Guilt as a Motivation for Change

            Historically, authors and poets have been a driving force for informing the masses and encouraging ethical changes in society.  Though these literary activists used many tools to achieves their ends, one such tool was to invoke a feeling of guilt upon the reader in order to either call them to action or encourage the reader to consider altering their mindset on various issues due to new information.  Guilt as a literary device can be a powerful motivator when attempting to sway a person's actions or opinions regarding certain ethical subjects.  A normal, empathetic human being could not possibly turn a blind eye to a great injustice once brought to their attention, especially if their own actions had been unknowingly supporting a heinously unethical activity.  The reader may not be spurred to act upon the new information, but their outlook would have been forever changed for the better.  The theme of guilt as a motivation for change can be prominently seen throughout a large portion of the literature we have experienced this semester.  Whether the ethical subject be racism, sexism, or child labor, guilt has been a weapon at the disposal of many authors throughout the various eras of literature discussed in class.  

            For Elizabeth Barrett Browning, one of the most noble issues she discussed in her works was the injustice of child labor.  During the British Industrial Revolution, factories sprang up and demanded more and more unskilled workers to keep them running.  Women and children were sought after as a cheap resource to fill in the gaps in the workforce.  However, conditions were horrid, and factories were an unsanitary and a highly dangerous environment for anyone, especially children, to work in.  In Browning's poem, "The Cry of the Children," the author paints the harsh realities of child labor as well as the impacts it might have on the child psyche.  Children are represented as having their childhoods stripped from them and being forced to work and act as adults well before their time.  The crying children were even depicted as going so far as to wish for an early death, as a form of release from the harsh conditions that dominated their childhood.  Sure such a mindset was meant to instill pity into the readers' hearts, but even more so, instill guilt into their hearts of the parents who sent their children to work as well as the employers to did little to improve their working conditions.  

            This type of depiction mirrored The Tone of the Times as though the industrial revolution brought about great technological advancements, living conditions plummeted and the discrepancy between classes became much more evident.  In poverty, hunger, and dirt did the working class live their lives as represented in Hood's poem, "Song of the Shirt."  This poem depicts the labor conditions women suffered as well as the oppressive mindset forced upon them.  Similarly to "The Cry of the Children." women are shown to have a damaged psychological mindset due to the monotonous factory work they had to endure.  There is no time to even daydream for an instant.  The working woman must continuously sew, stitch, and work constantly, and without repose.  In class, we discussed the repetitious use of the phrase "stitch! stitch! stitch!" in the poem as it furthers the conveyance of the monotonous lifestyle the working class lead.  Due to the monotony of even the content of the poem, the result is that the piece is not pleasant to read.   The reader is put in a sour mood reading it as well as compelled to feel bad for the women depicted.  This feeling extends to guild when the reader begins to realize that the products they enjoy as well as the lifestyle they lead are reliant on the dehumanization of the workforce, especially the women and children.  

            This type of dehumanization can also be seen via Charlie Chaplin's film, "Modern Times."  Though this film embraces comedy to express discontent rather than guilt, the provided clip does illustrate the dehumanization of the workforce to some extent. 

            William Cowper's "The Negro's Complaint" took on the serious issue of slavery as well as the task of informing the masses about the potential mindset of the subjugated race.  Cowper wrote the piece from the perspective of a slave as he illustrated the confusion a logical black man is faced with in a world where slavery exists.  Rather than show the dehumanization of the subject as the previous two works did, this endeavors to illuminate the humanization of those that many felt to be inferior.  It compels the readers to think of slaves in the same way they would another person they might pass on the street.  In addition,  the poem served to be A religious Appeal to Christians who did not speak out against slavery.  The piece argued that no religion was just for one race, and that if we believed that a religion extended certain rights to human beings, then those rights could not be hindered by the color of a person's skin.  Cowper's Complaint was that those back in Britain who enjoyed the benefits of slavery were guilty of encouraging it.  In that sense, this issue was similar to child labor as well as the harsh working conditions during the industrial revolution.  Those that embraced ignorance and inaction were made to feel guilty upon being educated.  In class, we discussed how these types of anti-slavery poems were targeted at and became popular with housewives and women.  Knowing that, I ask who could possibly be better to guilt trip the advocates of slavery than the women behind them.

