The History of Mary Prince

I can’t say that The History of Mary Prince was good since it is a slave narrative so it was not happy, but I thought that it was good at telling what happened to Mary during that time. Since the narrative tells of her life and how she was treated as a slave, which in a way, represents how all slaves were treated. Even though Strickland shaped it in her favor I honestly do not think that altering Mary’s history was such a bad thing, since they wanted to use the narrative to achieve a greater purpose. If Strickland omitted important information that Mary strictly wanted others to know then I would see a problem.    

Since slavery was not a happy circumstance I feel bad for what Mary, Aston, and all of the other slaves had to go through it. The only time that I was happy for Mary was in the beginning when she was friends with Miss Betsy and Betsy mother was also kind to Mary and her family. I honestly can’t imagine working that hard every day and getting reprimanded for simple things that were not even my fault.

All throughout this time the British expressed the need for power and control over everyone around them, like we discussed in class. Even though this is minor, the Woods even changed Mary’s name to Molly Wood since they probably thought that it was the most appropriate. In a way I think that the British appeared very useless in the history, but I am not if that was Strickland’s or Mary’s doing. Anyways whether who expressed it does not matter since they were useless anyways since the slaves did all the work for them. I really do wonder if any of them contributed to doing anything at that time. I wonder if not wanting to let go of Mary in England had anything to do with not wanting to do things themselves until they could hire someone else to do it. I also noticed that throughout the piece Mary often said how ashamed she felt by what she had to do, but I do not see how it was her fault that she was forced do those things in order to not be punished.

Discussion Questions:

 Do you think that the reason the British wanted to control everything was because, without control they would feel weak and helpless and they wanted to be superior over everyone else?

When Mr. Wood wrote to Mr. D asking if Mary Prince could be sold, why do you think Mr. D replied back that he did not want Mary to be sold off to someone who would treat her badly, even though he treated her horribly?