Contending Forces by Pauline E. Hopkins
Pauline E. Hopkins's Contending Forces opens in Bermuda around 1790, where Charles Montfort, a slaveholding planter uneasy about Britain's gathering emancipation movement, resolves to relocate his household and his seven hundred slaves to New Bern, North Carolina, intending to free them gradually on his own terms while preserving his fortune. Against the pleas of his clergyman and friends, he sails with his wife Grace, their sons Charles Jr. and Jesse, and his slaves, settling on a plantation bought from Anson Pollock. Grace's beauty and rumored African ancestry, combined with suspicion that Montfort means to free his slaves, turn the neighborhood against the family. Pollock, who secretly covets Grace, conspires with the overseer Bill Sampson and the vengeful Hank Davis (whom Montfort had horsewhipped) to destroy Montfort under cover of the "committee on public safety." Montfort is murdered at breakfast; Grace is dragged out, flogged at the whipping post by Hank and Bill, and the estate is looted and burned. Grace is driven off with her sons and later drowns herself rather than live dishonored. Pollock takes Grace's maid and foster sister Lucy as his mistress, and the two orphaned boys are separated: Charles is sold to a sympathetic English mineralogist who promises to pursue the family's claims abroad, while Jesse remains Pollock's slave, eventually escaping north, marrying Elizabeth Whitfield in New Hampshire, and raising a family. The narrative then shifts to Boston decades later, following the Smith family—descendants of Jesse—headed by widowed Ma Smith and her children Will and Dora, who run a respectable lodging house. A new lodger, the beautiful and guarded Sappho Clark, becomes close friends with Dora and draws the quiet devotion of Will, while Dora is engaged to the ambitious, self-interested lawyer John Langley. Through lodging-house gatherings, church sewing-circles, and a lively fundraising fair rivalry between Mrs. Davis and Mrs. Robinson, Hopkins portrays Boston's Black community life, debates on race, virtue, and the mulatto question (voiced largely through the clubwoman Mrs. Willis), and the romance developing between Will and Sappho, who privately struggles with a hidden sorrow from her past that she will not disclose even to Dora. John Langley, learning of the Montfort family legend, begins privately scheming to trace it for possible profit. The section closes with a newspaper account of a fresh lynching in the South, introducing the case of Jim Jones, accused of assaulting a white woman and seized by a mob.
By Pauline E. Hopkins · First published 1900 · Genre: Historical Fiction, Anti-slavery Literature, Social Problem Novel · 22 chapters · 99,150 words
First lines
"The civility of no race can be perfect whilst another race is degraded. " / - Emerson
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. / - J. G. Whittier
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Genres
- Historical Fiction — The novel is firmly grounded in the early 1800s, with specific attention to the abolition of slavery, the Bermuda and American colonial contexts, and the historical events surrounding slavery and emancipation that form the backdrop and driving force of the narrative.
- Anti-slavery Literature — The novel's primary purpose is to expose and condemn the horrors of slavery through detailed depiction of violence, family destruction, and systemic oppression. It functions as abolitionist propaganda documenting slavery's moral bankruptcy.
- Social Problem Novel — The text explicitly engages with social issues of racial prejudice, discrimination against African Americans, and the systematic injustice faced by people of mixed or African descent in American society.
- African American Literature — Written by Pauline E. Hopkins, an African American author, the novel centers African American experiences, perspectives, and characters, contributing to the African American literary tradition.
Tags
slavery · abolition · emancipation · African American literature · racial identity · mixed race · Bermuda · North Carolina · Boston · American South · 1790s · post-Civil War
What this Textopian page supports
Contending Forces is listed on Textopian as a novel by Pauline E. Hopkins, dated 1900 CE.
This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.
- Work type: Novel
- Author: Pauline E. Hopkins
- Date: 1900 CE
- Language: English
- Genres: Historical Fiction, Anti-slavery Literature, Social Problem Novel, African American Literature, Domestic Fiction
- Length: 99,150 words
- Structure: 22 chapters, 1,373 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Fairly Easy (7th Grade)
Good citation fit
- Work identity for Contending Forces by Pauline E. Hopkins
- Canonical title URL and first readable passage URL
- Genre and topic classification from the Textopian catalog
- Readability and classroom-planning context
- Passage-specific claims should cite the exact /read/ URL for the relevant chapter or paragraph
Contents
- A Retrospect of the Past
- The Days "before the War"
- "Coming Events Cast their Shadows before"
- The Tragedy
- Ma Smith's Lodging-House
- Ma Smith's Lodging-House
- Friendship
- The Sewing-Circle
- "Love Took up the Harp of Life"
- The Fair
- The Fair
- A Colored Politician
- The American Colored League
- Luke Sawyer Speaks to the League
- Will Smith's Defense of his Race
- John Langley Consults Madam Frances
- The Canterbury Club Dinner
- What Easter Sunday Brought
- The Bitter Arrow
- Mother-Love
- After Many Days
- "so he Bringeth them into their Desired haven"