            Robert Southey's "The Sailor Who Served in the Slave Trade" continues the fight against slavery with the depiction of a sailor who is forced to flog a female slave, which results in the man being overcome by his own Self Loathing in Bristol.  The poem follows the man as he falls deeper and deeper into anguish and guilt as he is overcome by the revelation that the woman he flogged had died the day after.  The man represents the reader, as a normal human being, being forced to commit such a travesty and feeling exactly what a normal person would.  The poem serves to not only inform the readers of the realities of the events which happen on a daily basis due to the slave trade, but also to disgust the readers, make them feel guilty for their country having any part of the slave trade.  From that guilt, readers are called to action against slavery, and it is because of poems such that these that public perception and opinion swayed so severely that the slave trade was eventually done away with in Britain. 

            Finally, Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" utilizes another character driven by guilt over an atrocity he had committed.  The poem features a Duke speaking to a representative of the family whose daughter he will potentially marry.  The Duke shows a painting of his previous wife to the representative and begins to tell the story of the painting as well as well as the woman it is of, his previous wife.  Throughout the explanation, the Duke's guilt overcomes him and he indirectly confesses that he was the one who had her killed after she failed to meet his expectations of her.  He wanted her to practically worship him and only pay attention to him and ignore all others.  His wife was a human being, though, and could not disregard her basic human rights.  This poem illustrates the lower standing of women at the time and how they were supposed to act.  Wives were supposed to be domesticated and be completely loyal to their husbands.  In that sense, they were expected to be less than human as they seemed to have fewer human rights married than single.  However, society was set so that women had fewer legal rights single than married.  This poem attacked that mindset, likening the lesser status of women married to the act of killing them outright.  In a sense, the Duke represents all men, and killing his wife would be the act of marriage itself.  Courtship would be similar to a game show when regarding marriage, And Behind Curtain #1.... Poison!

            Other works such as Rossetti's "Goblin Market," Coleride's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," and Arnold's "The Forsaken Merman" utilize guilt to establish a point or a need for change, but with only these few, a pattern can be established which shows the reliance of this emotion through these literary eras.  This technique, however, relies on the subject to be undeniably, morally wrong in order to provoke the necessary feeling of guilt in the reader.  As such, the majority of the pieces that utilize this technique are doing so in order to right a great injustice on humanity.  Slavery, child labor, and the subjugation of women are but a few of these subjects, but no one can deny the ethical importance they have had in history.

Burden of Blood

During class today, the story of Bluebeard was recited to us, which was the basis for Carter's "The Bloody Chamber."  Though each piece shared the almost exact plot of the other save for the ending, I found that the stories differed greatly in the morals presented.

In the fairy tale, I got the sense that the woman would have been find if she had obeyed Bluebeard.  Perhaps she would even have gone on to find happiness with him.  When she opens the room and discovers the fate of her predecessors, though, we understand that she has fallen into the same trap as they had in her inability to follow the set guidelines of her captor, the authority figure.  The reason Bluebeard makes such a big deal of leaving the key in plain sight to tempt her in order to set up the moral of the story.  I feel that this fairy tale is trying to teach children to respect authority, but also teach little girls to obey their husbands to avoid trouble.

"The Bloody Chamber" flips this around and presents the story in a more feminist light.  The author goes to great lengths to paint an otherworldly setting and give the reader the sense that something is off, both in the setting and with the husband.  The woman is described as corruptible, but as a converse, we are also told that she is not corrupted by that point.  There's nothing wrong with the woman, and her innocence is assured.  Whereas the fairy tale points out the faults in its female character, in this story, she is portrayed as more human.  With that humanity comes a natural curiosity.  Even though she disobeys her husband and opens the room, the woman remains innocent in that curiosity is a natural human trait.  The woman remains blameless, and thus no moral of obedience can be determined.  This only serves to further exemplify the faults of the husband and how he is the one corrupt instead of the woman.

