Difference between revisions of "329-2010--Week 6 Questions/Comments"
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The Fitzhugh reading, which is the pro-slavery argument, contradicts certain points that Dr. McClurken made in class. It said that African American women did not have to do much work and that the slaves only worked about nine hour days. Dr. McClurken taught that slaves worked about 15 hours a day, and the women either were in the kitchens and houses or were doing field work. The Carl Schurz reading describes the end of the war and the circumstances people found themselves in. The planters, who used to be thought of as the elite, were now in poverty and participating in menial labor in order to survive. This appears in the movie when Scarlett and her family are picking cotton in the field in order to earn money to get food. It was also interesting to see that some of the former slaves who were in the O’Hara household could not perform certain tasks, for example, tying up the cow. One of the African Americans actually told Scarlett that they were domestic servants and had no experience with livestock. Prissy also did not seem to have many talents when it came to housekeeping. I’m not quite sure how accurate that is. I know Deborah mentioned that its inaccurate that Prissy had no knowledge of “birthin’ babies.”-Samantha W. | The Fitzhugh reading, which is the pro-slavery argument, contradicts certain points that Dr. McClurken made in class. It said that African American women did not have to do much work and that the slaves only worked about nine hour days. Dr. McClurken taught that slaves worked about 15 hours a day, and the women either were in the kitchens and houses or were doing field work. The Carl Schurz reading describes the end of the war and the circumstances people found themselves in. The planters, who used to be thought of as the elite, were now in poverty and participating in menial labor in order to survive. This appears in the movie when Scarlett and her family are picking cotton in the field in order to earn money to get food. It was also interesting to see that some of the former slaves who were in the O’Hara household could not perform certain tasks, for example, tying up the cow. One of the African Americans actually told Scarlett that they were domestic servants and had no experience with livestock. Prissy also did not seem to have many talents when it came to housekeeping. I’m not quite sure how accurate that is. I know Deborah mentioned that its inaccurate that Prissy had no knowledge of “birthin’ babies.”-Samantha W. | ||
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| + | Because so much of Gone with the Wind actually takes place after the war is over, its imagining of Reconstruction is important. Scarlett returns home to a Tara that is "not only conquered in a political and military sense, but economically ruined" as Carl Shurz describes the post-war South. Scarlett, for some inexplicably reason, still had some of her former slaves to help rebuild Tara, but most Southerners had to learn how to restructure their entire way of doing things. Scarlett fits in with the all of the Southerners who "must do something, honest or dishonest, and must do it soon, to make a living." That sense of economic desperation makes Scarlett's decision to marry Mr. Kennedy and her drive to make money by any means possible seem relatively realistic. -Mary Ann | ||
== Questions asked in class == | == Questions asked in class == | ||
