Space and Place in Wilson's Our Nig

Larisa and I talk a lot about spatial analysis, and I guess I was thinking about it while I was reading Our Nig, because I found myself tracking descriptions of the space, trying to make meaning of the setting. There’s a lot going on in the novel; overall depictions and conceptions of “home” are challenged, and race and sexuality most certainly complicate a woman’s role in the domestic sphere. Mag Smith, Frado’s mother, lives in a home “contaminated by the publicity of her fall,” directly connecting domestic space with a woman’s virtue. Frado, codified in the novel as black, is held captive in the home (it would be interesting to read this novel as a captivity narrative…) and finds freedom in outside spaces: the barn, the woodpile, the hill with the sheep. Characters, too, are described in terms of space; Jack is Frado’s “shelter” (67). But I’m going to resist delving into those topics in favor for a chance to explore Frado’s little room at the Bellmont estate, beginning with the kitchen.

The kitchen is one of Frado’s primary work spaces, and thus also a place of much punishment—a rawhide is “always at hand in the kitchen” (30). It’s described as a space occupied by all members of the household, and characters are constantly entering and exiting while Frado toils. Mrs. Bellmont, especially, marks the kitchen as a space to conduct “housekeeping” and harshly monitor Frado: "It is impossible to give an impression of the manifest enjoyment of Mrs. B in these kitchen scenes. It was her favorite exercise to enter the apartment nosily, vociferate orders, give a few sudden blows to quicken Nig’s pace, then return to the sitting room with such a satisfied expression, congratulating herself upon her thorough house-keeping qualities” (66). The kitchen is the setting of most of Frado’s brutal beatings, is where Frado must eat her small ration of food (until James intervenes), and is rarely (if ever) described in pleasant terms.

The one place in the house that Frado is, theoretically, safe from abuse is in her own little apartment, described in one scene as a safe haven: “But there was one little spot seldom penetrated by her mistress’ watchful eyes: this was her room, uninviting and comfortless; but to herself a safe retreat. Here she would listen to the pleadings of a Savior, and try to penetrate the veil of doubt and sin which clouded her soul, and long to cast off the fetters of sin, and rise to the communion of saints” (87). Though “uninviting and comfortless,” Frado’s tiny room is a safe retreat as Frado attempts to “rise to the communion of saints.” Interestingly, then, initial descriptions of Frado’s room are far more ominous—the “L chamber,” as Mrs. Bellmont calls it, hardly seems fit for a child. According to Jack, Frado would “be afraid to go through that dark passage, and she can’t climb the ladder safely” (26). Nevertheless, he escorts her to the little room and “opened the door which connected with her room by a dark, unfinished passage-way” (27). Obviously, Frado’s little room isn’t a place people visit, nor do they ever plan to visit. It is simply “an unfinished chamber over the kitchen, the roof slanting nearly to the floor” and only a “small half window furnished light and air” (27). On her first night there, the “hot sun had penetrated the room, and it was a long time before a cooling breeze reduced the temperature so that she could sleep” (28). If you haven’t noticed yet, Frado’s “safe haven” is often discussed in terms of penetration. The hot, abusive sun penetrated her room making it too warm to sleep. And Mrs. Bellmont seldom penetrated her room, though we can assume she was there sometimes since “seldom” is not “never.” In fact, the only person we ever see there with Frado is Jack. The language of penetration conjures obvious sexual imagery, and it’s no coincidence that it appears so many times in the bedroom of an (for all intents and purposes) enslaved woman. If readers needed any more spatial clues, the L-chamber is located directly over the kitchen, which is the primary site of Frado’s abuse; though secluded, the L-chamber is never separate from the house and never truly safe.

Of course, once Frado decides to peruse a religious relationship, Wilson’s use of penetration describes Frado’s desire to “penetrate the veil of doubt and sin which clouded her soul.” Here is where I think the novel begins to mimic the captivity/conversion narrative genre—Frado begins to sort through the abusive experiences of her captivity and use them as moral fodder for her conversion. Her reclamation of the word “penetrate” indicates that any untold sexual abuse is part of that conversion and atonement.