Questions for Engaging With Barrett Browning
- Why
insert a story of romantic love in stanzas IX-XII? Think about how it
brings the action to a crisis as well as the way it supplements the
speaker’s reflections in stanzas IV-VIII.
- EBB inserts the story of romantic love in stanzas IX-XII, because it humanizes the mother prior to the climactic action. Without the reference to human emotion— one of the most universal of these is love— the reader might interpret the speaker as a simple criminal. Instead, it supplants an ethical dilemma that helps us understand the further understand the infanticide that later takes place.
- Stanzas
IV-V depict two punishments How does stanza IV recall stanza I? What does
she mean when she says “it was too merciful to let me weep pure tears and
die” (ll. 104-05)?
- Stanza IV recalls stanza I, because they refer to the punishment of existing as a marginalized, oppressed, and enslaved person. Furthermore, the stanzas refer to the hypocritical logic upheld prior to abolition that black individuals were born into their oppression, and are subhuman due to their existence. Ultimately, the dehumanization of black individuals meant that they were viewed to lack emotion, feel pain, and take part in the human experience. Therefore to be able to feel negative emotion and have it validated would be merciful because it would indicate that the narrator did not deserve the punishment simply for being.
- As the
speaker recounts her story, she alludes to its ending—“until all ended for
the best” (st. 16)—before she describes the central event. How does she
interpret the child’s will to live?
- The speaker describes the child’s will to live as very strong, frequently referring to the child’s struggle and attempts to fight against being smothered. “And he moaned and struggled, as well might be/For the white child wanted his liberty//Ha, ha! he wanted the master-right.”.
- What
reasons or explanations does she provide for her repeated effort to
overcome his struggles? Which ones does she deny?
- The speaker explains her repeated effort to kill the child as motivated by his resemblance to the “master”, or the man enslaving her, “The master’s look, that used to fall/On my soul like his lash … or worse/And so, to save it from my curse,/I twisted it round in my shawl”. The child’s race being incongruent with her own, is also relevant, as she is believed to be cursed and the child— being fair, is not. However, despite the child’s skin color, he will still be enslaved as his mother is. Thus, she tries to prevent him from this”curse” and kills him so that he might experience freedom through death “A child and mother/Do wrong to look at one another/ When one is black and one is fair.”.
- Stanzas
XXVIII and XXIX arguably resolve the infanticide story and see the speaker
return to the present, to a new dawn from which “the pilgrim-ghosts”
retreat, but their “hunter sons” appear and a new struggle emerges. What
forms of defiance do you see in stanzas XXX-XXXIII?
1. Defiantly, the speaker likens herself to a black eagle— perhaps representing freedom despite the oppression of her race. Additionally, she curses the “hunter sons” wives to suffer a miscarriage. Having made multiple references to the curse of her race, this transfers the disempowerment from herself to those persecuting her. Finally, she says “I am not mad—/I am black.”, by repossessing her race she is defiantly opposing the “hunter sons” reduction of her humanity to her blackness.
- What do
you make of the speaker’s contrast of the slave’s wounds do Christ’s?
1. Like Jesus and the Jews were enslaved, so is she. The human tradition of exploiting marginalized demographics is represented and condemned in the same book the white settlers prosthelytize. In the same way Jesus was crucified for breaking the law that imprisoned him— she is as well. - Why
does the speaker, who has come to the shore to “curse this land” (l.20),
leave “white men” “curse-free” (st. XXXVI)?
1. The speaker leaves the men curse free because she is not culpable for their wrongdoings. Instead, she believes they are cursed by their own actions— not her existence.
The
poem was first published in Liberty Bell, the journal of The Boston
Female Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS). Knowing the organization’s mission, do you
think the poem would have been an effective instrument of abolition? To what
extent does Barrett Browning humanize or round out a slave’s, a woman’s, a
mother’s character?
I believe that, for the most part, the poem would have been an effective
instrument of abolition because the beginning of the poem does significant work
to humanize the speaker, as well as to problematize the horrific acts committed
against her. However, I think the inclusion of infanticide negates some of the
work done to humanize the enslaved mother in an effort to further depict
symbolism that illuminates problems associated with race.
A.
How might Critical Race Theorists problematize Browning’s depiction? What do
you think of those arguments?
Critical Race Theorists might problematize Browning’s depictions, as she offers
more time to the description of the infanticide, the speakers crime, than the
crime that lead to the conception of the child— which was rape, perpetrated by
the man enslaving her. Furthermore, Brownings depiction does not disempower the
themes of white supremacy— it rather just seeks to humanize other races by
likening them— negating the potential for nationalism. Thus, Browning’s poem
still perpetuates racism, despite promoting abolitionism. Additionally, her
poem sensationalize the perspective of an enslaved mother through a
marginalizing plot line, which could contribute negatively to dogmatic thought
and prejudices surrounding enslaved mothers.
Ultimately, I agree with the arguments made by critical race theorists. If a
work of literature (outside of the context of it’s time) only has the capacity
to interpret other identities through the vector of the majority, then it is
still marginalizing oppressed narratives.
