Wednesday, September 28, 2011

#7 A Sisterhood in Motherhood

In Frances E.W. Harper’s poem The Slave Mother, the element of the listener stuck out to me the most in the author’s way of advocating for social reform in the abolishment of slavery. I imagine one type of listener would have been the wives of abolitionist men and quite possibly even the wives of men who believed in the enforcement of slavery. I imagine these women, wives, were also mothers since in that time it was almost unheard of for a woman to be married and not bare any children for her husband without receiving some kind of social ridicule, so it makes sense that Frances Harper would write in the tone she does in this poem, successfully drawing similarities to a slave mother and her child to a white or freed mother and her children. In line 13, she writes “She is a mother, pale with fear, her boy clings to her side”. I think Harper so plainly stated that the owner of those heart wrenching shrieks was a mother to really grab the reader’s attention and make them realize they have a shared kinship in motherhood with this slave women, with whom it is so easy to unidentify with in all other aspects of their lives.  She continues this notion further by expressing the widely known agony associated with childbirth that each and every mother at that time had to experience; pain does not discriminate. “ He is not hers, although she bore for him a mother’s pains; He is not hers, although her blood is coursing through his veins!” These lines may have deeply touched at the heart strings of listeners who were mothers because in this point in time, it was sadly very common for women to die during childbirth, yet millions of women chose to have more and more  children knowing the great risk that went along with it, however the reward of having your child to love and care for greatly outweighed that risk. However, for this slave woman, who endured the same type of earth shattering pain and discomfort, she would not get to enjoy the harvest of her hard labor because her child would be stolen away to be sold in chains since the law of the day was that the child followed the condition of the mother. This poem draws a very clear picture of how it must have felt for a mother to experience losing her own flesh and blood, something that the white mothers probably never could nor had  to imagine. Line 23 reads, “The only wreath of household love that binds her breaking heart”, thus describing the sentiments slave mothers must have felt towards their children, they were probably the only person on the plantation that truly loved them, especially if the father/ husband had been sold off to some other owner. I also think this touches on the role of women upheld by white people of the time with their placing an emphasis on the woman’s role in the household and how wives should seek their life’s fulfillment in raising and rearing the children. Slave mothers would miss out on this opportunity completely in the home. Overall, I think Harper’s ability to use her words to relate an idea and commonality to her female readers proved to be a large part of her poems success.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

#6 - All Caught Up in Color


At this point in American history and society, the color of one’s skin was very important in signifying one’s place in the social hierarchy of the times. Even amongst slaves, there was a certain strata amongst them according to the type of slave they were based upon the degree of darkness their skin complexion was. In the case of Lydia Maria child’s The Quadroons, the main character, Rosalie, had quite an atypical slavery experience when compared to other slave biographies ad narratives, due in part to the fact that she was the daughter of a wealthy merchant in New Orleans and that she also was of a mixed ancestry that resulted in her outward appearance being significantly lighter than most pure blooded African slaves. When Rosalie desired to marry the love of her life, societal norms and rules came into play, because she was of a mixed ancestry “a union with her proscribed race was unrecognized by law, and therefore the ceremony gave her no legal hold of Edward's constancy”(117). This is just one example of the conflict between society and slaves, even the mulattos.  Her race kept her from having any legal right to the freedom that her husband shared or to any will and testament he may have left upon his death, the societal rules went so far as to make them be married in a specific church, since the union wouldn’t be recognized by the state of Georgia. Rosalie and Edward were well aware of this limitation put on their relationship, but persevered through life by the power and passion of their love for one another, knowing there was nothing they could do to change it. Sadly, the same kind of contentions would fall to their daughter, Xarifa, who’s “complexion, of a still lighter brown than Rosalie's was rich and glowing as an autumnal leaf. The iris of her large, dark eye
had the melting, mezzotinto outline, which remains the last vestige of African ancestry”. She was utterly beautiful, with her exotic features. However this would pose a problem for the young girl socially. “Xarifa learned no lessons of humility or shame, within her own happy home; for she grew up in the warm atmosphere of father's and mother's love but in summer walks with her beautiful mother, her young cheek often mantled at the rude gaze of the young men and when some contemptuous epithet met her ear, as white ladies passed them by, in scornful pride and ill-concealed envy.” Xarifa was a problem to white elitist people for she did not fit wholly into the caste type system they had in place socially for blacks and slaves. When her parents had died, and she was captured by the sheriff and put for sale on the auction block, she became a victim to our American culture, and despite the fact that her father had been a freed man and her mother the child of a former slave, she too inherited the punishment of slavery at the hands of a white man who paid a very high amount for her. This harsh realization, so contrary to the way she had been raised in a peaceful paradise almost, was enough to drive the poor, beautiful girl mad, literally. The infamously beautiful Xarifa, became yet another victim to society, limited by white culture and her own ethnicity.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Depreciating the Indian in America

