September, 1918

Have you ever been going through the roughest time of your life and you wonder when it’ll lighten up? And in the midst of whatever may be going wrong, something good happens. You see a squirrel holding one to many nuts in its mouth, an old couple on a date, something good that lightens your day just a little. The peaceful bliss in the time of dark war was the emotion I received from Amy Lowell’s September. The poem was written in 1918, which is nearing the end of World War I. 

Lowell starts her poem light and airy, almost like one could imagine themselves outside on a nice day. The opening paragraph has the essence of a warm fall, with, “This afternoon was the colour of water falling through sunlight” and “The sidewalks shone...And the houses ran along them laughing…” This seems like a comparison to children running around the neighborhood playing. 

And then she says, “Two little boys, lying flat on their faces/Were carefully gathering red berries/To put in a pasteboard box.” so there are actually children, out and about, enjoying the weather.
After all the blissful descriptions, her second stanza begins with, “Some day there will be no war.” This line was surprising to me at first because the first stanza had been so relaxing and beautiful that I never would have thought a war was going on. After her statement about war one day being over, she says, “Then I shall take out this afternoon/And turn it in my fingers...And note the crisp variety of its flights of leaves.” She then goes on, in summary, to say that she will pack up this day and save it for a better day, perhaps a day without war, and reminisce on the happiness she tried to feel.
She ends the poem by saying, “For I have time for nothing/But the endeavour to balance myself/Upon a broken world.” This summary clarifies the fact that she did feel joy in that moment, but she couldn't enjoy it knowing what was going on in the world elsewhere. This poem is relatable to everyone, whether we be going through war or not, because we can all think of a time where we felt sad or depressed and yet something made us feel a little less blue. Even for a moment.

Uncle Tom's Cabin: Personal Synthesis

Personal Synthesis: Domesticity in Uncle Tom’s Cabin

“The Cult of True Womanhood/Cult of Domesticity” seems to reappear in multiple places throughout Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The four different parts of it contain piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. When referring to those four terms they are usually meant to be traits that are desirable and necessary in women. Male and female slaves have these qualities as well as the few white female characters seen throughout the book. Three of the four terms are prominently found in most of the book: piety, submissiveness, and domesticity.

Piety is shown through women and their spiritual center of home; they are expected to be religious and teach their family about said religion. Most, if not all, the slaves had religion. They used it to tell themselves that suffering hell on earth would be worth a lifetime in paradise. On page fifteen, George is telling Eliza that he’s not a Christian like her and questions how someone (God) could let atrocities like slavery continue. She replies with, “O, George, we must have faith. Mistress says that when all things go wrong to us, we must believe that God is doing the very best” (Stowe). Mrs. Shelby has passed on her duties as a woman to spread the word of God to Eliza, who then spreads it to her family. Tom is also a strong character that is pious. His sermons make even the heaviest non-believer have faith, if only for a moment, and his songs bring joy to all.

Submissiveness was demonstrated by the passivity of women; they were told to stay out of the way and to respect men and God. One character who is the epitome of submissiveness is Tom. He seems to be oblivious to how terrible he’s being treated, whether it’s because his faith is so strong or because he’s a mellow kind of guy, he rarely gets fired up about anything. He’d sooner throw himself on the line to protect another slave or person with little regard to his own life. His loyalty not only to his slave brethren, but his white masters, is generally disturbing. After St. Claire gives Tom freedom, Tom says, “Not while Mas’r is in trouble. . . I’ll stay with Mas’r as long as he wants me, --so as I can be any use” (Stowe, 279).

After St. Clare dies and is sold to Legree, Tom’ doesn’t falter there, either. His loyalty to Legree is perplexing when Legree has treated him worse than any owner Tom’s been with. Yet, when Legree is ready to kill Tom, he’s only concerned for his masters soul. Tom says:

Mas’r, if you was sick, or in trouble, or dying, and I could save ye, I’d give ye my heart’s blood; and, if taking every drop of blood in this poor old body would save your precious soul, I’d give ‘em freely, as the Lord gave his for me. O, Mas’r, don’t bring this great sin on your soul! It will hurt you more that ‘t will me! Do the worst you can, my troubles’ll be over soon; but if ye don’t repent, yours won’t never end! (Stowe)

Legree has treated Tom as if he were less than human, yet Tom holds him to the same caliber he did with Shelby and LeClaire. He isn't pleading for his life, he's trying to save Legree's soul by telling him not to commit murder. Tom seems to care more about Legree's life rather than his own since Tom seems to know his "troubles'll be over soon". At this point, I recall Cantave's point of leaving out the horrors and reality of slavery. This scene was off to a "good" start when it came to Legree nearly beating Tom to death, but at this point I don't think any person could lie there and preach about their abuser's soul. As Northup described, being poked, prodded, inspected, separated from their family, doing laborious tasks, treated like animals rather than people, and being whipped and tortured would surely bring out the worst of even the best religious person.