As a feminist statement, this fairy tale needed to be rewritten as women are not and should not be beholden to the commands of their husbands as described in Bluebeard.  The husband in "The Bloody Chamber" serves to prevent his wives from becoming actual people rather than possessions.  This is why he is the villain and why the story goes to such lengths to portray him as such rather than focus on the disobedience of the wife. 

Kipling

One of my favorite things we read for Monday was Kipling's Epitaphs. I didn't really have one epitaph in particular that I liked better than the rest but there is a few I prefer more than the others. As a whole I found the Epitaphs to be very moving, especially since they were written just a few short years after world war one. Kipling was an English man so I believe that these Epitaphs could mean more considering England was in the war from the beginning. Unlike America who joined in just the last year. I also think they mean so much more considering this was the first world war. All the death and destruction had world wide implications and relationships with countries were ruined forever. During world war one there would be pages in the newspaper filled with the names of those who died. It was one of those things that hadn't been seen before in England, at least not by the people of that generation. The news coverage on the war was probably just as shocking to the people living in World War I as the television coverage was to those living through Vietnam in America. There was probably a lot of epitaphs written that year, but Kipling's were't published until two years after the war was over. Even though they were published later I believe they probably still held a deep emotional significance to those who lost family and friends in the war. For some it was probably therapeutic to read it, and for others it was probably just an unwanted reminder. Either way, Kipling used this great historical event (which would have been a contemporary event for him) to immortalize those who died during world war one. I see this book of multiple epitaphs to be like one giant epitaph and whoever reads it can identify the one they lost with a particular epitaph. Kipling is reaching the general audience and a particular audience all at once. That's what I like so much about this work, he is reaching out to people and feeling what they feel. No one is alone.

An Outpost Lacking in Morality

I feel as if An Outpost of Progress represents the mentality most people in Britain who were agents of Imperialism have about British Imperialism in Africa as well as Slavery in general.  After having their workers sold into slavery, the remaining three at the outpost sat that "slavery is a horrible thing."  They take a hollow moral stance against it, even though it was one of them who sold their workers in the first place.  It is as if as long as it is not happening by their hand, it can just be overlooked.  It does not matter that they have trampled on the lives of their fellow man.  What matters in the end is that the company has prospered.  In the story, the company gains the quality ivory in exchange for their workers.  Although the three who remain claim that slavery is wrong, they do nothing about it aside from sit around and be angry about it.  Their inaction does not make them any less guilty, even if action would be futile.

I think this sort of "say one thing and do another" attitude represents British Imperialism fairly well.  They are supposedly spreading civilization as well as claiming new territory for the empire.  However, they consistently neglect to care about the peoples they trample over and established civilizations they have to crush to achieve this goal.  They may take a false high ground and speak out against slavery and other atrocities, but at the same time, what they're doing isn't really better. 

Joseph Conrad and Imperialism

For this post I wanted to go into detail on how I feel that Joseph Conrad wrote “An Outpost of Progress” as a way to call out the British government on what he saw as the mishandling of their colonies. I think that the two white characters represent the British agents and how more often than not they were clueless about running and managing far flung colonies. Conrad in his younger years was a sailor for both the French and British Merchant navies and in both instances traveled to the far east and when he was in the British Merchant Navy he spent some time working on a river boat in Africa.

                I think that Conrad also used Kayerts and Carlier to show how tenuous the connection between ruler and the ruled really were. The white men wielded all of the “power” for two reasons, the first being the supplies coming from other parts of the empire and the second was the fact that the natives believed them to be powerful. I think that Conrad made this connection thin to display how on the outside things may seem to be in order but when the rulers are far from home and have a support system nearly wholly dependent on the ruled it would not take very much to completely upend everything and have the whole endeavor end in disaster.