Between the narrative of William Apess and the poem by Lydia Sigourney is a shared them of the undervaluing of the Native American by limiting his possibilities and trying to write them out of our nation’s history. In Apess’ An Indian’s Looking Glass for the White Man, he conveys this theme by giving examples of the inequality that is experienced by “red skins” from white people and relates it to Biblical scripture about how to treat one’s brother in the correct way in the eyes of God. He says that because God commands that to truly love him you must love your brother, then white men, who call themselves devoutly religious, are liars because they do not show love to their Indian brothers. He cites Matthew 22:37, 40 which states, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” He reiterates this point with 1 John 4:21, “He who loveth God loveth his brother also.” However, instead of white men “loving” the red men they mistreat them by denying them rights and privileges and counting them as less than equal, going completely against what God has demanded of them as Christians. Apess continues on with this powerful notion of religion criticism as a way of evoking true and legitimate awareness from white people by asking, “Did you ever hear or read of Christ teaching his disciples that they ought to despise one because his skin was different from theirs?” The obvious answer is no, and this strikes at the heart of Apess’ point of concern, white men have no validity on the basis of religion in denying Native Americans liberties that they feel they are entitled to, so Indians, in the eyes of God, should be able to enjoy opportunities like preaching, education, holding office positions, and marriage with a person of any race, if this nation were to call itself a true Christian nation. Sigourney’s Indian Names, illustrates the undervaluing of Indians by showing how white men have tried to write natives out of our history here in America, despite their great contributions. She opens with, “Ye say, they have all passed away… but their name is on our waters, ye may not wash it out”. This sets the tone of how Americans have used the Indians for their resources and knowledge of the American landscape and then in totally failed to give credit to the natives for their help in allowing settlers to be successful. They want to exploit all they can from the Indians but not give them any credit. Sigourney writes, “ But their memory liveth on your hills”, signifying that natives have done and meant so much more to the success of America as a whole than their given recognition for, that their influence can never really be masked by white male greed.  The poem ends with, “your mountains build their monument, though ye destroy their dust”, meaning as we continue to advance as a country, we are continually trying to push further and further away the Indian influence and association, for example the Indian diaspora of the Trail of Tears and the Indian Removal Act of 1830. These two works combined reflect a underlying sense of undervaluing of Native Americans in an emerging American society.

Sunday, September 11, 2011

The Tenth of January

The short story “The Tenth of January” takes place well into the frigid winter months in the city of Lawrence. A city that the author writes is well known for its “simooms that scorch you and tempests that freeze you”, and it is these opposing and severe types of weather features that play into creating a dramatic backdrop to the story of Asenath Martyn’s tragic end. With winter, one usually associates things like cold, chills, freezing, ice, snow, and so on, this is so for Sene when she is out amongst this harsh frozen landscape learning that the boy she has secretly loved for two long years has too had a secret love but for someone else. At this discovery, Sene’s character becomes increasingly more introverted with the bubbling over of emotions she must have endured coupled with the immense heartbreak she felt. The setting adds to this feeling by implying the vivacity of the underwater creatures, carrying on with splendidly varying daily tasks, beneath a solid, hard exterior of capped frozen ice, leading one to believe that everything underneath is too absent of life and frozen in time until spring’s warmth comes. Like the river remains frozen and hard on the outside, so does Sene as November days turn into January nights, keeping her true feelings toward Del and Dick’s relationship beneath the surface, to herself, culminating in the burning of Pemberton factory. As Sene watches the beautiful and lovely Del pulled to safety and embraced in the arms of Richard, she finds solace in the thought that what “she had done was right, quite right. God must have known.” At that moment, “the tangled skein of her perplexed and troubled winter unwound suddenly”, she finally understood it all, “God had provided himself a lamb for the burnt-offering” and that was herself. She knew she could never nor was ever supposed to be with Richard Cross, he belonged to Del, and this fact allowed her to give the opportunity of rescue to Del. Finally the chilled heap of emotions and deep thoughts that had engulfed Sene’s mind all these months were able to manifest themselves in the flames of understanding like a waking bear at the first of spring. Sene was then able to accept her unavoidable death, “they had left her, tombed alive here in this furnace. . . Yet it gave her a curious sense of relief and triumph.”She no longer had to tirelessly struggle with the uncertainty of Richard and herself, their relationship, and Del. Now nothing remained, “only the smoke writhing up a pillar of blood-red flame.”

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Journal #3- "The Wife"

Irving’ short story, “The Wife”, emphasizes an importance on the value of marriage and women in American culture, relaying the power of the two to overcome any and everything else in life, like economic downturns for example. Irving spends much of the story describing the comforting and soothing nature of the woman counteracting the strong exterior and harshness of men and how that helps to give support to the patriarchal husband figure and head of the household back in the 19th century, “… so it is beautifully ordered by Providence, that women, who is mere dependent and ornament of man in his calamity, winding herself in the rugged recesses of his nature, tenderly supporting the drooping head, and binding up the broken heart”. He continues on to depict the high importance of subordinate women as being the main motivation of a man’s striving for success, “because they are more stimulated to exertion by the necessities of the helpless and beloved beings who depend upon them for subsistence.” Further into the story, Irving writes of a family being lowered in social status due to a loss of the husband’s wealth. The husband is practically mentally incapacitated by the fear of revealing the bad news to his wife in fear of her response to the drastic change in their lifestyle. This is a prime example of the heavy emphasis American’s of that time placed on economic stability and social standings. However, Irving chooses to resolve this problem by having the “loving and endearing” wife be acceptable with the lifestyle change and revel in the power of her love for her husband and the prospect that their lesser way of living will only draw them closer to each other and deeper in love, overcoming everything else.