Iola's War on Alcohol, Lynching, and the Rise of the Carceral State.

This article probes the discourses of the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in the war on alcohol, prison reform, and the twin punishments of lynching and incarceration that help recontextualize Frances Harper's 1893 novel Iola Leroy. The argument between Frances Willard and Ida B. Wells frames the illusory fear of black men raping white women and the threat of miscegenation. Harper's novelistic response to this debate is to create multiple discourses for diverse audiences: white slavery, miscegenation, and the rise of a carceral state and its practice of convict leasing and the chain-gang. The article shows that the debates over women's issues, domesticity, gender normativity, and prison reform within the WCTU disrupt the discourse of the tragic mulatta that has often been assumed primary and has softened the narrative critique in Iola Leroy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]