Mary Prince A West Indian Slave Analysis

As was expected of the time, plantation owner’s had to broadcast certain opinions about people of color. This derogatory view become a standard for the South and other opinions that differed from this were frowned upon. Kate Chopin, in her story Desiree’s Baby describes a letter about Armand’s race, “’But, above all,’ she wrote, ‘night and day, I thank the good God for having so arranged our lives that our dear Armand will never know that his mother, who adores him, belongs to the race that is cursed with the brand of slavery’” (Chopin, 4). Armand was raised white, his father keeping his black mother a secret from the world. We can piece together information to infer that not every person in the South held black people in such a deprecating way.

Surely, only an opposing, selfish, and insensitive person could send their wife and child away upon realizing that they both were mixed race. In Kate Chopin’s “Desiree’s Baby”, however, protagonist, Desiree, is altered over just a few days as she goes from being thankful from the happiness of her husband and baby into saddened and betrayed by her lover. The story eventfully shows how racism and denial both play a part in the way the future may turn out. From the time that the story begins, one can see that the love between Armand and Desiree is what they say to be a dream come true. It’s the love that everyone asks for.

They were also told that as long as they did not rebel they would go to heaven. He touches on how terrible his slave owner was and how cruel the slave owner’s wife was. Once the owner and his wife died William believed that they went to hell because they were so cruel. He also talked about the children of the slave owners who, surprisingly, were very kind to the slaves. They would bring the slaves paper and books without letting their parents know.

I kissed them slightly, and turned away” (Jacobs, 79). This is the moment that Linda Brent left her children, Ellen and Ben with her grandmother at her house to get away from Mr. Flint who was sexually abusing her. This moment can compare to the article that talks about motherhood and help readers understand what Harriet Jacobs message throughout the novel was about being a slave mother. The article Motherhood as Resistance in Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl breaks down all the parts of Harriet Jacobs life that has to do with motherhood and also explains to the readers about what one of the outcomes is to being a slave which is “Enslaved women and their children could be separated at any time, and even if they belonged to the same owner, strict labor polices and plantation regulations severely limited the development of their relationships” (Li, 14). No matter who you are when the time comes you and your children will be separated from each other and possibly never see them again or at least for an extremely long time.

The most notable account of this separated was faced by a female slave that Northup encounters by the name of Eliza. Northup writes about the disregarding of the white slave traders towards the suffering of the mother and intense emotion of grief that Eliza displayed at the auction block when she realized that she was being separated from her children. As Northup noted, All the time the trade was going on, Eliza was crying aloud, and wringing her hands. She besought the man not to buy her child, unless he also bought herself and her other small child. She promised, in that case, to be the most faithful slave that ever lived.

The individuals who were slaves were "captured in warfare, some were debtors, others were criminals" (Clark, 16). The slavery was temporary and never passed down to the child. As well as, the slaves can work into their freedom, and the slaves can get married into the family that held them. There were bad parts to this type of slavery as well because some slaves were sacrificial death, woman and children were in demand for labor or even any sexual purpose. Even though this is bad on its own the Triangular Trade is deemed much worse for multiple reasons.

Similarly, Stowe makes use of the subject family and language to highlight the destruction of slavery by mentioning how Harris was separated from his mother. One may assume that going through life without a mother or the lack thereof a close female relative has a significant impact on a person's behavior because there is an absence of nurturing and protection that society expects women to perform. Therefore, describing the reaction of his mother once they were not sold together depicts the harsh reality of slavery and tap into audience’s emotions to understand that experience. The text states, “I saw my mother put up at sheriff’s sale, with her seven children… they were sold… one by one… she came and kneeled down before old Mas’r, and begged

She goes to him and pleads that she is not black, even comparing her hand color to his. Her attempts to persuade Armand are useless, and he continues to believe she is black and that his heritage is permanently damaged. Chopin writes that “Moreover he no longer loved her, because of the unconscious injury she had brought upon his home and his name (Chopin 3).” He swiftly dismisses Désirée and his son from the plantation due to the “damage” she has brought upon him. Soon afterwards, in an ironic turn of events, Chopin writes that Armand discovers a letter from his mother to his father while burning Désirée’s possessions. Upon reading this letter, it is revealed that Armand is truly the one with black heritage, as his mother had been black.