Strange Case of Kayerts and Carlier

Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Conrad’s An Outpost of Progress both seem to have themes of personal deterioration. Not only does health and morality deteriorate in these stories, but as good things fail and shrink, evil and disease grow in response. Dr. Jekyll’s health fails as Mr. Hyde’s wickedness begins to take over his body. This slow descent into death is spurred on by Hyde’s complete lack of morality and adherence to carnal desires regardless of consequences. In a similar way, Kayerts and Carlier become plagued by diseases as their trades in Africa become greedier and more corrupt. Their cooperation in the slave trade draws them down into their eventual madness and doom at their own hands. Before Kayerts kills Carlier, both men become as violent and wild as Hyde is described. I found it interesting that both Stevenson and Conrad link moral degradation with mental and physical degeneration in surprisingly similar ways.

Goblin Empire

One of our readings for Monday was The” Goblin Market” by Christina Rossetti. In this reading I saw a number of passages that show a metaphorical relation the British Empire. To be more specific about this the passages describing the different fruits and the fact that they are sold in no town from here. Many of the fruits being described were not fruits that were grown in England and a few were not grown in Europe at all. The passage also says it is not known on what soil the fruit is grown, a metaphor for foreign lands.

                I think Rossetti used the goblins as a metaphor for the agents of the East India Company or other agents of empire who went forth to conquer far off lands and bring back the resources and goods from those places. I think if we look at the poem in relation to or as a commentary on the Empire we can see Rossetti taking a negative view of how things were going. Perhaps this may be a stretch but I could see her making something of a prophecy that would come true later. This prophecy would be the eventual turning on the empire by her colonies. The passage that best describes this is when Lizzie is beaten up by the goblin men for not wanting to partake of their wares but take them back to her sister showing that eventually one must pay for the actions that have been done, regardless of whether or not those in the position of power committed the crimes. The picture below has nothing to do with the story but I thought they were funny.

Goblin Market and Female Strength

When reading Goblin Market, I felt as if the poem had overtones of female empowerment. The relationship of Lizzie and Laura could be interpreted as erotic due to word choices but the fundamental nature of their relationship is that of sisters who support each other. When the poem describes them sleeping next to one another, they are painted as innocent and at total peace with the world. While they are together, they are untouchable and all is good.
I found it interesting that men do not make an appearance in the poem except when the goblins are being described - Rossetti refers to them as "goblin men" who the girls should stay away from. The fruit that they sell Lizzie is possibly a metaphor for the dominant and often abusive nature of masculine love that was accepted at the time. Lizzie indulges on the fruits and becomes hooked on it even though it is clearly self-destructive. The goblins forcing Laura to consume their fruit against her will could very well be a metaphor for violence against women. By the end of the poem, both women have fallen victim to the evil of "goblin men" which causes them to once again find comfort in one another.

Complex or Hypocracy?

   It seems odd to me that in an era marked in part by the resurgence of chivalry, that there be such a discrepancy on how to deal with the agency of women. The Lady of Shalot is left with the the task of weaving, using her mirror both for her work and to see the world. These things are distinctly feminine and all is well for her as long as she continues her "women's work". It is not until she leaves her work and the tower to serve her own purposes that she is is cast down and killed by the curse. Aside from whatever commentary this may have about creating art or industrialism, this acts a "lesson" for how women should behave, "If you leave your station in life this is what will happen to you".
   In My Last Duchess, the women in question is held as a on the wall. The late duchess is his example of how he deals with women that won't obey or appreciate him. This is even more heavy handed because the duke directly takes the life of the duchess who leaves him. What's even more disparaging here is that the Duke is in the middle of dowry discussion, which shows that Duchess for him are easily replaced. His choice of art in the statue of Neptune taming a sea-horse simply furthers this.
    The difference between the two views here on the agency of women, is that Browning's poem could be seen ostensibly as a way of bringing this negative view on female agency into light for criticism, while Tennyson seems to have simply used it as a metaphor. I don't know for certain what Tennyson's take on women's agency was, but the way he uses it here implies that he sees it as a fact of life. Even if one tries to see the Lady of Shalot as bringing the problem into light the way Duchess does it still seems just like a idea thrown in with everything else he wanted to say. Though this may just be a vented frustration of mine, to me it hardly seems to even call out chivalry's name.

