Money’s Influence in Enslavement Ellen Cragin and Ellen Betts lived polar opposite lives as enslaved women in Mississippi and Louisiana, respectively. When Cragin was interviewed in 1939, around age eighty, she described her experience as a difficult and abusive time, which is exactly what one would have in mind when thinking about slavery. However, not all slave owners treated their slaves like animals. Ellen Betts had a different interpretation of her enslavement. Betts was eighty-four at the time of her WPA interview in 1937. She reflected on her time as an enslaved young woman with gratitude. The distinction between these two women’s narrations show the spectrum of slave treatment in the late 19th century. Nevertheless, the primary reason
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She would beat the other enslaved children if they said something she didn’t like, and she also threatened to shoot the slaveholders if they whipped her mother. She had no authority to show her affection during her upbringing. This can even be noticed during her interview. The interviewer writes that Cragin is “barely hanging on to the thread of life without a thrill or a passion.” (Cragin 8.) After being shown no love as a child, it is hard to imagine that one would show much passion as an elderly woman with no money living in a single …show more content…
In Ellen Cragin’s interview, she is very forthright in her realization that she and her fellow slaves were merely accessories on the Polk plantation. Conflictingly, Ellen Betts does not seem to detect William Tolas’s intentions. It is easy to see that the way these women were treated has influenced their adulthood. Ellen Cragin, after being treated awfully her entire childhood, is living with little enthusiasm, as the interviewer describes. Ellen Betts is living comfortably with friends, surrounded by support. These two women are proof that slaveholders were not all alike - some cared for their slaves to an extent, and others did not. But no matter how they acted, there was always one thing on their mind: an
She would beat the other enslaved children if they said something she didn’t like, and she also threatened to shoot the slaveholders if they whipped her mother. She had no authority to show her affection during her upbringing. This can even be noticed during her interview. The interviewer writes that Cragin is “barely hanging on to the thread of life without a thrill or a passion.” (Cragin 8.) After being shown no love as a child, it is hard to imagine that one would show much passion as an elderly woman with no money living in a single …show more content…
In Ellen Cragin’s interview, she is very forthright in her realization that she and her fellow slaves were merely accessories on the Polk plantation. Conflictingly, Ellen Betts does not seem to detect William Tolas’s intentions. It is easy to see that the way these women were treated has influenced their adulthood. Ellen Cragin, after being treated awfully her entire childhood, is living with little enthusiasm, as the interviewer describes. Ellen Betts is living comfortably with friends, surrounded by support. These two women are proof that slaveholders were not all alike - some cared for their slaves to an extent, and others did not. But no matter how they acted, there was always one thing on their mind: an