The Confessions of Frannie Langton

The story, in the main, is told through Frannie’s writing while imprisoned. She tells about her childhood on Paradise Plantation in Jamaica. Frannie’s narrative shows that she is enslaved by a man named Langton. At its beginning, four-year-old Frannie is brought to live and work in the house. She writes of her meeting with Langton’s wife, Miss-bella, who is reluctant to have Frannie in the house. It is implied that Frannie is the child of Langton and one of the women enslaved by him, though at this point in the narrative, young Frannie is unaware of the nature of her connection to Langton. Miss-bella gives Frannie a corn cake and milk, and she admits she must be a kind of mother to her now, despite the fact that Frannie’s presence goes against her own desires.

Continuing her written account, Frannie remembers Phibbah, one of the other enslaved women at the Langtons’, who looks after her. Phibbah tells her about the way the house works, and how Langton only built it in order to get a wife. Frannie describes how she and Phibbah attend to Miss-bella, and how Miss-bella has to be looked after “like a rose” (22). Phibbah frequently sasses or talks back to Miss-bella, but she isn’t punished for it even though she is punished for other things because Miss-bella is entertained by her back talk.

Frannie remembers an incident where she unconsciously reaches for a book that Miss-bella is reading, accidentally sending it into a tub of water. Her punishment is to sit in the sun with the book, wiping the pages until it is dry. As she tries to dry the book, Miss-bella comes to check on her and offers to teach Frannie to read. Phibbah is horrified. She says Frannie should be whipped for ruining the book, and Frannie is extremely hurt that Phibbah is the person whose words lead to her first whipping. Afterward, Phibbah tells her that a bored white woman is the most dangerous thing in the world, and that Frannie shouldn’t risk learning to read. Phibbah is right to be concerned, as reading among the enslaved people on Paradise Plantation is forbidden by Langton.

Frannie reflects on what she has written, despairing that so much of it is about Miss-bella. She thinks of how terrible it is that she felt love for the Langtons, not just hate.

Frannie writes of the history of the plantation as Phibbah told it to her, how Langton left to be educated in England and only reluctantly returned to run the plantation after his mother died.

Miss-bella teaches Frannie how to read. Frannie believes that it was both the best and worst thing to happen to her. After learning to read, Frannie steals moments alone with books from the Langton library. She is eventually caught by Langton with the book Candide. He forces her to read a page to him and then forces her to eat the pages of the book until she throws up.

Frannie writes about Phibbah’s skill as a doctor, and how she cares for the inhabitants of the plantation. An apothecary, Mr. Thomson, comes to visit and speak to Phibbah one day, leading Langton to dismiss the idea that any Black person could be learned in botany or medicine. Still, he tells Phibbah to answer Mr. Thomson’s questions as Langton wants to capitalize on the connections to English publishers that Thomson has. Frannie remembers years later finding the book that Thomson had published in a shop in London, and how he simply copied everything that Phibbah told him. She went back to the shop and wrote Phibbah’s name on every page.

Despite Phibbah’s skill, Miss-bella grows ill. A white surgeon comes and prescribes mercury, which Phibbah doesn’t think will help. Miss-bella’s condition worsens, and she loses a tooth. Langton accuses Phibbah of poisoning Miss-bella, and asks Frannie if she has ever seen Phibbah add anything extra into the food. Frannie, thinking she has to tell the truth, says she’s seen Phibbah add seasoning. Frannie stops her account briefly, saying she was suddenly unable to write, but that she wants to tell a truthful account and therefore must include her own sins. She writes that Langton found the herbs that Phibbah used to make medicines and had her hanged for poisoning Miss-bella.

Frannie states her distaste for having her story told in the anti-slavery pamphlets that white abolitionists in London publish, as they always focus entirely on the suffering of Black people. She thinks of Phibbah, of how her story might be written, and of the guilt she still feels. Frannie says she writes her own story, addressed to her lawyer, in the hopes of it being published. Going back to her life at Paradise, Frannie writes of Miss-bella recovering once she stops taking the surgeon’s mercury and of her losing interest in Frannie.

One night, the surgeon comes for dinner, after which he and Langton take Frannie into a room they say is for experiments to prove their hypotheses concerning phrenology. They have Frannie act as their assistant and subject, measuring her skull. After the surgeon dies, Langton begins to lose muscle control in his hands. Unable to write, he has Frannie become his scribe.

When Frannie is around 14 or 15, she realizes Langton is watching her with interest. Aware of how likely it is that he will assault her, she remembers almost wanting him to just get it over with. One night, drunk on rum, he summons her over. She remembers his surprise at how low he would stoop, but that he did not go through with it.

One night when Frannie is 18, a fire breaks out in the cane fields. Langton approaches Frannie for comfort, holding her hand while he discusses the loss of the fields. Everyone else watches them. In the aftermath of the fire, Miss-bella’s brother, who holds Langton’s debts, forces him to leave Paradise in his hands. Langton flees to England, bringing Frannie with him.