For African American women permanently exposed to physical abuse, fiction shaped an unattainable dream of social happiness—almost impossible to reach while in bondage. Working within the limited discourse of white sentimental romance, black women were also “preoccupied with middle-class propriety, civility, domesticity, and commodity consumption” (Tate 1991, 106). The high value laid on marriage represented a mark of both gender and racial liberation, so that these sentimental narratives illustrated “the inalienable rights of black people as the consummated rights of families” (Tate 1991, 126).

Moreover, in their permanent struggle to overcome the conditions of the degrading racial system, black women have undermined the patriarchal assumption about the relationship between women’s so-called weak sex and their circumscribed domestic roles.⁴ Their inferior status both as blacks and women has contributed to the creation of a social context for them totally different from that for white women. African American women’s romance has incorporated accordingly the elaborate meanders of the black female existential journey. Their exemplary stories are haunted by forced separations between relatives and by lifelong searches culminating in deus ex machina encounters. Projected upon this harsh reality, black women’s drama is transfigured into heroic modes of action contributing to racial progress. The darker the background, the brighter the traits of the heroine. Since “black characters extricate themselves from incredible situations, perform incredible deeds, triumph over corrupt forces,” romance serves “as the predominant literary mode for transforming black history into mythic fiction” (Campbell 1986, xi).⁵