Close Reading Sept. 25/06
Close Reading September 25, 2006
In "Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point," Elizabeth Barrett-Browning explores the morality of the Victorian era, when slavery was still legal. The subject of Barrett-Browning's poem is an enslaved black woman contemplating her existence. The slave is aware of her oppression and segregation from white people because her "...blackness shuts like prison bars" (Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point VI). However, she still manages to maintain an optimistic attitude, and even finds beauty in her life through song and laughter. She notices that in nature even dark animals must be complemented by light attributes. For example,
There's a little dark bird sits and sings;
There's a dark stream ripples out of sight;
And the dark frogs chant in the safe morass,
And the sweetest stars are made to pass
O'er the face of the darkest night (V).
She feels as though she is similar to these creatures because her skin is black but she feels a lightness within herself that allows her to feel joy because, "...He made dark things/ To be glad and merry as light" (V).
When the slave woman falls in love with another slave, she initially feels even freer from her oppressors because of the newfound feelings of happiness she has:
...I laughed in girlish glee;
For one of my colour stood in the track
Where the drivers drove, and looked at me--
And tender and full was the look he gave:
Could a slave look so at another slave (IX)?
However, her lover is killed after their tryst is discovered, and she is raped by her white master,
Wrong, followed by a deeper wrong!
...the white men brought the shame ere long
...They would not leave me for my dull
Wet eyes (XV)!
The child born from the rape is white, awakening a feeling of revulsion and hatred in her that she didn't think was possible. She says,
Of my child's face, ...
I saw a look that made me mad...
The master's look (XXI).
Her own terrible feelings of evil are unavoidable because of her inability to see beyond her own child's skin colour and his resemblance to his father, the white master who raped her. Unable to accept either this memory or its progeny, she kills her baby. By murdering her infant, she proves to herself that evil is rooted in the deeds of an individual, in deeds that have nothing to do with color. The slave realizes that she's just as capable of evil as her white oppressors when particular circumstances call for it. On earth, she feels that racism and hatred will keep her separate from her baby, unable to love and nurture him, and justifies her murder by claiming she can love her baby better in heaven, saying, "And thus we two were reconciled,/ The white child and black mother, thus" (XXVIII).
The prevailing Victorian sentiment was racist. In addition to established social mores and theological teachings, technological advances gave many imperialists a feeling of superiority that led them to believe that different societies they discovered, as a result of colonial expansion, were somehow inferior to them. Victorian social attitudes were predominantly proper and polite; personal sentiments and affairs were kept behind closed doors. Perhaps because of the constant desire to hide most emotions, especially ones that were somehow dark and socially unacceptable, Victorian-era colonialists saw black slaves, in their skin colouring and relatively more expressive culture, as the superficial embodiment of the darkness of which all humans are capable. The slave in Barrett-Browning's poem knows how white people look at her:
...I am black.
I see you staring in my face--
I know you, staring, shrinking back (XXXII).
In this way, the poet's own society might have seen blacks in their comparatively unrestrained sexuality and -- especially -- in their physical differences as their spiritually lacking counterparts, beings who visibly embodied inappropriate human sins, and who wore the socially defined darknesses of human emotion on their skin. By such reasoning, such opinion would render them unfit for equality in Victorian society and justify their segregation. Barrett-Browning's poem, in exploring the evils that are possible in individuals of any race, in, "Runaway at Pilgrim's Point," asserts that the capacity for evil is within every human, regardless of colour or race, and that the wish for redemption is equally shared.
In "Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point," Elizabeth Barrett-Browning explores the morality of the Victorian era, when slavery was still legal. The subject of Barrett-Browning's poem is an enslaved black woman contemplating her existence. The slave is aware of her oppression and segregation from white people because her "...blackness shuts like prison bars" (Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point VI). However, she still manages to maintain an optimistic attitude, and even finds beauty in her life through song and laughter. She notices that in nature even dark animals must be complemented by light attributes. For example,
There's a little dark bird sits and sings;
There's a dark stream ripples out of sight;
And the dark frogs chant in the safe morass,
And the sweetest stars are made to pass
O'er the face of the darkest night (V).
She feels as though she is similar to these creatures because her skin is black but she feels a lightness within herself that allows her to feel joy because, "...He made dark things/ To be glad and merry as light" (V).
When the slave woman falls in love with another slave, she initially feels even freer from her oppressors because of the newfound feelings of happiness she has:
...I laughed in girlish glee;
For one of my colour stood in the track
Where the drivers drove, and looked at me--
And tender and full was the look he gave:
Could a slave look so at another slave (IX)?
However, her lover is killed after their tryst is discovered, and she is raped by her white master,
Wrong, followed by a deeper wrong!
...the white men brought the shame ere long
...They would not leave me for my dull
Wet eyes (XV)!
The child born from the rape is white, awakening a feeling of revulsion and hatred in her that she didn't think was possible. She says,
Of my child's face, ...
I saw a look that made me mad...
The master's look (XXI).
Her own terrible feelings of evil are unavoidable because of her inability to see beyond her own child's skin colour and his resemblance to his father, the white master who raped her. Unable to accept either this memory or its progeny, she kills her baby. By murdering her infant, she proves to herself that evil is rooted in the deeds of an individual, in deeds that have nothing to do with color. The slave realizes that she's just as capable of evil as her white oppressors when particular circumstances call for it. On earth, she feels that racism and hatred will keep her separate from her baby, unable to love and nurture him, and justifies her murder by claiming she can love her baby better in heaven, saying, "And thus we two were reconciled,/ The white child and black mother, thus" (XXVIII).
The prevailing Victorian sentiment was racist. In addition to established social mores and theological teachings, technological advances gave many imperialists a feeling of superiority that led them to believe that different societies they discovered, as a result of colonial expansion, were somehow inferior to them. Victorian social attitudes were predominantly proper and polite; personal sentiments and affairs were kept behind closed doors. Perhaps because of the constant desire to hide most emotions, especially ones that were somehow dark and socially unacceptable, Victorian-era colonialists saw black slaves, in their skin colouring and relatively more expressive culture, as the superficial embodiment of the darkness of which all humans are capable. The slave in Barrett-Browning's poem knows how white people look at her:
...I am black.
I see you staring in my face--
I know you, staring, shrinking back (XXXII).
In this way, the poet's own society might have seen blacks in their comparatively unrestrained sexuality and -- especially -- in their physical differences as their spiritually lacking counterparts, beings who visibly embodied inappropriate human sins, and who wore the socially defined darknesses of human emotion on their skin. By such reasoning, such opinion would render them unfit for equality in Victorian society and justify their segregation. Barrett-Browning's poem, in exploring the evils that are possible in individuals of any race, in, "Runaway at Pilgrim's Point," asserts that the capacity for evil is within every human, regardless of colour or race, and that the wish for redemption is equally shared.
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