Angel Of The Home Analysis

This is the ultimate loss of identity because indirectly by Mavis denying her children and breaking the bond between mother and child, she is in a sense denying herself and her natural inclination to care for her children. When Mavis and her husband are in bed together, we see Morrison compares her to a ?Raggedy Ann doll,?(26) illustrating the fact that Mavis? identity meant nothing to her husband. Ironically, it takes this initial shed of self for Mavis to be able to escape the bondage her husband has over her. An article by the Radicalesbians supports this fact by stating that the male culture?s definition of ?woman? binds a woman to sexual and family functions (Radicalesbians). Unfortunately, Mavis? husband didn?t allocate ?family functions? as including the needs of his children coming before his own needs. Another indication of a lack of identity in this is Mavis? mother?s ability to turn Mavis in when she runs away to her home. Her mother, a traditional woman, is unable to understand the idea of a woman running away from her family even if it is to save herself. Her informing Mavis? husband of Mavis? whereabouts is the result of her unwillingness to recognize the similarities between her own lack of identity and her daughter?s, another tendency of women stated in the article.

“Incidents in the Life of a Slave” by Harriet Jacobs is an autobiographical narrative. It gives us a look inside in how the lives of slave women were, the troubles they faced and how they met them, especially the sexual abuses they suffered by their masters. She tells us how her master had the “right” to impregnate the slave and then that child would have to follow in its mother’s life as a slave. It took a lot of courage to stand

Although the daughter’s shame in her mother is evident, she is also prideful of her as well. The strong love that the mother and daughter share is pervasive throughout the story. The story is being told by the daughter after she is all grown up. The fact that Jones uses such vivid detail on the mother’s preparation for her daughters first day of school shows that the daughter loved her mom and all that she did for her. The daughter recalls that her mother spent a lot of time preparing her when she says, “My mother has uncharacteristically spent nearly an hour on my hair that morning, plaiting and replaiting so that now my scalp tingles.” (Jones) She also remembers that her “pale green slip and underwear are new, the underwear having come three to a plastic package with a little girl on the front who appears to be dancing.” (Jones) The daughter having remembered details like these illustrate that she has an immense love and takes pride

First and foremost, she silences herself when she chooses to tell her story under the pseudonym “Linda Brent”. In this way, she uses someone else as a vessel of power to tell her own story. As a female African-American slave, Jacobs is a member of perhaps the most systemically silenced group of all. However, she learns to use the secrecy forced upon her as power. She lets her voice break the silence as she informs readers about the sexual and emotional abuse that often couples females’ experiences of slavery. As the story progresses, Jacobs begins illustrating silence as a way of loosening the shackles of slavery. She talks to and informs readers through her narrative and communicates the importance of silence through Linda Brent. Linda shares secrets with other slaves and they use their hushed whispers as a way to empower each other and share common experience as silence transforms from something forced upon them to something that forestalls the power of their masters and

The middle echelon in the late 1800s of New York had no idea about some issues of the poor and unfortunate faced. Riis attempt of exposing the unbearable events happening to innocent, beautiful, heaven-made waifs was successful. Jacobs Riis divulged the actions of mothers that saw nowhere to turn to with a baby they couldn’t or did not want to fend for. The document “reveals the bitter consequences of desperate poverty for mothers and children,” (p.67) consequences being the many young lives that were cut short, due to a decision that they had no say in and guilt, hatred, and depression the mother faced after “having to” abandon a being they brought into this world.

She tells of the feeling of shame which emerge from not even having a bed throughout her entire childhood (3). She does reassure that she has the security of her family being the only constant in her life, “Close and sweet and loving. Lucky me on my small pallet on the floor” (4). Travelling every summer “We never knew from one day to the next, from one year to the next, where we would go or live or what we would do” (127), her security of her family seemed always there “Having lived in other people’s houses, barns, and in migrant housing in various stages of decay and repair, it felt as though we could make a home out of anything” (99).

Physical violence wasn’t the only hardship that she endured in her early life. Her family became severed when three of her sisters were sold to other plantations that were far away. A trader from Georgia approached interested in buying her youngest brother, but their mother successfully resisted, preventing further

When a reader encounters the story ‘Our Nig’ it’s bound to leave them looking at the experiences of women differently. It’s an emotional autobiography that develops into a miserable experience of oppression and victimization on gender identities. The transition of the narrator from a young, beautiful mullato girl into an emotionally and physically crippled woman highlights the horrors of the society towards women but increases the pain because they are inflicted by other women. Harriet E. Wilson tells her story of the oppressions she suffers when she lived at a family house in the North of the US, where she undergoes violence and denigration. I mention in the North here to remove the assumption of slavery. She was a free

