slaves he did no man a wrong, since it was the common practice of those all about him, and he had been accustomed to this peculiar institution all his life.

Indeed, slavery never reached its lowest depths in this beautiful island; but a desire for England’s honor and greatness had become a passion with the inhabitants, and restrained the planters from committing the ferocious acts of brutality so commonly practiced by the Spaniards. In many cases African blood had become diluted from amalgamation with the higher race, and many of these “colored” people became rich planters or business men (themselves owning slaves) through the favors heaped upon them by their white parents. This being the case, there might even have been a strain of African blood polluting the fair stream of Montfort’s vitality, or even his wife’s, which fact would not have caused him one instant’s uneasiness. Moreover, he was a good master, and felt that while he housed his slaves well, fed them with the best of food suited to their occupations and the climate, and did not cruelly beat them, they fared better with him than they would have with another, perhaps, or even if they held property themselves.

The speeches of Mr. Pitt, Mr. Burke and others, together with the general trend of public sentiment as expressed through the medium of the British press, had now begun to make an impression upon some of the more humane of the planters on this island, and among them was Mr. Montfort. Uneasiness now took the place of his former security; thought would obtrude itself upon him, and in the quiet hours of the night this man fought out the battle which conscience waged within him, and right prevailed to the extent of his deciding that he would free his slaves, but in his own way. He determined to leave Bermuda, and after settling in some other land, he would gradually free his slaves without impoverishing himself; bestow on each one a piece of land, and finally, with easy conscien. . .