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The Reconstruction of the Black Slaves' Plight in Marcy Heidish's A Imperial Journal of Interdisciplinary Research (IJIR) Vol-2, Issue-12, 2016 ISSN: 2454-1362, http://www.onlinejournal.in The Reconstruction of the Black Slaves’ Plight in Marcy Heidish’s A Woman Called Moses Donald NZAMBI MIKOULOU1, Benjamin EVAYOULOU1 *ZACHARIE MBOUNGOU2 1Département des Langues et Littératures, Ecole Normale Supérieure, P.O. Box: 69 Université Marien Ngouabi 2Laboratoire de nutrition, Santé et Motricité Humaine, P.O. Box: 69 Université Marien Ngouabi, Brazzaville-Congo. Abstract: This article deals with black slaves’ inspired the author. This means that I want to point critical conditions of life in the United States to a few aspects of A Woman Called Moses that during slavery in Marcy Heidish’s A Woman seem to me to constitute a kind of interplay Called Moses. It purports to demonstrate that after between history and Heidish’s imagination. being ill-treated for many years by white masters Because the novel’s structure is built on the black on plantations, black slaves have started to express slaves’ enslavement, I will begin this discussion by their discontents to their masters through examining the slaves’ ill-treatment by their white complaints and some acts of rebellion as a way to masters. Then, I will study the black slaves’ freedom denied to them because of their position as complaints and rebellion as a way to freedom. slaves in a world ruled by Whites. The author’s 1. THE REFERENCE TO THE BLACK reconstruction of the black slaves’ such plights SLAVES’ ILL-TREATMENTS evidences the historical dimension of her novel. In Heidish’s A Woman Called Moses, the Key words: Plight, Black slaves, Masters, Slavery, black slaves’ ill-treatments by their white masters History, and Fiction. appear in different forms. While some are simply blamed and punished when they are mistaken, others are either sold or killed, because masters are INTRODUCTION fed up with their way of behaving. For example, I would like to start this analysis on Marcy one sees how a character named Tilly is suffering Heidish’s A Woman Called Moses by giving a brief even at the moment she is sold just like an object: explanation of the words “Plight” and “Moses” Tilly was roped around the waist to the other which might seem somehow obscure to some children, the grown slaves in a double row, readers. The first is linked to black slaves’ all braceleted and linked together with metal that gave forms of victimization by their white masters in the off a dull kind of beautiful sheen. And then I United States during slavery. The second is a direct comprehend. But it couldn’t be real (p. 10). reference to a black woman named Harriet Tubman born in Maryland, Dorchester County around 1820, In this passage, Tilly’s suffering is evidenced and known as a ‘Moses’ thanks to her role as a by the way she is “bracelated and linked with conductor of the Underground Railroad. Like metal”. The passage recalls the tortures prevailing Moses in the Bible, precisely in the Book of on plantations during slavery. The black slaves’ ill- Exodus, who freed the Hebrews from enslavement treatment is excessive that the author continues to in Egypt, Harriet Tubman has provided many black account for it through the character of Harriet slaves with freedom by taking them from the South Tubman who is profoundly shocked when she sees to the North of the United States considered by her master selling his slaves like goods: most of them as the Promised Land. It is indeed in During the lean times when I was small, when the this regard that she is called ‘Moses’. The novel is price of wheat and corn was dropping, and the based on the life of this protagonist who does not tobacco planting were commence to ruin large only embodies the whole black community because stretches of soil in Maryland, it appeared Marse Ed of the treatments inflicted on her by her white meant to get himself through by breeding and masters and mistresses, but also shows the selling off slaves instead of crops (p. 9). intertwining between history and fiction in the author’s narrative. What I find interesting in this Through this passage one understands that study is especially what this novel owes to black black slaves are considered as their masters’ slaves’ plight and how much this plight may have properties, and as such are prohibited to take any Imperial Journal of Interdisciplinary Research (IJIR) Page 1817 Imperial Journal of Interdisciplinary Research (IJIR) Vol-2, Issue-12, 2016 ISSN: 2454-1362, http://www.onlinejournal.in decision without their masters’ allowance. This what really happened to Blacks during slavery, as