Liberation or Discipline: Female Abolitionists' Interpretation of the Issue of Female Slaves
Abstract
On the topic of "Whether the discussion of female slaves under the abolitionist movement is related to women's rights", this paper analyzes a short story about female slaves written by a well-known female abolitionist Lydia Maria Child during the abolitionist movement. The paper make an brief summary of the tale and analyze it’s purpose based on Lydia’s language and description to the tragedy, and since her phrasing of the sufferings brought by the slave status of the two female characters in the story is all based on the misfortunes of love, the lack of chastity and other plots, which are still in line with the traditional requirements of patriarchy for women, so a conclusion can be draw that the description and discussion of the suffering of female slaves at that time were still based on the patriarchal discipline of women. Since the abolitionist movement was closely followed by the women's suffrage movement, the study of feminism in the abolitionist movement can help to form a more comprehensive understanding of the development of women's rights and the abolitionist movement, which is of relatively important significance, and also gave us a fuller picture of the era.
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