Imagery in Frances E. W. Harper's "The Slave Mother"

After reading Frances E. W. Harpers poem, “The Slave Mother,” I noticed that one of the main techniques she used in her work was very vivid imagery.  In telling the story of a child of a slave being taken from his mother, Harper employs words and phrases that evoke the intense pain and suffering of the slave mother. The continuing images of pain, suffering and terrible sadness come across very clearly in the poem. In the first stanza, we hear the screams of the mother, which “rose wildly in the air,” conveying the uncontrollable grief shown in the poem. Harper describes the mother in detail as having “hands so sadly clasped/The bowed and feeble head/The shuddering of that fragile form/That grief and dread?” By using these many descriptive adjectives, Harper paints a terribly sad portrait of a woman almost destroyed and crippled by the grief of losing her child. This image is used to generate sympathy for the mother from the readers who are shown how deep and tragic the woman’s sadness is. Harper is appealing to the readers’ emotions of pity, and possibly hoping to have readers who might be mothers themselves identify with the plight of a mother being separated from her child. 

Blog Post #6: Caught In Between

Lydia Marie Child’s The Quadroons is a case study of what it means to be caught between races in the 1800’s.  In the story, both Rosalie and her child Xarifa eventually fall into misfortune because of their race. The progression of both their lives goes from good to bad, or, if you will, light to dark, which could be seen as a symbol of how they are viewed throughout the story in terms of race. Rosalie begins in the “white” stages; she is happily married to a white man and has a beautiful daughter. However, her life soon begins to darken when her husband takes a fancy to a white woman. It is then that her race becomes an issue, and also is what causes her and her husband to separate. The same character arc can be seen in Xarifa’s story: she is beautiful, admired and adored by all until race brings about her enslavement, and eventually her demise. Both of these women illustrate precisely the idea of the Tragic Mulatta. Though they are virtuous, kind, and even beautiful socially respectable women, their race holds them back from happiness, and through no fault of their own, is eventually what causes their destruction.

            One thing that I took away from this reading was how Rosalie and Xarifa’s status as a Mulatta kept them from engaging fully on either side. Being part African American, Xarfia could never truly be a part of the white society due to the deep, inherent racism of the time. Also, because of her upbringing in a predominantly white society, she was not treated as a slave until she was repossessed, and therefore obviously unfamiliar with the harshness of such a life. In a way, I saw that Xarifa was doomed to insanity from the start, as she was unable to escape or either part of her identity. In addition to the shock of becoming a slave horrible treatment she endured, a crisis of identity could have been another of the many contributing factors to her insanity at the end of the story. The tragedy of this story is that the people of this time saw only the side of a Mulatta that they wanted to see. In the end, choosing to recognize her as a slave's offspring rather than a white man's daughter benefitted them more, regardless of her beauty, character and poise.

Blog Post #4: Sure as Death

While reading Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’s story “The Tenth of January,” I was struck by the sudden, unexpected and very violent ending. However, upon re-examination of the story, I noticed that Phelps had employed the plot technique of foreshadowing Sene’s death several times. The one instance that really jumped out for me occurred relatively early on in the story, when Sene sees Dick and Del together by the stream. Close to heartbreak, Sene resolves to investigate and check to see if the man was really her Dick, saying “I won’t be a fool, I’ll make sure, I’ll make sure as death.” This again brings up the idea of death in relation to Sene’s character in the story. This statement stuck out to me as a parallel to the end of the story in a way that the other mentions of death did not because it is sadly ironic. In the end of the story, it is in fact in death that Sene “makes sure” of her fear that Dick would choose Del over her, and that his love for her is lost, as Phelps says “for a scratch upon [Del’s] smooth cheek, he had quite forgotten her.” To me, by paralleling Sene’s earlier statement, the tragedy of Sene’s horrific death is both enhanced and also paralleled by the tragedy of her lost love. 

Blog Post #3: Quiet Strength

While reading Washington Irving’s The Wife, I expected to see a somewhat stereotypical view of women as associated with Irving’s time period. What I was surprised to find was that, though the common view of women as weak is present, Irving challenges that classification with a very different take on women. The Wife highlights the true strength of a woman, even if it is hidden beneath a soft and tender exterior. I thought that it was very interesting to see these two very different views of women juxtaposed so closely, especially given the time period in which this was written. In Irving’s world, women were ideally supposed to be tender, frail, slight, weak and dependent on their husbands, and were rarely involved in anything more than trivial matters. However, directly after describing this feminine ideal, Irving goes on to say that beneath the delicate exterior of a lady, there hides a strong, brave, and steadfast spirit that makes a woman strong even when men cannot. Irving illustrates this point by describing a delicate vine wrapped around a sturdy oak tree, that, when the oak tree is broken by lightning, clings to the shrapnel and holds it together. I think that it is very refreshing to see recognition of a woman’s strength in writing, especially by a male author. It is nice to know that this quiet strength that women have is recognized by others, and written about in such a pleasing light from one of the most famous authors in history.