Presentation Blog

The article I read was Crafting Social Infanticide on The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point and Aurora Leigh by Sarah H. Ficke. In this article I mainly focused on the use of infanticide in literature and then how that use in literature shows through in the poem The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point. Infanticide is defined as the crime of killing a child within a year of birth. This is something that is not only a crime and taboo in societies, but a tactic that writers used to utilize audience’s emotions through their writing.

The article starts to discuss the use of infanticide in British literature. The use was to discuss infanticide being the evidence that the legal system was failing so greatly that this was the outcome. Many British authors used the thought of shame that was used in society to show how desperate women felt in society leading them to the desperation of infanticide. The article talked about how the Poor Law Act of 1834 was a very important part of the government regarding the use of infanticide in literature. This act made things even harder for women with child out of wedlock than they already had previously. This set a very big impact on authors to share the side of desperation of these women creating the side of sympathy rather than judgment. This is one side that Elizabeth Barrett Browning uses in her writing.

Another way that infanticide is used in literature is in American literature. This side is changed from the British use because it discusses more of the side of a slave that commits infanticide. This changed a greater perspective of a slave as a whole. The way that authors changed the slave into a person and a mother the audience gains a further understanding of the woman and her use of infanticide. The articles find very good focus of slaves losing their right to be maternal. This lose makes it so that the sympathy is yet again found between the audience and the mother. Being able to relate to what life they have been forced into makes the sympathy easier to find because it is now seen that there is no other way to turn to.

Barrett Browning discusses infanticide in her poem The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point and does it in a new way. The author in the article discusses the use of the slave being the narrator in the poem. Giving this full view from a slave mother committing infanticide changed the way that this writing was done at this time. This gave the inside eye and created a new kind of sympathy that women felt was their only way to deal with this birth of the child. Barrett Browning’s way of creating this inside look of a fight within a woman to never want her child to experience the life a slavery and feeling there was only one way around this makes an audience feel the desperation. The author of the article discusses that Barrett Browning might have been also discussing the idea of these women going mad. However this was something that Barrett Browning refuted; however, it can almost go hand in hand with the sympathy. Even if this was not the idea that Barrett Browning was trying to discuss it can help her idea of sympathy because it drove the woman that far into this desperation. Whether the reader sees the madness or the desperation sympathy for the slave is created overall.