Maum Guinea (1861) Spotlight

About the Novel

Metta Victor’s Maum Guinea, and Her Plantation “Children”; or, Holiday-Week on a Louisiana Estate; A Slave Romance was “the novel most likely to be found in the backpacks of Union—and Confederate—soldiers and in the parlors and pockets of readers in both North America and Europe in the early days of the war” (Castagna). Marketed as a special holiday double-issue, the book runs just over two hundred pages and sold for twenty cents. Unusual, too, was the inclusion of an author’s introduction, claiming a truthful and politically-neutral representation of enslaved peoples.

Illustration on the cover to *Beadle's Dime Novels* no. 33, featuring Maum Guinea and other enslaved characters telling stories.

The story centers on the courtships of Rose and Hyperion—an enslaved couple—and Virginia and Philip—a white planter couple from neighboring Louisiana plantations. Set during the week-long Christmas holiday when many slaves were given time “off” from their usual labors, the enslaved characters agree to take turns sharing stories of their lives. These first person accounts of slavery repeatedly describe violence, abuse, neglectful white fathers, the selling of children, and families separated. One woman’s story describes how these experiences led to her husband’s participation in Nat Turner’s slave rebellion, a movement that aspired to wipe out every white person in Northampton County, Virginia. Maum Guinea, the “mother” of the slave community, helps Rose and Hyperion escape when Rose is sold to be a wealthy man’s concubine. Although many critics describe Victor as an abolitionist and her book as an overtly abolitionist text, others have argued that the novel’s ending, with Rose and Hyperion happily married and enslaved, indicates a “schizophrenic generic identity—a proslavery/antislavery ‘romance of fact’” (Stokes 2001, 57).

Maum Guinea was first published by Beadle and Adams in Beadle's Dime Novels no. 33 on December 10, 1861. It appeared simulteanously in American Novels, the London edition of the series. The novel was reprinted twice, first in Beadle's Standard Library of Romance vol. 1 (1862) and again in Twenty Cent Novels no. 14 (1876).

About the Author

Born near Erie, Pennsylvania in 1831, Metta Victoria Fuller’s family later moved to Wooster, Ohio where she attended a female seminary. By the age of fifteen she had published poems and stories in a variety of periodicals. She married Orville Victor, the editor of the Sandusky, Ohio newspaper, Daily Register, in 1856. Two years later the Victors moved to New York City, where she and Orville became editors of and contributors to the publishing house of Beadle and Adams, originators of the dime novel format. Metta Victor wrote several dime novels for Beadle and Adams prior to Maum Guinea, including The Dime Cook-Book (using one of many pen names, Louis LeGrand); Alice Wilde; The Backwoods Bride; and Uncle Ezekiel. In 1862, she published the Civil War themed dime novel The Unionist’s Daughter.

Metta Victoria Fuller Victor (1831-1885)

According to bibliographer Albert Johannsen, none of Victor’s other Beadle and Adams dime novels sold as well as Maum Guinea, which he estimates at over 100,000 copies in its initial American run, in addition to the tens of thousands of copies also sold in England. She is also credited with authoring one of the earliest full-length detective novels in the United States, The Dead Letter (1864). A prolific and popular writer, Victor published over 100 dime novels as well as numerous sentimental stories, poems, books of humor, and sensational novels throughout her life. She was the mother of nine children and died in 1885.

Discussion Questions

Most critics agree that Victor was an abolitionist and her novel is an abolitionist work, but her introduction seems to suggest otherwise. Why might Victor claim neutrality here? Is this really an abolitionist novel? Why or why not?
Victor represents enslaved characters’ southern dialect differently than she writes the speech of her white southern characters. Why? What is the effect of this difference? Identify one example of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) as represented in the novel and describe where and why it is used.
Why might Victor choose to open her novel with two couples? What does she accomplish by including both an enslaved couple and a white Southern planter couple? What romantic aspirations do they share? What differences exist in these couples’ social circumstances?
Discuss themes of home, mothers and motherhood, and slavery’s deformity of family affection in Chapters 3 and 8 especially. Teachers could also compare one or both of these chapters with excerpts from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Discuss threats to Rose’s sexual purity, a popular literary trope in this era known as the “tragic mulatta” character (especially in conjunction with Chapters 7 and 9). Rose’s situation could also be effectively compared with Harriet Jacob’s slave narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, published the same year as Maum Guinea.

Classroom Activities

Abolition in Print

Nineteenth-century American abolitionist magazines, journals, and newspapers provided emotionally stirring anti-slavery content in an attempt to swell support for the political movement to end slavery. Abolitionists believed in the concept of “moral suasion,” that in convincing others that slavery was morally wrong, the practice would consequently end. But they underestimated the centrality of slavery to the economic structures of both the North and South. Moreover, abolitionists frequently disagreed about the goals and means of ending slavery. African American abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass were often frustrated with Northern abolitionists’ unwillingness to fully take on issues of racism and full citizenship for African Americans. Publishers also disagreed, finding each other too radical or too conservative and accommodating to white society.

Hold a group discussion about the differences in point of view among these magazines. Divide students into small groups that will act as editorial boards of new abolitionist magazines of the 1850s-1860s. Each group should name its publication and design an appropriate cover image. Illustrations may be included throughout the magazine. Each magazine should include the following contributions:

A “Letter from the Editor” describing the magazine’s point of view and goals
Three literary works from the period (poem, short story, speech, excerpt from a novel)
A critical review of Metta Victor's Maum Guinea.
Three abolitionist songs
Three brief biographies of African American abolitionists, authors, or speakers

Resources

Nickels and Dimes: From the Collections of Johannsen and LeBlanc