Language English Originally published 1852 Genre Anti-Tom literature | Publication date 1852 Country United States of America | |
Publisher Charles Scribner Publishers Pages c.300 pp (May change depending on the publisher and the size of the text) Similar The Cabin and Parlor; or - Slaves, The Ebony Idol, Uncle Robin - in His Cabin, Aunt Phillis's Cabin, The Planter's Northern | ||
Frank Freeman's Barber Shop is an 1852 plantation fiction novel written by Baynard Rush Hall.
Contents
Overview
Frank Freeman's Barber Shop is an example of the numerous anti-Tom novels produced in the Southern United States in response to the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, which was criticised as inaccurately depicting plantation life as well as the relationship between slaveholders and their slaves.
Hall's novel is among the earliest examples of the genre, and focusses on the criticisms of Abolitionism and how it may easily be exploited - a concept later visited in The Planter's Northern Bride by Caroline Lee Hentz (1854).
Plot
The story focuses on a slave named Frank (later Frank Freeman), who is convinced to run away from his peaceful life on a southern plantation by "philanthropists" (Hall's term for abolitionists), having been promised that freedom would also bring a prestigious career.
When Frank comes to the end of his journey, however, he realises that he has been deceived: his prestigious career is nothing more than running a seedy barber shop frequented by his new abolitionist masters, and is paid meagre wages for his work.
However, Frank is soon discovered by members of the American Colonization Society, who rescue Frank from his predicament, and pay for his passage back to Liberia, his homeland, where he can finally live in peace.