Lastly, domesticity. Women were expected to keep their place inside the home by keeping up its maintenance and appearance. It’s in a different way that the women of Uncle Tom’s Cabin take control of their home. Mrs. Bird convinces her husband that it’s his moral obligation to put religion before law when it came to helping Eliza and her baby. St. Claire shares the affects his mother’s domesticity had on him by saying, "She was divine! ... She probably was of mortal birth; but as far as ever I could observe, there was no trace of any human weakness or error about her ...She was a direct embodiment of the New Testament" (Stowe, 205).

Women, and Tom, play an important role is this book. They are confined to their homes and students of religion, but they are not completely naive to their surroundings. There are female characters that show strength, courage, and intelligence when it comes to knowing what to do and exactly how to keep the men in line. Tom’s religious beliefs helped many slaves make it through the gruesome times They use what they know, specifically religion, as manipulation to achieve goals that are usually morally justifiable. Their submissiveness, piety, and domesticity contributed to how other characters formed; perhaps St. Claire would have been more like Legree had his mother not been so domestic.

Uncle Tom's Cabin: Critical Commentary

Critical Commentary: Who Gets to Create the Lasting Images? The problem of Black Representation in Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Sophia Cantave (p.582)

Sophia Cantave wrote Who Gets to Create the Lasting Images? The problem of Black Representation in Uncle Tom’s Cabin which talks about Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin in a critical manner. She raises several points about slavery and how books about slavery during that time period never fully expressed the absolute horrors of slavery. Specifically, Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig were criticized heavily for their romanticized version of slavery. Harriet Wilson mentioned in her preface, “I have purposefully omitted what would most provoke shame in our good anti-slavery friends at home” (Cantave). I haven’t read Harriet Wilson’s book, but I can attest to the fact that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was too fluffy when it came to the slavey accounts. Stowe surely had a wide variety of characters and shared a good number of views that could have been held by slaves, but it didn’t cover the true atrocities slaves suffered.

The writer acknowledges that the book is a very inadequate representation of slavery [because] slavery, in some of its working, is too dreadful for the purposes of art. A work which should represent it strictly as it is would be a work which could not be read; and all works which ever mean to give pleasure must draw a veil somewhere, or they cannot succeed”. In fiction, therefore, one can “find refuge from the hard and the terrible, by inventing scenes and characters of a more pleasing nature.” (Cantave)

Cantave makes a good point, here. In class, we've discussed how Stowe was more romantic when it came to slavery. This explains why; authors felt slavery was too horrible, so horrible that people wouldn't read it. So by making it lighter, it would then be readable. The only scene that may have shed some light on what slaves endured is at the end when Tom is tortured to death, but even that scene was romanticized with the dialogue between him and George at the end. Cantave claims many of Stowe’s characters were unrelatable; African Americans especially had a problem with Topsy. “Many middle-class African Americans want to forget, or get past, the images of Topsy ‘just growing’ of Sambo and Quimbo, of Sam and Andy, of Chloe and Uncle Tom himself” (Cantave).

Although Stowe’s account of slavery isn’t told as brutally as it actually was, I don’t know if she could’ve written it any other way. In today’s society, it’s more acceptable to be blunt when it comes to real life events, but I can imagine then it was already risque to be writing about slaves abandoning their owners. Another reason, perhaps, slavery wasn't told as gruesomely as it was in the books Cantave mentions is because they were fiction books; maybe people wouldn't have processed the reality of slavery in the same manner had it been based on true accounts. I agree with Cantave when it comes to slave stories being to light when it came to details about slavery. I don't think it was as common to find people who were compassionate towards there slaves, and in Uncle Tom's Cabin, we get four families who either treat their slaves kindly and/or help slaves escape (Shelby, Bird, the Quakers, LeClaire) and only one evil business man (Haley) and one cruel owner (Legree). Cantave helps point out these odds by showing stating how unrealistic the slave stories were due to the lack of cruelty experienced.

Uncle Tom's Cabin: Textual Background

Textual Background: A Slave Auction Described by a Slave, 1841 by Solomon Northup (p. 435)

A Slave Auction Described by a Slave was written by Solomon Northup in 1841. He begins the rather brief piece by explaining what the slaves endured before and during a slave auction. The men often wearing a new, cheap suit and cleanly shaven and women also finely dressed with frocks. Slaves were then arranged from tallest to shortest and separated by gender; men on one half of the room and the women on the other. They were taught to act like someone who wanted to be purchased, “exhorted us to appear smart and lively...he exercised us in the art of ‘looking smart,’ and of moving to our places with exact precision” (435).