makes sense because slaves being properties of the historian Gates writes: their masters can be sold at any time by the latter, House servant cared for the house and they cooked as evidenced by Goodell: the meal, slaughtered the meat drove the carriages, A slave is the one who is the power of a master to and were personal servant to the master and his whom he belongs. The master may sell him; mistress of the household (Gates: 2003, 55). dispose of his person, his industry and his labor. This passage shows that being a household is He can do nothing, posses nothing nor acquire not a privilege or a good occupation, for anything, but what must belong to his master households are always slaving as they are (Goodell: 1853, 23). condemned to do the housework every day. This passage makes it clear that for white Heidish’s efforts to account for black slaves’ ill- masters, selling slaves is a legal trade. This means treatments during slavery become very evident in that for them, “it is not considered as an inhuman the passage in which she tells of black slaves who practice as viewed by Blacks who are victims of it” are deprived not only of education, but also of (Nzambi: 2016, 1055). Such ill-treatments viewed several rights: as the black slaves’ nothingness on the American All our gatherings were forbidden unless a white soil can also be seen through the following man was present. All drumming, jubilee-beating, or dialogue about the price to buy Harriet Tubman. rousing noise was forbidden. All our passes to town Obviously, the dialogue confronts Harriet or other plantations were stopped. All books, Tubman’s master who is a seller and another white tracts, and Bibles were banned from us. Anyone master who wants to buy her: teaching a slave to read would be jailed. Any pair Well, here she is, name your price. of slaves congregating would be lashed. The door Why, she’s not worth a six pence, was wrenched off the privy. The fields were you must be plumb crazy, Edward. watched. The roads were watched. We were She’s so weak and scrawny. watched, wherever we were, whatever we did (p. I wouldn’t think of buying her. […] 35). Your price, sir? This passage evidences the Whites’ urge to She was one of the strongest keep black people in a total ignorance of wenches I had before this intellectual notions, as a way to keep them inferior unfortunate mishap and will be again (pp. 42-43). to them. It is indeed with regard to this aim that The utterance “she’s so weak and scrawny” Frederick Douglass, a former slave recalls the way shows that Harriet Tubman is a slave who cannot his mistress’s husband reacts when he surprises his be bought the same price as those who physically wife teaching him how to read: appear stronger than her. For buyers, weak slaves If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell. A are very profitable to them, because they are unable nigger should know nothing but to obey his master to increase their production on plantations. This – to do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the kind of life experienced by black slaves during best nigger in the world… if you teach that nigger slavery pushed some of them to confess that there how to read there would be no keeping him. It was no difference to make between field slaves and would forever unfit him to be as slave. He would at household ones. For, the treatment was quite the once become unmanageable, and of no value to his same, and that there was no choice to make master. As to himself, it could do him no good, but between both kinds of slaves, as evidenced by a great deal of harm. It would make him discontent Harriet Tubman who states: and unhappy (Douglass: 1845, 49). House servant, field hand, it appeared to make no The ill-treatments inflicted on black slaves by difference which one I was after all. I brooded on their white masters who always consider them as that revelation during three more seed times, my their own properties are also evident through the body moving over the work, my mind spinning off author’s mention of the quality of food they usually on its own. I came up into early womanhood eat on the plantation: troubled, restless, but aimlessly so. (p. 36). Time and time again we used to hear Mama Rit set One understands that there is no difference folks laughing with her stories, one in especial that at all between field slaves and domestic ones, she seemed to favor. It was about a slave who told because both categories of slaves are victims of his master all the hogs on the place had died from wrongful treatments by their white masters who a sickness called Malletitis, and Old Master, take them for granted.
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