Lifespan: 1800-1856
Nationality: American
Genres: Americana
Types of Work: Novels, poems, novelettes
Contemporaries: Harriet Beecher Stowe
Bio:
(From Wikipedia)
Caroline Lee Whiting Hentz (June 1, 1800, Lancaster, Massachusetts – February 11, 1856, Marianna, Florida) was an American novelist and author, most noted for her opposition to the abolitionist movement and her widely-read rebuttal to the popular anti-slavery book, Uncle Tom's Cabin. She was a major literary figure in her day, and helped advance women's fiction.
Caroline Hentz was born Caroline Lee Whiting to Colonel John and Oprah Whiting on June 1, 1800 in Lancaster, Massachusetts. The youngest of eight children, Caroline was raised in a very patriotic family. Her father was a soldier in the Revolutionary War and three of her brothers fought in the War of 1812. As a child, she attended a private school run by Jared Sparks. By the time she was twelve, she had already composed a fantasy about the Far East as well as a play. At seventeen she was teaching at a local Lancaster school. On September 30, 1824, Caroline married Nicholas Marcellus Hentz. Shortly after, the couple moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina with their first child. She is described as being “a northerner who traveled and worked throughout the South for nearly thirty years.” She lived in seven different states in her lifetime, bore her husband five children, and managed to support her family financially with her writing.
Being the youngest of eight, Caroline watched as “three of her brothers became officers and served in the War of 1812.” Their letters home and “tales of patriotic adventure” were great inspiration to Caroline. As a young girl, Caroline was “popular with her companions, playing games, taking woodland walks, and studying nature.”
On September 30, 1824, Caroline married Nicholas Marcellus Hentz, “a political refugee from Metz [and] son of a member of the French National Convention.” The couple originally lived near Round Hill School in Northampton, Massachusetts, where Nicholas was an instructor. In 1826, the couple moved to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where Nicholas became the chair of modern languages. The couple left shortly after for Covington, Kentucky, where Nicholas later found a girls’ school in 1830. From their new home in Covington, Caroline wrote the prize-winning tragedy De Lara; or, The Moorish Bride for William Pelby. Although he offered her a $500 prize, he was unable to pay and gave Hentz back the copyright. In 1832, the couple opened a girls’ school in Cincinnati. While there, Caroline joined the Semi-Colon Club which is probably where her acquaintance with Harriet Beacher Stowe began.
During their time in Cincinnati, Nicholas displayed an irrational jealousy that later fueled Caroline’s Byronic heroes. “According to their son, Dr. Charles A. Hentz, Colonel King of the Semi-Colon Club sent an improper note to the dignified and accomplished Mrs. Hentz.” When she attempted to respond to the note, her suspicious husband discovered the correspondence. After threatening to duel Colonel King, Nicholas swiftly closed down the school and the couple moved to Florence, Alabama where they opened another school.
The couple had a total of five children, though their oldest son died when he was only two years old. While in Florence, Caroline spent most of her time caring for the couples’ four children. Her writing began to diminish over this period of time, though she managed to write some poetry and kept a diary that inspired the “letters, deathbed confession, and other lamentations that are hallmarks of her novels.” After living in Florence for nine years, the family found another school in Tuscaloosa in the year 1843. In 1845, the family opened yet another school in Tuskegee, which was then nothing more than a village. This began a lapse in her publishing career as she prepared her children for the adult world and married off one of her daughters (Perry and Weaks 83). In 1848, the couple opened a school in Columbus, Georgia. One year later, in 1849, Nicholas became an invalid and Caroline was left to support her family, despite the fact that she herself was not well. Two of the Hentz’s children settled down in Marianna, Florida and the couple moved to join them there in 1852. “During her husband’s illness, Caroline wrote at his bedside, dividing her attention among his care, the demands of the literary public, and the occasional visitors who would disturb her routine. In 1853, she returned to New England for a brief visit before making her way back to Florida.
After nearly five years of supporting her family financially and nursing her husband, Caroline Lee Whiting Hentz died of pneumonia on February 11, 1856.Nicholas Hentz died a few months later. The couple is buried under one stone in the Episcopal Cemetery in Marianne.
The Planter's Northern Bride, published in 1854 in Philadelphia, would be Hentz’s last published and most widely known work before her death two years later.
In this body of work, Caroline Hentz came to the definitive defense of slavery. Hentz used her expertise, having lived for many years in the South, to claim that she was more knowledgeable about slavery than Stowe. Hentz wrote about the caring relationship between master and slave, a Southern opinion on slavery that strongly contrasted with the New England-bred Stowe's characterization of the institution.
Hentz introduces in this novel several villains, including a busybody who tries to free slaves against their will. In doing this, she tries to discredit the abolitionist argument of inhumane treatment of the Southern slaves. She portrays the people wanting to tear down the institution of slavery as actually being motivated by personal gains, not by a desire to improve mankind. She expanded on this motivation to include the industrial revolution that was taking place in the North, which would require the massive amounts of cheap labor that only the south could give by way of slavery.
Novels:
Lovell's Folly (1833)
De Lara; or, The Moorish Bride (1843)
Linda; or, The Young Pilot of the Belle Creole (1850)
Rena; or, The Snow Bird (1851)
Eoline; or, Magnolia Vale; or, The Heiress of Glenmore (1852)
Marcus Warland; or, The Long Moss Spring (1852)
The Banished Son and Other Stories of the Heart (1852)
The Victim of Excitement, The Bosom Serpent, etc (1853)
Wild Jack; or, The Stolen Child, and Other Stories (1853)
The Planter's Northern Bride (1854)
Courtship and Marriage; or, The Joys and Sorrows of American Life (1856)
The Lost Daughter and Other Stories of the Heart (1857)