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Chapter 20: Retribution
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Bondwoman’s Narrative, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Cruelties of Slavery
The Virtuous Woman’s Life
Religion and Hypocrisy
Race as a Social Construct
Enslavement as Gothic Horror
Summary
Analysis
Hannah doesn’t detail the rest of her flight to freedom, but she does tell readers—from the vantage point of years later—how things have turned out for her. She lives in New Jersey in a “neat little Cottage” and serves as a teacher in a school for “colored children.” Astonishingly, in New Jersey, she was at length reunited with her mother, whom the master sold to a plantation in Mississippi when Hannah was an infant. From there, Hannah’s mother ended up in Maryland, where she met a free Black man from New Jersey. They fell in love and fled to New Jersey and freedom together. The two women met as neighbors, and Hannah’s mother eventually recognized her daughter from elements of Hannah’s story and from Hannah’s birthmarks.
In the end, Bondwoman takes a clear turn from any pretense of realism. In contrast to the detailed way Hannah described the abuses she suffered at the hands of Mrs. Wright or her flight north with Jacob, in its final chapter the book opts for a straightforwardly happy ending. Hannah sees the hand of divine providence again in her reunion with her mother, and this occurrence suggests that she was right to trust her fate to God. But happy endings like this one are also a hallmark of the sentimental fiction popular in the mid-19th century and evidently well known to Hannah Bond.
Active
Themes
Having fled enslavement in order to avoid a forced marriage, in freedom Hannah eventually entered into one of her own free will, and her beloved and doting husband is a Methodist preacher. To make her happiness complete, she’s also been reunited with Charlotte and William, who live in a beautiful and flower-bedecked white cottage just next door. Hannah cannot find words enough to express her happiness and joy in her life of freedom.
Active
Themes