Not only were the slaves examined on how they worked, but their physical conditions were also inspected. Buyers would, “feel of our hands and arms and bodies, turn us about, ask us what we could do, make us open our mouths and show our teeth, precisely as a jockey examines a horse which is about to barter for or purchase” (436). And if that wasn’t degrading enough, they were also taken and stripped for further examination; if scars upon a slave’s back were numerous it was considered proof of an unruly slave which in turn hurt the slave’s chances of being bought. (436)

This specific writing intertwines with the part of Uncle Tom’s Cabin when Eliza, among many other slaves, is being sold. Solomon spoke about families being separated and about Eliza’s separation from Randall. This piece added more emotion to the already heart-breaking scene when he describes her reactions, “Eliza was crying aloud, and wringing her hands. She besought the man not to buy him, unless he also bought herself and Emily” (436). Not only did she fight for her son against a white man, but she bargained with him. When her master tried to put her in her place, “Eliza shrunk before him, and tried to wipe away her tears, but it was all in vain. All the frowns and threats of Freeman, could not wholly silence the afflicted mother” (436).

Northup also wrote this piece in a way that makes the reader feel compassion, anger, and sadness with them. He writes with such precise sentiments that it feels like one could be there at the auction watching the events take place. Within the scene of it all, he describes the moments when Randall is separated from Eliza, which he describes as, “It was a mournful scene indeed. I would have cried myself if I had dared” (437).

Reading accounts like this makes my mind reel. It’s unreal how poorly slaves were treated at that time in history because I was raised to treat everyone with equality. My grandpa use to tell me to greet and treat a janitor the same way I would a CEO of a successful company -- with respect. To read about how white men inspected black men like they were an animal to be purchased was disgusting, and so was the separation of families. I cannot imagine being torn from my family because the slave owner did not have enough money or because they were not good enough. Scratch that, I cannot imagine even being a slave. Slavery was a disgusting part of history and I hope that’s where it stays, in the past. Northup's account of the slave trade helped me to put myself in that situation. From Stowe's account, it's more romanticized that how Northup describes it. When he describes the way they were touched and prodded, I tried to put myself in that state of mind. Reading it made me angry, which wasn't completely done when comparing it to Stowe's account of the auctions.

The Yellow Wallpaper

There are things in that paper which nobody knows but me, or ever will. Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day. It is always the same shape, only very numerous. And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I don’t like it a bit. I wonder—I begin to think—I wish John would take me away from here! (Gilman) 

This part from The Yellow Wallpaper was one that I found interesting. The reader is introduced to the story through the eyes of a narrator, whom we know is ill with something called temporary nervous depression. Her husband, and doctor, has prescribed her with a resting cure where she is not to do anything physically or mentally strenuous. The quote above, to me, proves that she goes bananas (which are also yellow and horrible) from the wallpaper because she saw herself in it.

At the beginning of the story, she describes the room by saying, "I should judge; for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls" (Gilman). Now, when I hear barred windows, I'm not thinking child safety -- I'm thinking preventing dangerous people from escaping, like a prison. Also the "rings" made me think of the barbed wire that curls along the tops of fences in protective areas, also like prison. Her husband, John, could play the warden. He shuts her up in a house to help her get better but prevents her from doing anything to physically or mentally grueling. John treats her more as a case than his wife and doesn't seem to notice that his "treatment" isn't working, The narrator describes John as, ". . .practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures" (Gilman). Perhaps this is why he cannot actively help his wife with her depression; depression is something he cannot physically grasps and therefore struggles with processing the reality of the disease.

When she says, "There are things in that paper which nobody knows but me, or ever will", I think she's talking about herself. She mentions early in the poem around where she describes her husband as practical, but also says that, "John is a physician, and perhaps--(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind)--perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster. You see he does not believe I am sick" (Gilman)! This goes hand in hand with the idea of her husband not being able to grasp her disease, but also leaving her feeling even more isolated by battling depression alone.

The line, "And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern" brought the whole picture together for me. She's isolated in a house, which is more like her prison, where she sees herself growing old in the background of life. John's sister, Jennie, is serving as a housekeeper and nurse, but also reminding the narrator of everything her husband won't allow her to do. She'll grow old blending in, much like the patterns of the wallpaper. Had John let her write and express her feelings instead of insisting he knew how to cure her, she probably would have seen the wallpaper in a different perspective.