Analysis

Northup’s experience as a slave seems to have heightened his sensitivity to the value and abilities of women. For example, in Chapter XI he exhibits this pre-feminist leaning with two stories. First is the story of the four “lumberwomen” who join the work clearing trees from Big Cane Break. Assigned to work side-by-side with them, Platt is deliberate about praising their abilities. They are, he says, “equal to any man,” and to prove it he lists the kinds of work they did with excellence: “They plough, drag, drive team, clear wild lands, work on the highway, and so forth.”

Next, Northup returns to the story of Eliza, the woman he met way back in Burch’s slave pen. At that time, Eliza had been a picture of health and intelligence, the mistress of her white master and mother of his daughter, Emily. But months of neglect and hardship as a slave robbed her of strength and vitality. “Old Elisha Berry would not have recognized the mother of his child,” Northup writes. In Northup’s eyes, the loss of Eliza’s feminine value in the eyes of her owners is a cause for mourning, and it is emphasized in the details he relates of her death.