An Imperative Duty tells the story of Rhoda Aldgate, a young woman on the verge of marriage who has been raised by her aunt to assume that she is white, but who is in fact the descendant of an African-American grandmother. The novel traces the struggles of Rhoda, her family, and her suitor to come to terms with the implications of RhodaтАЩs heritage. Howells employs this stock situation to explore the newly urgent questions of identity, morality, and social policy raised by тАЬmiscegenationтАЭ in the post-Reconstruction United States. The novel imagines interracial marriage sympathetically at a time when racist sentiment was on the rise, and does this in one of HowellsтАЩs most aesthetically economical performances in the short novel form. Appendices to this Broadview Edition include material on the тАЬtragic mulattaтАЭ in literature, interracial marriage, the тАЬscienceтАЭ of race in the nineteenth century, and HowellsтАЩs literary realism.
An Imperative Duty tells the story of Rhoda Aldgate, a young woman on the verge of marriage who has been raised by her aunt to assume that she is white, but who is in fact the descendant of an African-American grandmother. The novel traces the struggles of Rhoda, her family, and her suitor to com...