The Confessions of Frannie Langton

The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins is a novel published in 2019. The novel follows the story of the eponymous Frannie Langton, a young Black woman on trial in early-19th-century London for the murders of the couple she worked for. The novel discusses slavery in the early-19th-century British Empire and the pervasive racism, classism, and sexism in contemporary London society. Sara Collins, who was a lawyer before becoming an author, uses the trial and its proceedings as a framework around which to base her heroine’s story.

This guide uses the Penguin Random House first US edition.

Content Warning: The source material for this guide discusses scientific racism and eugenics, slavery, violence against women and sex workers, child death, miscarriage, lynching, drug addiction, public execution, torture, and suicide. It also uses racist language in the context of the experience of enslaved people.

Plot Summary

The story begins in 1826 with the main character and narrator, Frannie Langton, imprisoned for allegedly murdering her employers. In her cell, she decides to write her story, addressed to her defense attorney, Mr. John Pettigrew. Her narrative begins in 1812 on a plantation named Paradise in Jamaica. Frannie is “owned” by a man named John Langton. At the age of four, she is brought to the house by the reluctant wife of Langton, Miss-bella, in order to become a “house-slave.” Langton’s wife is not pleased with this development because Langton is Frannie’s father.

Another enslaved woman in the house, Phibbah, cares for Frannie and teaches her how to do her work but also how to avoid punishment. Miss-bella treats Frannie as an amusement, even though she doesn’t actually like the child. She teaches Frannie to read, despite it being against Langton’s rules, simply because she thinks it would be interesting to teach her. As Frannie grows older she attracts more attention from Langton, and the ire of Miss-bella.

At one point, Miss-bella becomes ill, and Frannie, when interrogated, tells Langton that she has seen Phibbah season Miss-bella’s orangeade with herbs. Langton accuses Phibbah of poisoning Miss-bella and orders her hanged. Miss-bella’s illness actually stems from the mercury the English doctor prescribes her, and when she stops taking it, her health improves. Frannie feels Miss-bella is to blame for not speaking up when she knows Phibbah has been falsely accused. Miss-bella says Frannie is to blame because she spoke up when she knew what she said was false.

When Frannie is a teenager, Langton’s hands begin to fail him, leaving him without fine motor control. He employs Frannie as his scribe and assistant, forcing her to help him develop his phrenological theories, the idea that different races have different skull shapes and sizes that correlate to intelligence. Langton hypothesizes that a difference in intelligence is inherent to different races and seeks to prove it through phrenology.

When Frannie is 18, a fire breaks out in the cane fields. The fire destroys the carriage house, where all of Langton’s notes, experimental items and data, and Frannie’s copies of his manuscript reside. The fire leads to Langton’s bankruptcy. His wife and brother-in-law insist he give up the plantation. He leaves for London with the hope of getting his ideas published, He takes Frannie with him. In London Frannie is technically free, but Langton leaves her with his rival George Benham without warning or asking Frannie her preference. Frannie, with nowhere else to go, stays at the Benham house and becomes a servant.

Frannie suffers under the torments of the racist and strict housekeeper, Mrs. Linux. Life at the Benhams’ is initially intolerable for Frannie, who is far more literate and articulate than the rest of the servants. She is frustrated when Benham periodically interrogates her on the experiments Langton conducted. Benham’s French wife, Meg, however, takes an interest in Frannie. They share a love of books, philosophy, and writing. Meg designates Frannie as her secretary and personal maid, and they become closer. Eventually, this arrangement develops into a romantic relationship, with Frannie and Meg falling deeply in love.

Problems persist for Frannie as she is frustrated by her exclusion from the intellectual elite due to her race and gender. She feels keenly how society devalues her. Meg has depression and self-medicates with laudanum. Eventually, Frannie develops an addiction to the drug as well. Despite Meg’s attempts to achieve intellectual fulfillment within her role as Benham’s wife, and Frannie’s attempts to be content with her place as Meg’s maid, the issues of inequality within their relationship cause recurring problems.

Meg reacquaints herself with Olaudah “Laddie” Cambridge, who was formerly enslaved by Benham, brought to England, and freed as a child, but was forced out of the house by Benham prior to Frannie’s arrival. Meg flirts with Laddie, which makes Frannie jealous. Eventually, Frannie finds correspondence between Meg and Laddie that Meg hid from her. Upset and betrayed, Frannie gives in to Benham’s pressure for her to spy on Meg for him. Meg finds out, and Frannie is kicked out of the house.

Frannie survives by begging on the streets of London, until she is approached by an old acquaintance of Langton’s who offers Frannie a place at a brothel called the School-House, which caters to those interested in spankings as a part of their sexual appetite. Frannie becomes well-known there as a flogger, specializing in leaving scars. In her free time, she and a colleague, Sal, another Black woman, explore London and become friends.

Despite forming a new friendship, Frannie cannot get Meg out of her head. Sal advises her to forget Meg. She tells Frannie that she saw Meg at one of Laddie’s boxing matches. Evidence that Meg has moved on does not quell Frannie’s struggles. She learns from the newspaper that Langton has died, and also finds out from some of the other girls that Benham belongs to a club of men who fetishize violence toward sex workers. She learns that he has abducted and injured girls.

After a few months, Meg sends for Frannie, begging her to come back as Meg is ill. Frannie returns, simultaneously reluctant and overjoyed. Meg indeed had an affair with Laddie after Frannie was sent away. She is now pregnant. Frannie learns that the real reason she has been asked back is so that she can be given the baby after it is born to look after. Frannie is angry, and begins to take laudanum again, which she ceased to do while working at the School-House.

Meg, Benham, and Frannie are prepared to leave for Cornwall for Meg to give birth, but the night before they go, Benham demands they hold a party to maintain appearances. The morning of the party, Meg miscarries, and Benham wants to kick Frannie out again. Angered at Benham’s behavior and Meg’s lack of solidarity, Frannie interrupts the party to tell Meg off. After the party both Frannie and Meg take laudanum. Frannie does not remember exactly what happened while she was under the influence of the drug, but she wakes up to find herself covered in blood next to Meg’s dead body, She is subsequently arrested for the murders of both Meg and Benham.

During the trial, Frannie wants to defend herself by saying she loved Meg and would never hurt her, but Pettigrew and his team advise against this. Instead, they adopt a strategy to blame the laudanum. After listening to the testimony of the other servants in the house as well as that of the doctor who autopsied the bodies, Frannie herself goes on the stand.

Frannie tells the court she loved Meg. She then indicates that her real guilt is tied to the experiments to which she was witness and assistant at Paradise. She reveals that Langton was using living human subjects, and that it was she who set the fire in order to save a 10-month-old baby. The trial ends with Frannie being found guilty and sentenced to death.

Pettigrew comes to Frannie’s cell with a doctor, who discloses that he attended the autopsy and that the stab wounds on Meg were fake—she died of an opium overdose from the laudanum. Frannie then remembers a note she wrote. The note’s discovery confirms that Meg’s cause of death was suicide. Frannie also recalls her anger-fueled attempt to extort Benham in order to protect herself and Meg. Their conversation devolved into an argument during which she stabbed Benham.

Frannie is cleared of Meg’s murder but is still sentenced to death for Benham’s. Frannie leaves her manuscript and some money with Pettigrew, asking him to publish it. In her last moments, she thinks of Meg.