Polly In Sharon Draper's Copper Sun

The reader can express from the novel that Phillis Wheatley was a lucky slave that her slavery gave her life a big turnaround. Phillis Wheatley gain the title of being the first African American that became a poet, she was kidnapped at the short age of seven to be sold to a wealthy family in the Boston slave auction in 1761 and later was brought to America. Phillis had the chance to receive an education due to Susannah Wheatley, Phillis was taught to read and write as well as being able to know the Bible. She was a smart child that took advantage of her slavery and took advantage of every opportunity she had to write about freedom, slavery and religion through her writings in poetry. For her it was the voice of expression she had of being able

That is how Harriet Jacobs’s life was depicted in “A Perilous Passage in the Slave Girl’s Life”. Harriet Jacobs was the first black slave woman to stand and prove that she is not weak, submissive, or property. Jacobs did not do it just for the black women but as a black person

She has been caught between two fires: racial dehumanization in the form of “slavery” and “lynching” on the one hand, and the call for “being good” and exerting effort for the betterment of oneself on the other. Self-development and betterment of oneself date back to Booker T. Washington who called for peaceful co-existence with white people instead of protesting against racism. He called colored people to work hard and realize achievements in order to prove to white people that they deserve equal treatment. Finney does not agree on some values and beliefs of the past as she criticizes Washington’s viewpoint by portraying a hard-done-by protagonist who has “heard / 7,844 Sunday sermons on how God made every / woman in his image (Finney, Head off & Split 9: 60-62). Parks has also “hemmed 8,230 skirts “for white women and hemmed out “18,809 pants legs” for white boys.

Miss Martha’s compassionate ways were also shown in the way she stood up for the slaves while her husband was away. On numerous occasions, she was able to override Rankin’s harsh rule over the slaves. Miss Martha also treated the slaves, who were personal attendants, with great respect. Some wives of this time period could be quite rude to their help, but Miss Martha was different. She was civil with them.

But, he then goes to show how her transformation came to be of a true mistress and how that kind of foolish power corrupted her. She was not a bad person, but being able to control over another human being transformed her from an angel into a demon. Douglass saw the change in her how “That cheerful eye, under the influence of slavery, soon became red with rage; that voice, made all of sweet accord, changed to one of harsh and horrid discord; and that angelic face gave place to that of a demon” (38). This just shows how slavery affects not just the slave but the slave owners as well. This vicious cycle desecrates and destroys everyone involved.

However, it’s a known fact that the majority of enslaved women worked in the fields. In this novel, the enslaved women experiences mostly consisted of having to work in households as cooks, housekeepers; some as sexual slaves, and how some women became so used to the abuse that it was a norm. One of the experiences enslaved women happened to go through was having to work in households as cooks. While living in the Weylin household Dana meets various slaves including one whose name is Sarah. Sarah was a “stocky middle-aged woman” who not only struggled as an enslaved women but also as the cook of the Weylin household (Butler 72).

Their mindset suggests that they were dubbed as superior. Anything other than a “white” man was property. As a result, members of the “black” community were denoted as a purchase rather than a living being. The owners of their slaves had no regard to how anyone else felt; shown by how they dehumanized African Americans. They make the argument that property cannot have property, therefore Plessy is not allowed to sit as he

Don’t get your hands dirty by dealin’ with darkies” (78). Hence, Polly sees the slaves as below her and is appalled when she is expected to live with them (91). Through her actions, Polly demonstrates that she is jealous of the slaves because of their ability to find work and does not realize that the slaves do not choose to work, but are forced to work. Polly wonders, “who could compete with someone who worked for free” (75) and thinks that the slaves “ought to be grateful” because they were saved from savagery in the jungle (76). This leads Polly to see herself as more intelligent than the slaves, though in the later half of the

White women in slaveholding families in the south were one of the main forces behind the oppression of African American men and women. In society these white women held no real power but in the comfort of their domestic domains they were granted more power; so, these women took power where they could and became mistress to a slave. At a young age, they were taught how to manage slaves as well as being their master. In one case, a mistress had full power over the estate and managed it on her own without her husband’s help . Consequently, she held the power that she would not have had outside of the home.

Faulkner describes black people by a derogatory term “negro” to emphasize the main issue of the southern mentality. However, author pays the equal attention to gender inequality. Starting from the very beginning Faulkner describes Emily’s unquestionable obedience towards the constraints that her father put on her life. Emily is the symbol of old American south, yet her character has a lot in common with women of younger generation “Only a man of Colonel Satoris’s generation could have invented it and only a women could have believed it” (Faulkner), it is not women’s competence to think by themselves; the statement that Faulkner wants make in this part is that men are superior gender.

The white people viewed slaves as sub-human, and a black woman who was mentally superior was not something they would have encountered before. Dana explains what Margaret, Tom’s wife, may have been feeling; “I don’t think Margaret likes educated slaves any better than her husband does…. He can barely read and write. And she’s not much better” (Butler 82).

Everyone in the town thought of Emily has a wonderful person. Some people even described her as, “a tradition, a duty and a care.” (#) The town admired her wealth and her social status. After the civil war, there is still a lot of racism.

Women who could afford slaves had a life of more leisure, but the less fortunate women in both regions had to prepare their own food, clean their houses, and wash their clothes (Watterson

One of the main themes of the novel is Racism. During the time of depression, racism and poverty were a common issue. People with a dark skin tone, i.e the African- Americans were seen as derogatory and treated like dirt. Harper Lee depicts it in a very realistic way.

A constant comparison and contrast between Maggie and Dee is prominent structural feature of the narrative. This structural strategy helps in conceptualizing the plurality of female experience within the same milieu. This strategy encapsulates another dimension of womanism, viz. , womanism refuses to treat black woman as a homogeneous monolith. Unlike feminist position, womanism is sensitive to change with time.