The Last Runaway

Belle is Honor’s friend and an abolitionist who uses her millinery shop as a hiding place for those escaping slavery. Belle is brash and confident, qualities that Honor admires even as they contradict her Quaker values. When Judith demands that Honor end her friendship with Belle, blaming Belle for encouraging Honor to aid those escaping slavery, Belle refuses to believe that Honor would have written the letter on her own and insists on remaining friends until she receives a dismissal that she truly believes to be from Honor. This steadfastness encourages Honor to remain staunch in her own beliefs and continue her abolitionist work. Similarly, Belle supports Honor throughout the novel, even in decisions she thinks are foolish, such as Honor’s choice to leave her husband Jack. The novel persistently puts Belle into this supporting role without offering her much development for her own sake, thus obliquely reifying Honor’s own tendency to frame herself as the center point in the world of the text.

Belle has a complicated relationship with her brother, Donovan, whose politics and behavior she largely finds abhorrent. Despite this, the two are occasionally able to have a friendly rapport. Ultimately, however, Belle chooses her values over any lingering affection she holds for her brother; she shoots Donovan, killing him, when he tries to abduct Mrs. Reed. Belle dismisses the weight of this sacrifice, citing her fatal illness as condemning her to death in any case.

Donovan is Belle’s brother and an antagonist in the novel. He works as a “slave hunter,” apprehending those who are escaping enslavement. Donovan is violently racist, exhibiting intense hatred for Black people that Belle cites as coming from Donovan’s sense of entitlement. Donovan shows an immediate sexual interest in Honor; he aggressively pursues her and makes suggestive comments that discomfit her, both before and after her marriage. Despite her dislike of his politics and comments, Honor finds herself curiously drawn to Donovan, though this attraction is based more in sexual interest than a like of the man himself. Donovan seems to delight in smugly reminding abolitionists of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 (which, at different points in the novel, is either about to be enforced or recently enforced), illustrating his emotional investment in using the legalization of slavery to exercise power over others, including white abolitionists.

In the middle of the novel, Donovan shows fleeting potential for redemption; he offers to cease pursuing escaped enslaved people if Honor leaves her husband for him. When Honor refuses him, however, Donovan continues his racist, violent work. He often occupies a middle space between seeking Honor’s approval and flaunting his refusal to seek that approval; he routinely rides past the Haymaker farm with a re-captured escapee on his horse, as if to brag to Honor that he has once again aided the work of enslavers. His efforts to push Honor into a reaction frustrate her (as she cannot react without endangering herself and the Haymakers), Jack (who resents the attention that another man pays his wife), and even Donovan himself, as he fails to gain Honor’s love or sexual attention. This behavior grows more spiteful and aggressive after Honor’s pregnancy begins to show, which Donovan seems to consider a physical reminder of Jack’s “claim” and sexual “possession” of the woman whom Donovan desires. In the novel’s final chapter, Belle kills him as he attempts to abduct Mrs. Reed, who escaped slavery 12 years prior.

Judith is a member of the Faithwell Quaker community; she becomes, over the course of the novel, Honor’s mother-in-law. When Honor first encounters Judith, she is intrigued by the woman’s stern religious devotion; Honor observes Judith during a meeting in an effort to emulate her apparent communion with her “Inner Light.” After Honor becomes engaged to Jack, however, the relationship between them diminishes, as Judith sees Honor as an interloper in the household, having supplanted the local Quaker woman that Judith would have chosen as her son’s bride. Judith is authoritarian and determined to retain her position of authority in her household, which leads to friction between her and Honor.

Though she dislikes Honor’s abolitionist work, fearing the repercussions her family will face, Judith exhibits sympathy for some escapees, such as the mother and child to whom she gives milk. Ultimately, however, Judith proves interested in protecting her own family’s holdings over her moral objections to slavery. At the conclusion of the novel, Judith is a minor antagonist, as she threatens to take Comfort away from Honor if she does not return to the Faithwell fold. When Honor, Jack, and Comfort move west, Honor is relieved that Judith does not plan to accompany them.