I find combining my needlework with audio reading is not only a lot of fun, but I'm able to finish the latter a lot more quickly! I've already got my materials set for the next embroidery project.
But before I go into those details I thought I jot down some of my thoughts on The Adventurs of Huckleberry Finn so far. I am currently in the middle of chapter 17, which means I'm still a way off from completing half the book. However, I have been given some food for thought…or questioning, rather.
I recall reading a few reviews and comments on Margaret Mitchell's depiction of the black slaves in Gone with the Wind. She is accused of showing them of as child-like, innocent, and very dependent. I've read how readers feel she should have been sensitive to the whole issue considering the time she herself wrote in. Many have argued back saying that her portrayal of the blacks during the Civil War and/or just about it is accurate to the era in which the story is set.
All this was brought to mind when reading how Twain portrays Jim. This man is portrayed as child-like too. His entire conversation with Huck about how king Solomon could not possibly have been a wise man because he meant to cut a child in half, is proof of that. I mean he reasons with the reasoning of a child — plain and simple. Huck seems to play the role of the ever-suffering adult having to keep quiet because there is simply no reasoning with a child. The roles, therefore, of adult and child seem reversed in this situation because of the black and white dynamics. While Huck obviously cares for and respects Jim for all the superstitions the latter knows, Huck unconsciously treats Jim like a thing. This becomes very obvious when he begins to feel guilty about having been the cause of perhaps setting Jim free. Jim is thrilled about landing on Cairo which means freedom for him, and the possibility of earning money to buy his wife and his children from owners other than his own. Huck begins to hyperventilate, thinking he has done wrong by his widowed protector and by all those white people who own Jim's family. He does not seem to realise that Jim has a right to his freedom and his family.
The point I'm trying to make, though, is that Mitchell seems to be spot on with her portrayal of the blacks as viewed by the whites in those times. I don't know how far the blacks really were child-like since I don't know anything about African-American history, but I suspect that lack of education could be the reason, if it were so. It sure was the same case for women when they were not allowed to be educated!
Well, I'll stop here. My head is a bit fuzzy with lack of sleep and my son's trying to get me to play some games with him. I'll just quickly leave you folk with my latest needle work.
It's called Blue Flower and I found the free chart at The Workbasket.
From the same site I downloaded another chart to what is called Berthi's Birdbath.
I love the pastel shades. Unfortunately, I definitely won't be able to replicate these colours. I don't have these threads (for the most part) and I've yet to discover a place where I can buy whatever colour thread I need. Actually, I'm currently dipping into my mother's old stock of threads. So the following image shows a glimpse of the colours I will be using. I apologise for the rather raw photography, but then it's something I've never been very good at since I've always taken pictures only out of necessity and not out of any artistic temperament. :-/
The colours are a bit bright, aren't they? I'm doing this on a creamy cloth, so I hope the colours stand out well and subtly at the same time!
That's it for now!
How are you folk getting along with your current reads and other projects?
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Huck Finn is on my reading list. I’m looking forward to it.
Love your finished needlework project! Lovely!! I pinned the birdbath to my Pinterest page a couple days ago. Good choice — and I think your thread choices will work beautifully.
Blessings, new friend.
Thank you, Adriana.
even as I’m working on the birdbath I find myself trying out various colours. I think in one section along I’ve tried three different shades of brown/beige and I’m still not happy! I’m off to try a new shade now…hopefully I’ll stick to it.
Great combination, will pin for future reference. Good to know we are not just few in the world of needlework!
True! I’m really thrilled that some of the book bloggers I follow are keen on needlework as well. I don’t believe I realised it until I started talking about it on my blog!
Jim had to adopt a child like mask as his white masters wanted that and could only deal with a slave ascan inferior. Jim knew that so he learned over decades just as many oppressed people have, to hide themselves in order to get by in a situation where Jim is largely powerless
So, what you’re saying is, that what the white people knew of the black people, were merely masks that they wanted to show their oppressors? In which case, white writers portraying the black slaves of those times wrote of only what they ‘saw’ and not what really ‘was’?
Risa-not quite what I meant. i mean that the majority of slaveowners through out history dehumaize their slaves to deal,with moral issues they would have if they saw the slaves as as human as they are. Just as the Irish developed the personality of the so called stage Irish, slaves in the American south also developed similar masks. They internalized the white’s few of them. Twain for sure knew all this. Blacks knew that speaking in long complicated sentences would get them whipped. In Jim knew that he needed to remain childish acting to survive. There is nothing racist in Twain’s work, quite the contrary.
Oh, I see! It definitely makes sense now. I can’t help thinking of women and their wiles and cunning at this point….tools they had to employ (and sometimes still do) in order to be taken seriously without seeming so.
But, does this mean that Mitchell was unaware of this? If she was would it make her work non- racist?
As to Margaret Mitchell, I honestly do not know if she should be labeled a racist or not. I loved Gone With The Wind.
I think we can say that Gone With the Wind is “pro-South” and that its narrator is racist and/or ignorant, at least, but I do not think that we can thereby call Mitchell a racist. She is not her narrator. I would need to read more about Mitchell before making a decision, but it’s dangerous to assume anything about an author if the basis for that assumption is solely their fiction.
You’re right in that. It’s just that it has been bothering me that quite a few people have been reading Gone with the Wind and labelling it racist, which has had me in a puzzle considering the historical era in which Mitchell had set her novel.
Also, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is definitely not racist. It is a bit bigoted (against white southern Christians, believe it or not), so there is a bias – just not the one most people assume and complain about. Twain, Twain, brilliant Twain!
And, what I meant to say in the first place was, I love this idea! Creating something while experiencing/pondering another’s creation… very interesting (and fun).
Yes…I’ve been more aware of the fact that Twain’s more busy attacking Christians for the their hypocrisy and what not through this novel so far.
And thanks!
it’s a good way to do two things you love at the same time! 