Journal 7

Slave Poetry

         The element of poetry I am going to analyze is speaker, specifically Frances E. Harper's speaker in "The Slave Mother". The speaker in this poem is someone describing the pains of a slave who has recently had a baby, but "He is not hers, although she bore/For him a mother's pains... He is not hers, for cruel hands/ May rudely tear apart" (1231 lines 17-22). This poem is discussing the practice of slave owners taking the babes of their slaves to also go into slavery since law at the time said that the status (slave or free) of the mother determined the status of the child. 

        People have a tendency to ascribe the feelings of the speaker to the author, but Harper was never a slave. Certainly she was discriminated against, being a black woman at the time was no easy feat, even a free black woman. But the speaker in the poem seems well acquainted with the cruel practices of slavery, some reminiscing, so to speak, on the sound of, "these bitter shrieks/ Disturb the listening air:/ She is a mother, and her heart/ Is breaking in despair" (1232 lines 37-40). The speaker remembers hearing a slave mother torn from her child, and uses the sound of her keening grief to relate it to the audience. The author uses this speaker because the audience intended of this poem were not slaves, but whites and free, educated blacks, and as such they could feel empathy for the slave woman, but their connection would be to an outside party, to witnessing these horrible things, because they have never experienced them.