In Beloved by Toni Morrison, cruelty factors into the theme, dehumanization in Blacks because Whites employ cruelty to coerce Black slaves to view themselves as animals who serve superior human. Thus, Black slaves gradually start to independently view themselves with the same rights as animals. Cruelty is a noun that consists of the act of inflicting physical or mental pain to others. Accordingly, in Cincinnati, Ohio and Kentucky in the 1850s, cruelty is the factor that forces Sethe, a Black, female slave to turn homicidal and ignore human ethics like gentleness and peace because she does not want to be dehumanized by schoolteacher again. In other words, the cruel savagery in Whites is the source of the savagery in Sethe when Sethe is desperate for freedom.

Not only Sethe was the victim of the brutal white society, but also the victim of her husband. She suffered a lot because of her husband who was supposed to be her protector from the external world. Hence, Halle who was the husband of Sethe mistreated her because he was hiding in the barn loft when the Schoolteacher’s nephew sucked out her breast milk. Traumatized by his wife’s suffering, Halle eventually lost his mind. Being a victim of slavery, Sethe was deprived even from a natural right as a living human being when she naively requested a marriage service to honor her union with Halle.

The media prominently portrays slavery to be bad because of all the pysical abuse that happened to slaves, but the silent attacker that effected most all slaves were the ones they couldn’t even see. Psychological abuse is no stable matter, because once the cracks in the foundation of the mind begin to fall a part, it is only a matter of time until the whole person collapeses. Harriet Jacobs was an inspiration then and is an inspiration now because of her strong will to keep going until her and her children were free, and leaving her memories in the

The author tells how sad is the life of a slave girl and how, as soon as she is old enough, and against her will, she would learn about the malice of the world. Meanwhile, male slaves rarely suffered from such abuse, and different from women, slavery mostly affected their manliness. As Douglas says while describing one of the oversees: "It was enough to chill the blood and stiffen the hair of an ordinary man to hear him talk." By saying so, he proved how, at a very patriarchal time, male slaves completely lost the bravery and "superiority" often used to describe white men. Therefore, slavery did have some different effects towards women and men, but always towards a worse condition.

There was no prospect of being able to lead a better life.” To Jacobs, she had grown up with the notion that she would be a slave forever and so had no hope for herself to be free. For the sake of her two children, she became free and so did her children. Her complaint against slavery was that it was a curse and believed death to be better than slavery. She believed this because of her experiences with slavery, to her death was freedom and slavery was

In Celia’s case, we see this truth through Virginia and Mary Newsom’s position of powerlessness. Whether they wished to assist Celia or not, Newsom’s husbandless daughters were utterly dependent upon their father (McLaurin, 32), a fact that made confronting him dangerous. The importance of this master-slave structure in Southern life, as well as the value of slavery itself, may explain the actions of the Judge presiding over Celia’s trial. By choosing to sustain the objections of the prosecution, Judge William Hall sealed the fate of Celia the slave. Had he acted against the established institution, Celia might have been spared.

When using the word “obsessive” there should be no commection made to the idea of “love.” In this slave society was unattainable, especially for our slave girl. Brent, in the chapter Love, begins her tale with the question “why does the slave ever love?” She recalls her first love being born a freeman(446). She asserts that her love for him was true, having loved him with all the “ador of a young girl 's first love(446). However, upon the reflection of her situation of servitude she knew that a union between the two could never happen, because she belonged to Mr. Flint—literally. Brent describes this love-dream having been her support through many trials, and was dreadfully fearful that this pleasure of her own making would fade.