Humanity and Motherhood in The History of Mary Prince

The account of the first time Mary Prince is sold with her sisters at a slave auctions is one of the most disturbing narratives in The History of Mary Prince. The very first stage of selling Mary involves the removing of her clothes and replacing them with a "osnaburg" (589). Both of her sisters are given the same coarse linen to wear. The sisters are given these osnaburgs to remove any evidence of their humanity to bidders at the auction. Mrs. Williams, Miss Betsey, and Mrs. Pruden most likely would have allowed Mary to wear articles of clothing that were especially hers. The removing of these items represents the removing of Mary's humanity to erase any guilt white bidders might have during the auction. Dressing Mary in the same clothes as all the other slaves at auction destroys her individuality. It makes the slaves seem more livestock like to the white bidders. However Mary's mother's presence at the auction demands that white bidders see them as human.

It is incredibly disturbing that Mary's mother is the one who walks them to the auction and even places them "in a row against a large house, with [their] backs to the wall" (590). This situation is so disturbing to read about because it is such a human moment. The girls have been set up as nothing more than livestock, but their mother is present because it is her duty as a mother to watch over them until she no longer can. This account is parallel to a dying person surrounding their death bed with loved ones. Humans want to be surrounded by those they love in horrible times and the presence of Mary's mother at the auction proves both their humanity and similarity to people of all races. Mary's mother standing next to her daughters at the auction forces the bidders to see them as people. Perhaps this is another reason Mary's mother wants to be present at the auction. She is trying to create sympathy for her daughters to be sold into kind homes. However this attempt fails and exhibits how immune to attempts of humanization the white bidders are.

Esmeralda Rodriguez

     Cowper’s poem gives a sort of teasing tone, such as when saying “curious assortment of dainty regales” (line 11). In other words, sweet talking “negroes” more than likely with false promises in order to have them board the ship. Then adorning “fine chains around the neck” (line 13) and using “a cat with nine tails”, a whip, perhaps to force slaves into submission.

     Barbauld says in her poem, “Forced her averted eyes his stripes to scan/Beneath the bloody scourge laid bare the man” (line 7-8). The “stripes”, or opened wounds caused by the lash, would be gruesome, enough to make Barbauld turn away.

     What is interesting about Cowper’s poem however, is how he writes “which nobody can deny” after each and every verse. As if saying “I cannot make this up”. The pictures painted throughout the poem, through every stanza, give an insight as to what happened on slave ships. Such as line 30 through 34, seeing the slaves lying on their back in the deck below.

     And also, part of Cowper’s poem, is the various tools or methods used on slaves to weaken and have them submit. Such as “supple-jack” and “rat-tan” (line 15), which were used as switches or canes; also “padlocks and bolts, and screws fir the thumbs” (line 19), which would be like shackles tightening around their skin until they bled; and finally, “victuals withdraws” (line 23) or starvation.

     What Cowper does is vividly depict the horrors and atrocity that went on in these ships, and although sounding mocking or playful with the rhyming scheme and the consistent song-like “which nobody can deny”, it does not denote the fact these were events and tools and methods frequently used on slaves. 

Felicia Hemens

The Effigies

This poem starts out telling us about the way a fallen hero is remembered and honored for his actions. He is rewarded for his actions in battle by fame. The woman he left behind is not honored for her actions. While he is at battle she continues to tend to his home (line 43-44), prays for his safety (line 45) and waits for him to return (line 48). None of her actions are celebrated although in losing her knight she has also made a great sacrifice for her homeland. Not only is  her sacrifice just as great but a death in battle requires a great heroic moment while she has to live her sacrifice day in day out for the rest of her life.

The argument could also be made that his fame is temporary. The poem mentions that his name is “faded from the stone” (lines 5-6) and that the speaker has to trace his deed “through a cloud of years.” (lines 7-8) At this point our warrior is still remembered but the world is starting to forget him. We are given vague descriptions of his heroic deeds (lines 9-16) and we are told that the leaders celebrated his deeds. I wonder if she is also criticizing the leaders who order men into battle from their safe, lofty positions (lines 17-18) and who celebrate the victories with “blood-red wine” (line 20) with little thought to the individual lives that are impacted by these actions.

The Image in Laura

This poem made me think of the discussion in class on Tuesday over “The Skylark.” Shelley was writing about achieving “unpremeditated art” a higher form of art than something purposefully created by following our established blueprints for building something artistic. It seems to me that Hemans is arguing that this woman who died trying to protect her child from the volcanic eruption at Herculaneum achieved just that. She compares the impression to manmade art multiple times (lines 9-12, 33-36) to show us that there is no comparison. This impression tells us more about human love (lines 37-41) and sacrifice (lines 21-24) than a state-commissioned piece of art ever could.  We don’t know who this woman was but her actions left an impression upon the very earth.

Woman and Fame

This poem goes into the fleetingness and fickleness of fame. The first few stanzas go into the allure of fame. It tells us about how people strive for it and how it calls to us. Many look at as a path to a sort of immortality. Women are denied access to this kind of fame and are confined to the domestic sphere (lines 17-18 and the quote before the poem). At the same time she questions if fame is worth pursuing. She refers to it as “hollow” and questions what it really does to enrich us. Fame doesn’t live up to what it promises us.

