A shattered soul

- Kloe’ Williams

A person’s position in the society of England was very much pre-determined before birth. There was little movement on the class ladder during the 1800’s. “The Runaway slave at Pilgrim’s point” paints a picture in the reader’s head of the different positions and roles that were implemented depending on one’s race, gender, and class status. Elizabeth Barrett Browning tells the story of a slave woman running away to escape persecution for killing her white child. This derived from her getting raped by the white men, which happened after she tried to have a relationship with another slave.

The poem begins with the slave woman bending down on her knee in the dark, and looking out at the sea, where the pilgrim’s once were. The slave feels like she is in the same boat as the pilgrims who fled the volatile political environment in England for calmer Holland, and eventually settling in North America. The pilgrims, the slave woman, and her white child are all running from the austere hands of those few white males that held the power.

I think this poem raises the question of who was in charge. Who was more involved in the lives of the people? Was it God, or the upper-class white males? For example the slave cries out in agony at not being able to be with her lover, and the fact that her pain goes largely unnoticed. “Yes, two, O God, who cried to Thee, though nothing didst Thou say. Coldly thou sat’st behind the sun!” (VIII, Browning) This poem was written when people were starting to question their faith and the bible as a literal interpretation. There was no longer an ideal of the world conforming to God’s wishes. Passage XXI, and XXII bring this idea to life when the slave woman is killing her child because she feels it is what is best, “to save it from my curse.” She felt that the child would live a life of misery, as she had lived, and only after death could the child be free. (XXI) The child is moaning and trembling and then was “. . . too suddenly still and mute [and she instantly] “felt . . . a stiffening cold.” (XXII) She hates what she felt she had to do. It happened too soon and too suddenly. I do not think she could really comprehend what she had done. There is apparent pain and suffering in this poem, and God is absent or not involved in the human affairs.

The final passage of the poem really brought it together as a whole for me. “White men, I leave you all curse-free in my broken heart’s disdain!” (XXXVI) The men that killed her are not even worthy of her recognition. She feels like they are too beneath her to even be worth her curse. The white men can make her suffer, but they can not take away her pride and dignity. “You think I shrieked then? Not a sound. I hung as a gourd hangs in the sun.” (XXXIII) The reader hears acceptance and relief in the tone of the woman’s voice at this point in the poem. Now that she is dead she can be reconciled with her dead child, and as a result her life’s worries cease in importance.

I found it interesting that the poem was written from the point of view of a runaway slave telling her story, and that Elizabeth Barrett Browning the poet came from a wealthy family whose fortune came from owning a slave plantation in Jamaica. Certain images from the poem stuck out at me, such as the little huts where the slaves lived, the mango trees, the bowl the slave woman’s lover makes for her, and the “. . . sunny ground between the canes.” (XI) I almost felt like I was in Jamaica, or some similar tropical environment. Browning the poet, and the runaway slave she writes about, are not that different. Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning married secretly in London and eloped in Italy because they had to hide from her father who forbade his children to marry. Similarly the slave woman runs away to avoid persecution, after her feelings for another slave were found out. Both the poet and the narrator in the poem are women, and women held no power in society. This poem brings to light some very important issues of gender and race inequality, which was the cause of much suffering, and was rarely discussed, in England.



Works Cited

“A Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point” Resources for students http://www.practa.com/
http://www.Shlensky.com/assigned_readings/E.B.Browning-
“A Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point”. pdf
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. “A Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point.” The Longman Anthology British Literature Volume 2B.Ed. David Damrosh USA: Pearson Education, Inc, 2006. 1196-1198