And Behind Curtain #1.... Poison!

I really was not too sure what to think when I read My Last Duchess. The rhythm took me a minute to get use to (at first if felt a little contrived and ridged), but after a few lines that minor detour went away. It also took me a minute to figure out that this duke was talking to not only a group of people, but also his future father-in-law about his last wife. After figuring out who the duke was speaking to, I felt like it was much easier to see a type of story come together. The captions that are in my book let the reader know that the speaker of My Last Duchess is modeled on Alfonso II (Duke of Ferrara) who married Lucrezia de Medici when she was fourteen years old in 1558. She died about three years later, and the cause of death was speculated to be poison. The duke remarried in 1565. I felt like this information also allowed a story to unfold. When I re-read the poem, I started to wonder if maybe it was the duke who poisoned her. The fact that he keeps her picture behind a curtain, and only he is allowed to open the curtain, is what made me intentionally slightly suspicious of the thought. I also felt like the way I felt she was being described was as being a major flirt. The way the duke talks about her makes me think she flirted A LOT, maybe even had an affair or two. There is a motive right there: an unfaithful wife. Well, it is safe to say she certainly is only smiling for dear ol’ hubby now! An indirect confession scene is the picture that this poem painted for me. I think that this is a very interesting poem, and I enjoyed reading it.  

Cry of the Children

Browning's Cry of the Children comes in an era where child labor is exponentially increasing alongside the Industrial Revoluation. Before, children would work on farms or in shops, but with technology growth, they started to work in factories instead as cheap labor. The urging for working children to "go out, children, from the mine and from the city" and play in the meadows presents the dichotmy of a society once agricultural, now industrial. Youth and life are associated with nature while the cold metal of machines are associated with death. The poem is not only drawing attention to the ghastly conditions of child labor, but also to the shift from nature to machine.

Cry of the Children draws attention to the conditions of child labor, forcing the audience to question society's role in taking away children's innocence. The poem blatantly describes the jaded and hopeless attitudes working children have toward death, God, and life. The ending lines say, "But a child's sob in the silence curses deeper/ Than the strong man in his wrath," indicating that though they are young and unwise, the pain a child endures can be more powerful than the petty vengences of a man. Children have raw emotion due to their inexperience, so they do not understand their pain as much as an adult does, but can feel it deeper than adults. Browning's poem calls for protection for the children and questions the morality of a society that uses children as another stepping stone toward power.

More Children Crying?

In Matthew Arnold's "West London," he briefly describes a simple but saddening moment in which a young girl is sent out by her mother to beg. It is more than likely that the little girl was sent to do it because fewer people could turn away a starving young girl (however the woman did have a baby with her). Arnold observes that the girl doesn't try to get money or food from the rich and instead lets them pass and stare at her. This is most likely because the girl doesn't expect the rich to help her but they don't feel the need to. Other people in her class are more inclined to sympathize despite being in a harsh situation themselves. Arnold is clearly very critical of the rich person in this scene when he states that the person "attends the unknown little from the unknowing great, and points us to a better time than ours." This tone shows that Arnold knows that the rich think of the poor as 'unknown' and they are unaware that their own circumstance is much more fortunate than they realize. The poem provides simple but powerful social commentary reflecting the ignorance of the upperclass and the fact that the poor are aware of this ignorance and have given up trying to expect any help from them.

