The Confessions of Frannie Langton

“I don’t make a habit of reading what the broadsheets say about me, for newspapers are like a mirror I saw once in a fair near the Strand that stretched my reflection like a rack, gave me two heads so I almost didn’t know myself. If you’ve ever had the misfortune to be written about, you know what I mean.”

Frannie must constantly battle other people’s preconceived ideas of her and her character in order to make her way in the world. Often people have immediately negative opinions of her due to her skin color, and this has not been helped by the fact that she is on trial for sensationalized murders.

“I’ve always wanted to tell my story, even though one person’s story is only a raindrop in an ocean.”

Frannie, despite being imprisoned, finally has a chance to tell her story the way she has seen others do in novels and memoirs. This quote shows not only her longstanding desire, but also her awareness of the subjective nature of personal histories.

“I’m trying to write this story as if it’s mine. Yet I look back over what I’ve set down so far and see how much of my own paper and ink I’ve spent on Miss-bella. The trouble is nothing ever happened to me except through her. That’s just how it was. So many in England have said that must have taught me how to hate. How you must have hated them, Frannie Langton! The pair of them! But the truth is not a cloth every man can cut to fit himself. The truth is there was love as well as hate. The truth is, the love hurt worse.”

Frannie struggles with the emotional abuse she experienced at the hands of her enslavers, knowing that what they have done is wrong but having been isolated with them as her companions. She is, however, able to use her recognition of this to combat popular narratives of slavery, exposing an abuse different from the one that usually makes it to print.