Because she was a slave, she served others and lived at their mercy. Her relationships with the family as a whole were based on that fact that she was a slave, so it was her race that led her to that predicament. However, even George had some control over what happened in his life. He had control over Celia to a degree; at least that he could influence her. That is more than Celia had. Because of her gender and race, she was powerless, and had to submit to the will of others. She even confronted Newsom because she feared losing her relationship with George. The text notes, "While it is possible that Celia may have taken action against Newsom of her own accord, the evidence strongly suggests that she confronted Newsom only when forced to do so if she wished to continue her relationship with George" (35). This indicates how truly powerless she was in her own life and decision-making. Her relationship with Virginia and Mary must have been strained, although it is difficult to tell from the reading. Certainly, they had little interest in her gender, other than the fact she was their father's concubine. Their interest was in her race, in that she was their servant, and black, and as such, beneath their caring or compassion. The text states, "Women within the South's slaveholding families were, after all, beneficiaries of slavery, and as such unlikely critics" (27). Thus, their interest in her was not because of her gender and her problems with their father, but rather on her race and how she could serve them. They saw black women as a threat, and as "temptresses" (28),...
Worse was George's ultimate betrayal of her, leading to her arrest. She acted because of love, and was betrayed by that lover. Again, as a woman, she was the weaker of the two in the relationship. All she had was trust, and he betrayed that trust. Celia was powerless in all her relationships, no matter what element of her they were based on. The whites, male and female, held all the power, as Celia's and countless other slave stories indicate.
McLaurin states in the beginning of his book, "The life of Celia demonstrates how slavery placed individuals, black and white, in specific situations that forced them to make and to act upon personal decisions of a fundamentally moral nature" (McLaurin 1991, xi). The American policy at the time supported slavery, and even allowed slave and non-slave states to join the Union in equal numbers. Most Northerners did not support slavery,
After being charged with the crime, a slave-owner yet eloquent prominent trial attorney James Jameson was appointed to defend Celia, partially to silence critics on both sides of the issue in Missouri. Jameson defended his client's right to resist her master's advances based upon statues designed only to apply to assaulted white women and another statute that allowed slaves to fight back with deadly force to spare their own lives.
history of Missouri there is a strained and well-documented legacy of slavery and conflict over it. As the nation divided itself on the political/economic rather than moral issue of slavery, deciding status of statehood almost entirely on this one issue Missouri was caught in the middle. Yet, this reality had little if anything to do with the reality of life for black women in the state. Black women's lives
" James a.S. McPeek further blames Jonson for this corruption: "No one can read this dainty song to Celia without feeling that Jonson is indecorous in putting it in the mouth of such a thoroughgoing scoundrel as Volpone." Shelburne asserts that the usual view of Jonson's use of the Catullan poem is distorted by an insufficient understanding of Catullus' carmina, which comes from critics' willingness to adhere to a conventional -- yet incorrect
Shakespeare Journal 9/14 Sonnets (1. I usually have to force myself to read poetry, especially sonnets about romance that seem contrived or sentimentalized. Also, I am not very good at understanding and explaining the various metaphors, hidden meanings and so on. Sonnet 18 is so famous that it has long since turned into a cliche ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?") and would simply not go over very well is
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