The Tone of the Times

I noticed a lot of similarities between Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "The Cry of the Children" and other publications of the Victorian era, particularly in their tone and the overall mood they create. For instance, Charles Dickens's "A Walk in the Workhouse," an essay written during the Victorian era, was very similar to Browning's poem in more ways than one. Both have what we would today consider an over the top depressing mood. The children in both poems want to die, which just seems like they're laying it on thick. In "The Cry of the Children," the fourth stanza shows a small child saying "It is good when it happens...That we die before our time," and in "A Walk in the Workhouse" you've got a nearly identical scene where the narrator comments about how a "morsel of burnt child, lying in another room...thought it best, perhaps, all things considered, that he should die." In this day and age, it's hard to even imagine children choosing death over life. The concept seems to repulse us. But I wonder if that's a consequence of the times or if it's just because we live in an affluent country? A hundred years from now, I wonder what people will think about what we consider "modern" and "postmodern" literature? Will they think it's just as over the top as the Victorian era literature we're reading now?

In poverty, hunger, and dirt

The tired and dehumanized woman in Hood’s poem is a clear illustration of what industrialized life does to a person. Between her harsh and seemingly endless ‘work-work-work’ she thinks fondly on the sky and flowers. However she only briefly enjoys this daydream as she must ‘stitch! stitch! stitch!’ Her meager mans barely allowing for her most basic necessities. This kind of life was described in Marx’s theory of alienation.  Simply put, alienation occurs in socially stratified societies as a direct result of workers being disconnected from their humanity as they are a simple part of a large machine. Hood’s worker lacks autonomy because she is directed and basically property of those who own the means of production. Beyond just being physically tired, it is draining on the soul. The ‘work-work-work’ pounds in the head and constantly interrupts the thoughts and feelings of Hood’s worker. When I read the poem I almost instantly thought of Charlie Chaplin’s film “Modern Times” which deals with the dehumanizing nature of the capitalist mode of production. Below is just a short clip, however the film in its entirety is available on Youtube.

Social Awareness In The Cry Of The Children

After listening to the in class discussion and going into small groups about the poem The Cry Of The Children I wanted to go into more detail about the voices of the children act as a social commentary of the time.

                “But the young, young children, O my brothers, They are weeping bitterly! They are weeping in the playtime of the others, In the country of the free”.  The lead up to this is how everything is happy and how the young in the natural world are free and joyous yet the young children who are not in nature are not free and happy but are weeping instead. It seems to me that at the time that this poem was written the social view of children had begun to swing away from them being small adults and actual children. My reason for thinking this is that for Browning to be bemoaning the condition of these children infers that at least some segment of the population would be in agreement with her.

                There was one passage in particular that did show kind of a transition from being young adults into children. In the passage the children say their our fathers but feel do not know the rest. I am not sure which is more oddly cruel, the fact that they only know those two words for the prayer or the fact that they are aware that they do not have all the words necessary for their God to hear them. I think that Browning uses lines like that to paint a looking glass view into the confusion surrounding what society was to expect of and from the young adults.

The crying children.

The Cry of the Children provides an insight of the life of working children and the misery of life. These children were in fact the little adults of the Victorian period that we discussed in class. These children are in so much misery that they think "Death in life, as best to have". These children have obtained the belief that death would be more enjoyable than life because all they do is suffer and do labor. They then begin to question religion, God more specifically. They question his existence because he has not answered there prayers. These children did not get to experience a normal childhood; such as, innocence, joy,  and growing experiences. These children were thrown into a life they had no choice but to take and are miserable living it. In this selection were are shown sides that make us feel more sympathetic towards the children because we do not get to see their kid side. To experience what they have at such a young age makes a person grow up faster than they should and not enjoy life, as these children have.

Self Loathing in Bristol

In Robert Southey's "The Sailor Who Served in the Slave Trade," he tells the tale of a sailor who was forced by his captain to bound and flog one of the female slaves they had just picked up who ended up dying the following day. The way that he words this poem vividly paints the sailor's anguish as he describes how guilty he feels for what he was forced to do by his captain. The slave woman haunts his dreams and he seeks mercy and forgiveness from God. However, knowing what I do about God, once you ask you are forgiven, so really the issue is forgiving himself. He feels a deep anguish and self loathing for not resisting his captain's orders. If the sailor can't forgive himself then when Southey has the call to action at the end for all us to pray for him as well is all for naught. He must forgive himself if he is to recover from this tragedy.

