Mistress

I think what Douglas was saying when he said that slavery was hard on his mistress was that she has very mixed emotions about her views on slavery. On one hand she feels that the slaves should be educated. The other side she feels that are just part of her property. She is forced to take a side by her husband. This is what makes slavery hard for Douglas mistress.

The way in which you can tell that Douglas mistress feels about education of slavery is the way she teaches Douglas to read. She teaches him because she feels that it will help him out. There is no reason that she had for teaching him to read besides for his pleasure. In those days slaves were not taught to read. She taught him to read out of the kindness of her heart. He says that his mistress is “a kind and tender-hearted women” (148). This was in the beginning that she treated him so nice though. He says that “she treats me as she supposed one human ought to treat another” (148). He gives another example of her kindness.

Allthough as time went on she lost her qualities that made her a caring woman. She stopped having a heart and started to become part evil. Douglas says that “Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me” (148). In this section he was saying that it had changed his mistress and had caused her to go from a kind woman to an evil woman. The women lost here hart and sense of direction. Most of this loss came from her husband. He try to show her what was right and what was wrong. He helped to make her stop teaching Douglas from learning to read.

Douglas happened to be a very determined man and taught himself how to read and write. He uses the kids around to help him with this task. He then became aware of what was going on around him. He would race the kids in writing contests. This is how he learned to write. He would go learn a letter or two then race with letter he did not know and that was how he learned.

The mistress heart is very flaky. She was easily moved from one extreme to the other on an issue. This is why Douglas says that was hard on his mistress. He could see the way in which she had changed. She was moved by the social norm of that time. She did not stand up for what she believed in. She had a very hard decision to go with her husband or to go with her morals.