her own way in the world. Heroines negotiated their journeys from adolescence to adulthood, and the novels usually concluded with a happy marriage. (...) the initial displacement of the heroine indicated social corruption and her eventual triumph symbolized the reconstruction of a beneficent social order.
             Harper's novel has a similar structure. After her father's death, Iola is deprived of all that she lived and believed in before. Being remanded to slavery and sold, Iola suffers separation from her family and abuse from her master who attempts to sexually exploit her. Her plight emphasizes the horrors of the institution of slavery – and, in this sense, the social corruption that Nina Baym wrote about. Ultimately, Iola's character is enhanced thanks to her suffering and, indeed, it may be assumed that it is the reversal of her fate that makes her nobler than if she was saved from such horrors. Nina Baym notices also the function of a guardian in women's romances – a figure that is a surrogate for heroine's father or brother. Iola, in fact, also receives help when she is rescued from slavery, though what also should be taken into account is that she is too independent to rely only on the support of others (that is why she turns down Dr. Gresham's marriage proposal).
             Naturally, Iola does finally get married which, accordingly to Baym, should mean the reconstruction of a social order. However, as Hazel V. Carby emphasizes:
             the consequences of change in Iola's condition [the end of slavery] apply not only to the individual but also to the entire race. The social displacement of a whole people cannot be remedied by the triumph of the individual woman, and the conclusion of Harper's text, though optimistic, does not offer the reader a restored moral order.
             In other words, Iola's triumph is the triumph of the individual. Although, obviously, her achievements w...