Jesse’s Reviews > Hagar's Daughter > Status Update

OMFG HOW DID I NOT SEE THAT COMING AHHHHHHHH

melodramas are freakin awesome!!!!!!!!!!

OH GOD I JUST REALIZED THAT HAGAR PROBABLY RECOGNIZED ENSON BUT SHE CANT SAY ANYTHING AGAINST HIM WITHOUT HAVING TO EXPLAIN WHY SHE KNOWS HIM AS A HORRIBLE SON OF A BITCH WHICH WOULD INVOLVE EXPLAINING HER HERITAGE AND IT ALREADY BURNED HER ONCE. HER INTERNALIZED SOUTHERN CASTE PREJUDICE IS ROBBING HER OF HER AGENCY. THIS IS GONNA GET SO FREAKIN MESSY

As a romance, this works, because I’m pissed at the 50 yr old barely disguised St. Clair’s Enson busting up Jewel’s engagement to Cuthbert so that he can marry her, by way of using Aurelia, Cuthbert’s one-time fiancée.

Given the format, I’m 99% sure that Mrs. Bowen is Hagar, and Aurelia is her daughter, the two having been separated from when she jumped into the river during her escape.

We have an echo of the scene-setting drama that began Contending Forces: a woman’s wealthy, slave-owning husband is murdered and she, along with her child, are slated to be sold into bondage due to her parentage. In this case, her African ancestry is a surprise to her and her husband, but Ellis Enson was too moral a man (for a slaveholder) to revile his beloved. Which is why his brother had to stage a suicide.