An Educational Complaint

   The line between right and wrong is often said to be a matter of perspective, but people often mistake the meanings of these words with "correct" and "incorrect", which blurs the lines even further. In the context of The Negro's Complaint the issue of slavery is laid bare, in a way that appeals primarily to the moral compass. Yet in Pity for Poor Africans, Cowper does something different. He lays out his internal conflict, claiming that he knows that slavery is wrong "I own I am shock'd at the purchase of slaves," then turns to explain that though it would be right to try and end it the correct thing socially is to be silent. The excuses are both ridiculous and desperate, they reek of forced justification. Yet it is the story of the boy in school that really makes the poem.
   The boy in the story is against the idea of stealing the apples from a neighbor, it is initially strictly a moral issue. It is when the other children threaten to keep the apples they steal from him that he buckles. This portion mirrors the first half of the poem in which Cowper argues that though slavery is wrong it would be awful to be the only nation without. By taking the moral conundrum away from the touchy subject of slavery it becomes easier to see how frivolous the actual argument is. The fear isn't really to be without dessert in the first place, just to be the only one without. The whole poem becomes satirical and those who would pose such arguments are exposed as disingenuous. When the argument is considered from this angle it becomes apparent that the argument is strictly a social one.
   Remembering The Negroes Complaint, and how it poses that the issue of slavery goes against nature's claim of equality, an interesting opinion from the poet himself emerges. Cowper's poems are two halves to a whole. Half of his argument claims that slavery is not an issue of inequality, because skin color cannot  "forfeit nature's claim" and god himself would answer with fury upon it's proponents. The other half states that it is instead is a social, issue, thus concretely stating that society is in direct opposition to God in regards to slavery.

A religious Appeal

When reading William Cowper “The Negro’s Complaint” the thing that stood out to me the most is the religious aspect of the message. I know that cowper was a religious man, and I believe the approach he took was wise and understanding. Religion has always been a complex topic to discuss, people will always stand behind their believes when they feel they are threatened. I think he used this knowledge to try and connect to the common people and their feelings towards guilt in the name of god. Most importantly the fourth stanza, beginning with line 25 questions if it is the peoples doing or gods. All men are supposed to be treated equally, so why are men and women of color being treated so differently and used for white mens needs. “What are Englands rights, I ask,” calls to not only to question the laws of government but the laws of religion and moral integrity. Although no actual slaves were asked for their opinion and Cowper did not know what it was like, I feel it was wise of him to write it in a way that shows how slaves are really just the same as everyone else. It is then that the person reading should start asking themselves how they could deny a person their natural given rights.  By doing the opposite of what they say in the name of god, then they are simply hypocrites and denying the fact.

Cowper's Complaint

Upon reading William Cowper's The Negro's Complaint, what becomes immediately evident is that it is written from the first person point of view. This is indeed interesting, as Cowper has no background in slavery and finds it morally appalling only due to his religious nature. Had this poem been written by John Newton, it would have probably been vastly different, but still more agreeable since Newton was once a slave trader himself. Though the poem itself does seem to capture what would arguably be a well written dissent to the social norms in a time where slavery was a common practice, it seems to stand out in that it's message is that which the slaves at the time were not allowed to say or were unable to so eloquently express: slavery is wrong on every basis. It is morally wrong "Skins may differ, but affection/dwells in black and white the same," it is illogical, "still in thought as free as ever, what are England's rights, i ask," and it there are emotional connotations that ask the reader what kind of person indeed would enslave another, even when the "One who reigns on high" sends nature to undo the such evil. The poems ends in a rallying call to arms that the reader "prove [their] human feelings/ere you proudly questions ours!" This poem is indeed quite a powerful sentiment coming from a white evangelist hymn writer, not necessarily because he believes in the words he's written, but because he has given a voice to a group that had none.