DuBois began the novel with a lengthy and
florid dedication. “To Her High Loveliness TITA-
NIA XXVII By Her Own Grace Queen of Faerie,”
he wrote, “Commander of the Bath; Grand Medal-
lion of Merit; Litterarum Humanarum Docor; Fidei
Extensor; etc., etc. Of Whose Faith and Fond Affec-
tion This Romance Was Surely Born.” He divided
the story into four parts entitled “The Exile,” “The
Pullman Porter,” “The Chicago Politician,” and “The
Maharajah of Bwodpur,” respectively. The novel be-
gins in a mode of high anxiety and disruption be-
cause the honor student Matthew Towns has been
denied the opportunity to continue his medical stud-
ies at the University of Manhattan since white pa-
tients will not be willing to have a man of color tend
to them in obstetrics. Outraged by the hypocrisy of
the institution and fed up with the limitations placed
on African Americans regardless of their demon-
strated ability or potential, he abandons America
and sets sail for Europe. A man of “tall, lean form
and dark brown face,” he soon finds himself in Ger-
many, where he instinctively defends the honor of a
beautiful woman of color when a crude white Ameri-
can threatens her. He finds himself sharing his auto-
biography with the woman whom he comes to know
as Princess Kautilya of Bwodpur, India, and is in-
trigued by her provocative questions about African-
American survival and their strategies for
advancement in an age of ruthless segregation.
Eventually, he is initiated into the princess’s plans to
stage a systematic reevaluation of the Negro in
America and of “the relative ability of all classes and
peoples.” Part One closes as she tells him of her
pending trip to America, “to see for myself,” she ex-
plains, “if slaves can become men in a generation. If
they can—well, it makes the world new for you and
me.”
In “The Pullman Porter” section, DuBois inten-
sifies the mystery of Dark Princessas Towns becomes
an undercover agent for Princess Kautilya. He meets
the enigmatic Mr. Perigua who intends to counter
lynchings by staging targeted bombings of the lynch
mobs. In an effort to realize his scheme, Perigua ar-
ranges for Towns to become a Pullman porter, work
the popular New York–Atlanta route, and recruit al-
lies among the men. Despite his insistence that he
had no interest in America, Towns works spiritedly
as an observer for the princess. He endures awful
work conditions, racism, and insults so that he can
provide her with reliable assessments of the condi-
tion of the Negro. He characterizes his first report as
a “hasty but careful survey of the attitude of my peo-
ple in this country, with regard to the possibility of
their aid to a movement looking toward righting the
present racial inequalities in the world, especially
along the color line.” In it, he concludes that “Amer-
ican Negroes are a tremendous social force, an eco-
nomic entity of high importance” despite the fact
that “[t]heir power is at present partly but not wholly
dissipated and dispersed into the forces of the over-
whelming nation about them.” In a dizzying turn of
events, however, Towns becomes committed to lead-
ing a strike that never materializes and to allowing a
bombing of a train that he then prevents when he
realizes that the princess is aboard. The section
closes as he is found guilty of providing aid to the
would-be murderers and is sentenced to 10 years of
hard labor at Joliet Prison in Illinois. The princess
sees him just before he is interned, and he instructs
her to visit his aged mother in Virginia. “Make her
life’s end happy for her,” he cautions the princess as
he bids her to be discreet about his whereabouts.
Over the course of the last two sections of the
novel, Towns is awarded a pardon, thanks to the en-
terprising efforts of Sarah Andrews and the ambi-
tious politician Sammy Scott for whom she works.
Towns marries Sarah shortly after his release and al-
lows himself to be groomed for public office. He in-
creasingly accommodates her political agenda and,
through her persistence, advances systematically
through the political system. Yet, he abandons the
career and his wife when he is reunited unexpect-
edly with the princess, who is masquerading as a
leader of a trade union, and decides that “[t]he
world was one woman and one cause.” Their shared
tales of sacrifice fuel their passionate love affair fur-
ther. Both have assumed different identities and
worked alongside people who constitute the masses
whom the princess hopes to band together. Eventu-
ally, pressed by demands from her native land, she
returns to Virginia, where she seeks counsel from
Towns’s mother. It is this unsung elder who provides
the rich and idealistic young woman with a renewed
sense of global purpose and personal commitment to
Matthew, the man with whom she hopes to “build a
world... where the Hungry shall be fed, and only
the Lazy shall be empty.” The novel closes as the
pair is reunited once again in Virginia after Matthew
appears at the divorce proceedings in Chicago and
finds Sarah now paired off with her former boss.112 Dark Princess