Essay Questions

Why did most modern English writers paint a black woman as a trope for disruptive harmony?

The colonialists have to find a way of making a black woman feel inferior so that she can think that her best role is to serve her master. The modern English writers are in the frontline to do what we call damage control to justify the actions of the white man against the black woman. They describe the black woman as fertile and whose work besides serving the master is to give birth to more slaves. They further taint her as disruptive so that she can remain loyal to her master. The author says, “Scholars of early modern England have noted the discursive place of black women: Peter Erickson calls the image of the black woman a trope for disruptive harmony.” That is not true because the same scholars have not provided any evidence to justify their assertion that Black women are disruptive. This is just a psychological mind game to demean a black woman.

Columbus describes black women as sagging to the ground. What literary device did Jennifer L. Morgan want to achieve out of this description?

Columbus is using the sagging breasts of the black woman to illustrate the shapelessness of the African continent. Morgan wants to appeal to the reader how modern English writers want to gain white supremacy by degrading the African woman and her continent. The white man wants to look superior so that he can rule and use the African woman as a slave. Therefore, through the description of the sagging breasts, Morgan can employ the use of symbols to enhance her literary works as she develops the theme of slavery.

Explain this quote from the Solitude: “Hang down below their navels, therefore when they stoop at their common work of weeding, they hang almost to the ground, that at a distance you would think they had six legs.”

This is quoted from Richard Ligon by the author to show how the Black woman is degraded and viewed by the masters. She is symbolized as an icon in producing crops and children for the benefit of her master. Besides, Ligon is using this abusive language to make the Black woman believe that she is a good for nothing being but a property of the master. Ligon equates the woman's breasts to the size of the legs when he says that she has six legs when she stoops. This quote helps the reader to have a better understanding of how an African woman is treated and viewed by the white man.