ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Frances E. W. Harper's three early novellas, Minnie's Sacrifice and Trial and Triumph, and then the novel loia Leroy, whose plot combines the earlier efforts. It argues that Harper's fiction offers all sorts of creative ways to understand one's responsibility to a certain community and to act upon it. The chapter explores what Harper's text teaches about defining communities and identifies one's responsibility to them. Ultimately, the challenge for Harper and other Woman's Era activists was to recognize and reclaim the ways in which control over information was used to oppress slaves and freedmen, as well as white and black women. All three Harper novels alter and embellish the teleology of a happy marital ending. True Womanhood for women who know and honor their racial heritage means no love is pure without individual commitment to one's people.
