In eight pages the views of several characters featured in the novel are discussed in this analysis of slavery ideology and practice in the American South.
Name of Research Paper File: JL5_JLstowe.rtf
Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
the grounds that most people were more likely to sleep through a sermon than take note of it, and therefore a dramatic, or indeed melodramatic, telling of a narrative would
be more effective in sparking public feeling against something that she felt was immoral and counter-productive towards the American way of life as a whole.
However, she acknowledged that there were strong economic arguments in favour of slavery: something which
could not be challenged given the way that the plantation structure operated. Highly labour-intensive plantations such as those in the South could not function without a large labour force, and
there were various reasons why this was not possible with a solely white work-force. In the first place, since immigration to the New World was still in its fairly early
stages, there were simply not enough people to form a viable labour pool: at the same time, whites were unaccustomed to the kinds of illness and disease which were endemic
in the new country, having built up no immunities to them. Had it not been for the black workforce, which was self-sustaining and self-replenishing, the plantations would have failed very
quickly. It is true that in some of the Northern settlements, plantation managers preferred to use white indentured servants rather than black slaves: this was, however, also a matter of
economics. Conditions in both areas of settlement were harsh, and if an indentured servant died the
plantation owner had only lost what was in effect the rental of labour: slaves were expensive and there was a much more sizeable financial loss if they died. However, later