11/10 Hemans

Though all of Felicia Hemans' poetry assigned contains the immortalizing of women, The Effigies pulled at me the most. Her connection between the Warrior and the Woman, and how they were each immortalized is what pulled at me the most.

The Warrior is immortalized not just by his tomb, not by his name, but through his heroic acts. Everything else about him has been lost to time, but the heroic story of what he done can be traced back to him. His tomb is just another dedication to his acts as the Warrior.

The Woman, however, her heroic deeds are not immortalized with the tomb, but her place by the Warrior side. We do not know her story, but the poem assumes that her place beside the Warrior was full of grief. While the Warrior lives through a tale of victory, her tale can only be a tale of woe unable to stand against the test time. We remember these great Warriors that fight heroic battles, but the women who stand beside them sacrifice not their lives, but their hearts, their stories fade and only the Warrior's acts remain. No songs are sung about them. When their name fades from history. their acts of love and sacrifice are not immortalized. Their tomb beside the Warrior's is the only tribute to them and it is a tribute to their place beside the Warrior.  The Effigies does not tell you the story  of the Warrior, it tells the story of the Woman and gives her the praise history chose to forget.

Felicia Hemans

I found it interesting how all of Hemans' poems that we read had something to do with immortalizing the memory of long-deceased woman. I know on Tuesday how we talked about how she, Shelley and Keats we all interested in their own mortality and memory, but that still didn't prepare me for the way her poems seemed to say "Hey, women are awesome and deserve to be revered long after their deaths."

Mostly, I was interested in how--aside from "Woman and Fame"--her poems all seem to be about other women. In fact, the women in "Effigies" and "Lava" don't even have names, but Hemans sought to write about them all the same. By comparison, the works we read by Keats and Shelley (to a lesser extent) we focused on themselves. I wondered what it might be that made Hemans call attention to the memories of these other women. Was it a sort of quid pro quo, where if she wanted her own place in popular memory she should make sure to remember other women?

I also found it interesting that she embraces femininity in the poems. In "Effigies" she unironically calls the woman in the statue "gentle" and praises her presumed devotion to her husband. In "Lava," she gushes about maternal affection. Neither of these seem snide in any way, but rather comign from a deep respect for these "feminine" traits. But perhaps I'm only getting the surface sensations again.

11/8 - Shelley and Blake

Shelley's "To the Skylark" seemed pretty straightforward to me until the last couple of stanzas where he shifts from questioning the bird and envying it because as humans "Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought" (90), to understanding that if humans could attain the mindset of the bird then it would make the bird's joy kind of obsolete. He says that if we could scorn all the negative emotions, like the bird seems to, then he knows "not how thy joy we ever should come near" (95), so I guess he could be trying to say that to truly appreciate joy, human's also must experience pain and sadness.
I saw some of that idea in Keat's "Ode on Indolence" when he talks about his indolence giving him a numbing feeling where "Pain had no sting, and pleasure's wreath no flower" (18), he's not subject to pain, but he also isn't feeling any joy. Based on his letter to George and Georgiana, Keat's was trying not to think about his friend's father dying, and so was trying to ignore love, ambition, and poetry because they would disrupt his goal of attaining disinterestedness (or a state unmotivated by self-interest) which I think connects with the line "A pet-lamb in a sentimental farce" (54).
I think both poems contain the idea that joy (and poetry) spring from pain, and maybe where Shelley is more hopeful about learning from the skylark ("Teach me half the gladness/ That thy brain must know" (101), Keat's is weary of learning it because he thinks "nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced" (pg 856) and he doesn't actually want the experience that will make his poetry authentic so he tells love, ambition, and poetry to leave him and never come back.

"To a Skylark" Reflection

After I read this poem, I was curious to know exactly what a skylark was. I know the poem does explain to us that it is a bird but I wanted to know what was different about THIS particular bird. I thought some of you may be interested to know as well. This is what I found, and although it isn't the most reliable source we use, I found this information to be interesting.

"It is a bird of open farmland and heath, known throughout its range for the song of the male, which is delivered in hovering flight from heights of 50 to 100 m, when the singing bird may appear as just a dot in the sky from the ground. The long, unbroken song is a clear, bubbling warble delivered high in the air while the bird is rising, circling or hovering. The song generally lasts two to three minutes, but it tends to last longer later in the mating season, when songs can last for 20 minutes or more." (Wikipedia)

Now I can understand more of the beauty to this bird and why the poet made this bird seem to be so beautiful and inspiring. It is as if the narrator wants to be able to escape from the human life, and have no worries or thoughts, but to soar above the clouds like this bird. I get the feeling that the narrator envies the bird. No, it is not specifically spoken in the poem, but it is a feeling you get while you are reading it. They way the bird is identified and compared to so many beautiful things in the poem, and how you can feel the authors want of just wanting to escape and sing as the skylark can. One of the stanzas that I mostly related with is , "What objects are the fountains Of thy happy strain? What fields, or waves, or mountains?  What shapes of sky, or plain? What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?" (Lines 71-75) It is the narrator asking questions to this bird about it's secrets that it cannot tell, and the narrator wishes they could relate and have this ignorance of pain.