The theme Motherhood: Being a Mother or Grandmother is one that invokes feelings of happiness and joy. Generally, mothers care for their children from the time they are born and as they grow until the mother passes away. The poems “The Slave Mother” and “On the Death of My First and Dearest Child, Hector Philips” shows the morbid side to motherhood. In each poem the mother figure suffers a traumatic experience regarding their children. Although experiences of this nature occur on a daily basis they are not the common experience. The first body of work “The Slave Mother” is written by Frances E. W. Harper. The title alone conjures such imagery into ones mind. It takes the reader back in time when slavery was legal, a time when a black …show more content…
Lawes. The title gives the reader a clear indication as to what the poems topic will be. Philips use of “my first and dearest child” can be interpreted to mean even if she was to have more children the loss of Hector immortalizes him forever as her dearest. The first stanza begins with Philips mentioning the length of time she’s been married which equal a little over 3 years. With the birth of her son she states “my vows crowned with a lovely boy.” (2). Philips use of the word “crowned” expresses to the reader what the birth of her child truly meant to her, comparable only to a high and much coveted status as king or queen. The third line of the first stanza “And yet in forty days he dropped away:/O! swift vicissitude of human joy!” (3-4) takes a saddening turn and shows how suddenly ones fortune can change. In the second stanza serves to reiterate how swiftly the speaker experienced the loss her son. In lines 5-6, she refers to his spirit in a sense of here one moment and gone the next while comparing his nature to that of a fragile rose. “A sorrow unforeseen and scarcely feared” (7) implies to the reader the baby was born healthy with no signs that would point to an early death, therefore no reason for the speaker to fear
Slavery is a term that can create a whirlwind of emotions for everyone. During the hardships faced by the African Americans, hundreds of accounts were documented. Harriet Jacobs, Charles Ball and Kate Drumgoold each shared their perspectives of being caught up in the world of slavery. There were reoccurring themes throughout the books as well as varying angles that each author either left out or never experienced. Taking two women’s views as well as a man’s, we can begin to delve deeper into what their everyday lives would have been like. Charles Ball’s Fifty Years in Chains and Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl were both published in the early 1860’s while Kate Drumgoold’s A Slave Girl’s Story came almost forty years later
In all, Tademy does a great job in transporting her readers back to the 1800s in rural Louisiana. This book is a profound alternative to just another slave narrative. Instead of history it offers ‘herstory’. This story offers insight to the issues of slavery through a women’s perspective, something that not so many books offer. Not only does it give readers just one account or perspective of slavery but it gives readers a take on slavery through generation after generation. From the early days of slavery through the Civil War, a narrative of familial strength, pride, and culture are captured in these lines.
Celia, a Slave, a book by author Melton McLaurin, shows the typical relationship between a slave woman and her master in America during the 1850s. The story is the perfect example of how relationships between slave and their masters and other non-blacks within the community. This is shown through Celia’s murder of her slave owner, Robert Newsom. It was also shown through the community’s reaction that was involved in unraveling her court case. The Celia personal story illustrated how slave women was treated by their slave owners and how the laws wasn’t effective at protecting slave during the 1850s. Celia’s story help shed light on woman injustices, unconstitutional rights and most importantly racial issues/discrimination.
Stanza three again shows doubtfulness about the mother’s love. We see how the mother locks her child in because she fears the modern world. She sees the world as dangers and especially fears men. Her fear of men is emphasized by the italics used. In the final line of the stanza, the mother puts her son on a plastic pot. This is somewhat symbolic of the consumeristic society i.e. manufactured and cheap.
Laurence Hill’s novel, The Book of Negroes, uses first-person narrator to depict the whole life ofAminata Diallo, beginning with Bayo, a small village in West Africa, abducting from her family at eleven years old. She witnessed the death of her parents with her own eyes when she was stolen. She was then sent to America and began her slave life. She went through a lot: she lost her children and was informed that her husband was dead. At last she gained freedom again and became an abolitionist against the slave trade. This book uses slave narrative as its genre to present a powerful woman’s life.She was a slave, yes, but she was also an abolitionist. She always held hope in the heart, she resist her dehumanization.
The poem is written in the father’s point of view; this gives insight of the father’s character and
In her story Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs presents what life was like living as a female slave during the 19th century. Born into slavery, she exhibits, to people living in the North who thought slaves were treated fairly and well, how living as a slave, especially as a female slave during that time, was a heinous and horrible experience. Perhaps even harder than it was if one had been a male slave, as female slaves had to deal with issues, such as unwanted sexual attention, sexual victimization and for some the suffering of being separated from their children. Harriet Jacobs shows that despite all of the hardship that she struggled with, having a cause to fight for, that is trying to get your children a better life
Motherhood, in its simplest definition is the state of being a mother; however, it isn't as clear cut and emotionless as the definition implies. Motherhood holds a different meaning for everyone. For some it is a positive experience, for others it's negative. Different situations change motherhood and the family unit. Slavery is an institution that twists those ideas into something hardly recognizable. The Master and the Mistress are parental figures. Slaves never became adults; they are called boy or girl no matter what their age. They are forced into a situation where biological parents have no say over their children. The slave owners control the slaves' lives and destroy the traditional idea of motherhood and family. Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl deals with the issues of being a woman in slavery. The mothers throughout the narrative are powerless in keeping their children from harm. They watch as their children are hurt or sold and can't do anything about it. The mothers use everything in their power to protect their children and succeed in their motherly duty.
