A Mother's Pain

In an article from William Wells Brown called Another Kidnapping he expresses the feeling of a mother's love for her lost child. In the story a man is traveling to Ohio and is passing through Georgetown when he notices a gathering of people on the streets and they are talking as if something had just happened. The narrator learns that last night a group of five or six men broke into a house of a colored man, beat the man and the wife and took their fourteen year old boy. It became apparent to the narrator that the village of neighbors had tried to get the child back but it was no use since the men had already crossed the Mississippi into Virginia.

The character in this story that I would like to take the most note of is the mother. This story is short and although she is only briefly mentioned, I believe she holds the most impacts. When the men come to tell her that her child has been lost forever the mother says the only dialogue in the whole story. "Oh, my boy! oh, my boy! I want to see my child!" (Brown p442) The words she says are not only meaningful within themselves, but what is more expressive than the words is the fact they are the only dialogue in the story. The only words this author thought worth while to quote were the ones from the mother, bleeding both in heart and from physical abuse from the intruder. The amount of a women's love for her child and then to have that feeling of losing their child brought the author to add only these words.

The mother in this story related almost directly to Eliza Harris in Uncle Tom's Cabin. In Uncle Tom's Cabin, Stowe has a very distinct perception of motherhood and when reading Another Kidnapping it is apparent she is not the only one that shares that view point. When reading Stowe's writing the halo she put mothers in seems to be almost too surreal until I read another author's view point. Maybe this love for a child is more powerful than I originally thought. Stowe writes, "But stronger than all was maternal love." (Stowe p 45) In this quotation Eliza Harris is running away with her child before he is to be sold and with powers she never knew she had before she escapes into the night. "She [Eliza Harris] wondered within herself at the strength that seemed to be come upon her." (Stowe p 45) Stowe makes is known that the power Eliza possess in the story is nothing "supernatural", but one that rears forth with the natural love that comes with bearing a child. Within the whole text of Uncle Tom's Cabin the women are the only ones that hold this meaningful characteristic love.

Brown, William Wells "Another Kidnapping"
Uncle Tom's Cabin Critical Edition
Ed Elizabeth Ammons
NY: Norton 2012 532 539

Stowe, Harriet Beecher "Uncle Tom's Cabin"
Uncle Tom's Cabin Critical Edition
Ed Elizabeth Ammons
NY: Norton 2012 532 539