First Read, First passage

This is a somewhat sudden shift from what we’ve been reading earlier on in the semester, and somewhat was a difficult transition for me for the first ten or so pages. The other books and essays had many common themes of community living, experimental living situations in isolated areas, and witness the expected gender roles for both men and women during 19th Century in the United States. During the same time that “Little Women,” “Wide Wide World,” “The Yellow Wallpaper,” “Blithdale Romance” and the Transcendentalists’ essays were being written, an inhuman treatment on individuals being brought here from Africa and South America to the U.S. to become slaves quickly became an epidemic. What I find most surprising is that the most recent books prior to “Incidents of a slave girl” hardly ever mention the Civil war, or minimal reference to the slaves. I became even more aware this when the passage that said that slavery was tough on everyone, not just the slaves and the families that were being separated and shipped off to different regions of the United States. It was interesting because the narrator, Harriet, mentioned that it was especially difficult for the slave owners and their families. That having the responsibility of owning the plantation and taking care of the slaves drained the owners. That he (meaning most of the men owners) had to be more mean than what they actually wanted to be- perhaps out of fear of not being respected and the fear of being overthrown, that the children didn’t understand why their closest friends while growing up became more as a piece of property that they own, and the wives…the wives had to deal with the husbands cheating on them, fathering numerous babies with the young slave girls and accept this. It may be how honest it was written, but this is a very different aspect of looking at the issue.
I wasn’t sure exactly why the wives, especially the doctor’s wife didn’t do more to help prevent the rape and “affair” from developing. Other than being afraid of the husband’s reaction. The wife had a difficult time accepting it, and throughout the months, her jealousy for the slave girl began to grow stronger, I thought she would do or say something about it. Instead, she left her husband cheat on her, and let a man rape a young girl. It simply didn’t seem in her character to let this happen and was outraged about not anyone doing anything to make it stop.