The passage that actually gave me shivers was when Tom Loker says on page 59, "This yer young un's mine, and not yourn, and you've no kind o' business with it." That is terrifying. Even white people who were dirt poor and in an economically similar boat to black people, could still comfort themselves with the fact that they'll always have family, nothing could take that away from them (I mean, besides death and all). Black women owned absolutely nothing, not even something that was biologically theirs. Its hard imagining how this must have felt.
Friday, January 27, 2012
Mother-Child Relationship
One thing that has shocked me thoroughly while reading Uncle Tom's Cabin, is the insensitive and inaccurate beliefs of the slave masters and slave traders that pertain to the mother-child relationship among black people. They seem to believe that black mothers have no natural attachment to their children. Animals that are mammals even express motherly care and devotion for their young! These slave masters and traders are so baffled by the behavior of mothers that have had their children torn from them. They view the mothers' outbursts as dramatic and unnecessary and should basically just "get over it". Family ties are apparently meant to be broken among black people.
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A good post, Anna! I like how you make focus on a single, important point, support it with evidence, and share your personal response. Very well done!
ReplyDeleteThis post puts Haley's "business first" mentality into a philosophical context for me. In what respects can a person really be "owned"? If you own a chair or a sofa, you own it materially. If you own a dog or a cat, you have responsibility for its action and discretion over its movement. If you own a human being, as I think Stowe is trying to show us, you obviously do not own their humanity, like George's desire for recognition and fulfillment or Eliza's superhuman motivation to save her child from a life of increased cruelty and degradation.
ReplyDeleteEven Uncle Tom's religious and personal devotion is something that by its very nature is impossible without a conscious, principled, feeling self.