For centuries, women have had the role of being the perfect and typical house wife; needs to stay home and watch the children, cook for husbands, tend to the laundry and chores around the house. In her short story “Girl”, Jamaica Kincaid provides a long one sentence short story about a mother giving specific instructions to her daughter but with one question towards the end, with the daughter’s mother telling her daughter if she had done all the instructions to become a so called “perfect” woman, every man would want her. Kincaid’s structuring in “Girl,” captures a demanding and commanding tone. This short story relates to feminist perspectives. The mother expects a great deal from her daughter to have a certain potential and she does not hesitate to let her daughter understand that. As a matter of fact, the story is about two pages long, made into one long sentence - almost the whole time the mother is giving her daughter directions to follow - conveys a message to the reader that the mother demands and expects great potential in her daughter. The daughter is forced to listen and learn from what her mother is telling her to do to become the perfect housewife. Throughout the story, Kincaid uses the symbols of the house and clothing, benna and food to represent the meanings of becoming a young girl to a woman and being treated like one in society. Women are portrayed to appeal to a man to become the ideal woman in society, while men can do anything they please.

Some critics have argued that Richard Wright’s women are “flat, one dimensional stereotypes, portrayed primarily in terms of their relationship to the male character”. (Quote, p540) However, in Uncle Tom’s Children, Wright resents three very distinct types of female characters who did not fit this description. Wright portrays women as an Avenger, a Sufferer and a Mother figure whose actions propel the stories to their final conclusion. In the story “Bright and Morning Star” Wright places the protagonist, Aunt Sue, in a domestic environment. “Her hands followed a lifelong ritual of toil” (pg222) as she cleans and cooks. Interestingly, Aunt Sue is the only heroine in the stories, who shows a different type of bravery than perhaps shown by

Looking at the female slave as a mother, we find that she fetishizes her relationship with her child. Fueling her state of distortion further, we suggest that the mother believes her infant son’s existence is another mistakes. Boldly, the mother takes on the unprecedented role of God and makes a multitude of distasteful decisions about her infant son. Like deeming his fair skin unbearable, predicting that as an adult he will claim a “master-right” over black slaves, and finally ending his life. By all accounts, the mother is unable to make sensible decisions about anything.

Jacobs creates a connection by demonstrating her horrible experience as a slave and her humiliation in her choices to escape it: “Pity me, and pardon me, O virtuous reader! You never knew what it is to be a slave; to be entirely unprotected by law or custom; to have the laws reduce you to the condition of a chattel, entirely subject to the will of another” (919). This shows that Jacobs attempts a draw an emotional response from free women so they will her understand of not only her experience as a female slave, but of many enslaved women that were subject to the same abuse as she. Nudelman states that on the title page of the first edition “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,” there is the Scripture Isaiah 32:9: “Rise up, ye women that are at ease! Hear my voice, ye care less daughters! Give ear unto my speech.” This illustrates Jacobs’ motive of mobilizing free women to look upon enslaved women, pity them, and strive to free them. Continuing, Jacobs also uses her time in her grandmother’s crawl space to establish a connection with her female audience with a motherly dilemma. She is able to see her children, but she is unable to speak to them, nor give them the knowledge that she is directly above them (923). Mothers could sympathize with Jacobs wondering how they would respond if they were separated from their kids.

Jacobs autobiography which is known by the name of ‘Incidents in a Life of a Slave Girl’ gave a true account of the treatment that black women faced during that time and also throwing some light on a perception which has been kept in shadows from the society. While writing the story of her life, Jacobs though focused on her defeat due to obstacles like race and gender, gave voice to something which was hidden from society regardless of the presence of patriarchal society of the nineteenth century.

Shielded from the atrocities of slavery during her childhood, Jacobs depicts family life among slaves as one that remains intact in a “comfortable home” (29) through the example of her own family. Each member held limited rights along with the ability to work and the privilege to use their earnings as they pleased. It is not until the death of her mistress where she finally begins to feel the effects of slavery in the sudden separation of her family who are “all distributed among her [mistress’s] relatives” (Jacobs 33). The separation of family is one of the most integral subjects of her narrative since “motherhood [plays a great role] in her life” (Wolfe 518). Jacobs appeals to the emotions of her female audiences by contrasting a slave mother’s agonies in her separation from her children with the “happy free women” (40) whose children remain with her since “no hand” (40) has the right to take them away. The separation of families in Douglass’s narrative does call for some pity but the event is not as tragic in comparison to

This need to separate the angelic qualities of women into a totally separate world might come from the desire to protect one’s mother, and plays into the idea of the eternal feminine that must be preserved. “She has no story of her own but gives ‘advice and consolation’ to others, listens, smiles, sympathizes…” (Gilbert and Gubar 815). The aunt is a perfect example of such feminine qualities and represents the untainted light of civilization.