Although the little girl doesn’t listen to the mother the first time she eventually listens in the end. For example, in stanzas 1-4, the little girl asks if she can go to the Freedom March not once, but twice even after her mother had already denied her the first time. These stanzas show how the daughter is a little disobedient at first, but then is able to respect her mother’s wishes. In stanzas 5 and 6, as the little girl is getting ready the mother is happy and smiling because she knows that her little girl is going to be safe, or so she thinks. By these stanzas the reader is able to tell how happy the mother was because she thought her daughter would be safe by listening to her and not going to the March. The last two stanzas, 7 and 8, show that the mother senses something is wrong, she runs to the church to find nothing, but her daughter’s shoe. At this moment she realizes that her baby is gone. These stanzas symbolize that even though her daughter listened to her she still wasn’t safe and is now dead. The Shoe symbolizes the loss the mother is going through and her loss of hope as well. This poem shows how elastic the bond between the daughter and her mother is because the daughter respected her mother’s wish by not going to the March and although the daughter is now dead her mother will always have her in her heart. By her having her
In Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, the author subjects the reader to a dystopian slave narrative based on a true story of a woman’s struggle for self-identity, self-preservation and freedom. This non-fictional personal account chronicles the journey of Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897) life of servitude and degradation in the state of North Carolina to the shackle-free promise land of liberty in the North. The reoccurring theme throughout that I strive to exploit is how the women’s sphere, known as the Cult of True Womanhood (Domesticity), is a corrupt concept that is full of white bias and privilege that has been compromised by the harsh oppression of slavery’s racial barrier. Women and the female race are falling for man’s
During the eighteenth and nineteenth-century, notions of freedom for Black slaves and White women were distinctively different than they are now. Slavery was a form of exploitation of black slaves, whom through enslavement, lost their humanity and freedom, and were subjected to dehumanizing conditions. African women and men were often mistreated through similar ways, especially when induced to labor, they would eventually become a genderless individual in the sight of the master. Despite being considered “genderless” for labor, female slaves suddenly became women who endured sexual violence. Although a white woman was superior to the slaves, she had little power over the household, and was restricted to perform additional actions without the consent of their husbands. The enslaved women’s notion to conceive freedom was different, yet similar to the way enslaved men and white women conceived freedom. Black women during slavery fought to resist oppression in order to gain their freedom by running away, rebel against the slaveholders, or by slowing down work. Although that didn’t guarantee them absolute freedom from slavery, it helped them preserve the autonomy and a bare minimum of their human rights that otherwise, would’ve been taken away from them. Black
Micki McElya’s comprehensive analysis of America’s “faithful black mammy” is aptly titled Clinging to Mammy: The Faithful Slave in the Twentieth-Century America (Harvard University Press, 2007). Clinging to Mammy details the historical background of the characteristic imagery of the black female and its implications in the black community as well as its white society’s misrepresentation. Although there is immense scholarly research on American slavery, McElya’s sets out “confront the terrible depths od desire for the black mammy and the way it still drags at struggles for real democracy and social justice”(14). In doing so, she dissects the vast amount of research into the mythology of the “mammy women”. This approach proves successful in broadening the discourse on implications of the faithful slave in the twentieth century.
Katherine Philips gained a lot of attention as a poet after writing “On the Death of My Dearest Child, Hector Philips”. This poem was written in a way to give readers an emotional account of a mother mourning the experience of losing her child. Philips expressed deep emotions from a maternal standpoint in the elegy. Unlike Jonson, Philips had the unspoken right of claiming a deep maternal connection with her son through pregnancy and childbirth. Philips’ approach to writing “On the Death of My Dearest Child” illustrates that the pain of losing her son, Hector, was enough for her to never write another verse again.
... aborted her children. She begins to think about the joy of having children. In contrast, the poem “those winter days”, it displays how children can be ungrateful for things parents do. It shows how a young boy believes his father doesn’t love because he is not affectionate. The father goes to work and comes home in pain. However, the father still performs the necessary tasks of keeping the house warm and polishing the children’s shoes. If the woman in “the mother” had not aborted their children, would they grow up to be the perfect little angels she dreams of? The father in “Those Winter Day’s” had sacrificed his own happiness for his child. The father’s life revolved around his son. Perhaps the woman in “the mother” was not ready to make those sacrifices as the father did. The woman could have not been able to carry out the duties of raising a child on her own.
‘On my first sonne’ and ‘Refugee mother and child’ both have many biblical allusions and the first poem refers to the relationship between Jesus and God because the child was Ben Jonson’s first born just like Jesus and God. In the first stanza Chinua Achebe says “no Madonna and Child could touch that picture of a mother’s tenderness” is a metaphor and refers to Mother Mary and Jesus when he was a child, it also is a comparison between a regular “mother and child” and a “helpless mother and child” which brings about sadness.