Mary Prince mentions earlier in the text of having Saint Anthony’s fire on her left leg leaving her almost a cripple. Not only suffering from a skin infection, Mary Prince also develops Rheumatism which is a debilitating disorder that effects the joints of the body. Although a cripple, Mary Prince was still forced to work and beaten. This makes the reader wonder what other infections, diseases, and sufferings Mary Prince had been through which the text has not included.
Furthermore, her willpower to continue on and her tenacity to be free is incomparable to most. The thoughts that were running through her mind that kept her going through all this pain. How was Mary Prince able to convince herself to not give up and see the light at the end of the tunnel? All those sleepless nights and hopelessness and she was still able to find strength and pull through. It’ll come a time when we have a “bad day” and think of Mary Prince. Our worst day is a good day for Mary Prince.

It was empowering to hear when Mary stood up to master D. While reading the History of Mary prince in the sense I was longing to hear about a slave standing up to a master. Also I couldn’t imagine earning 20 cents a day for the amount of labor that Mary what endure. Now to hear that the $2.25 that she would make a week would go directly to the master is also one of the moment that pissed me off. Another part that was significant was when Mr. D have the gaul to saw that Mary could not be sold any master that would miss treat her. This was a moment of confusion because of the way he treated her and was concerned about how she was going to be treated by another master. Do Mr. D actually have a soft spot for Mary. I think not. !!!!!

The part that I found most interesting was when Mary Prince went to England with her master and mistress, at that point she was suffering heavily with her rheumatism but they payed no mind to it. They thought she was lying and being lazy, which was obviously not true. They forced her to do tasks that she could not do and her owners asked her to leave the house for the third time, and she did as they asked. She left them and never came back but what was odd is that they didn’t actually want her to leave and never gave her freedom. She was technically a free woman in England but not in her native place and she wanted that. They tried to persuade her owners to give her freedom, they even offered them a big amount of money but still they did not give in. They didn’t love her or anything of that matter, so why didn’t they just take the money and let her go? That shows that they wanted to toy with her mentally and make the rest of her life insufferable.

In the beginning of the story Mary was working for Mrs. Williams who was said to be “a kind-hearted good women and she treated all her slaves well”. Mrs. Williams had a daughter named Betsey for which Mary was purchased for. Mary stated that Betsey made a pet out of her and call her (Mary) little nigger, which Mary said “was the happiest period of her life”. Reading that made me notice that Mary was not at the right age to understand the situation she was in (slavery). Later on in the story Mrs. Williams died which not only made Mary grief but all of her Mrs. Williams slaves grief, as all of the slaves cried. I found this part of the story interesting because of all the slave or slavery related book I have read I never heard or readied about slaves crying for their dead mistress or master.

In many moments in the text, Mary Prince and the slaves are often described as cattle or sheep and the owners or masters as the butchers. The floggings would involve a slave tied up from the wrists similar to an animal at a butcher shop where cattle are hung from the ceilings. This gives the reader a very graphic detail of how the slaves were treated and beaten. This also occurred at auctions when the slaves were sold off like cattle. They were naked and forced to rotate all around to be examined and sold off to the highest bidder. Mary Prince states that it wasn’t going from one master to another when she was sold off but going from one butcher to another. These personal experiences and descriptive details show a first person view of how the slaves were treated worse than the cattle and pigs on the farm.

The sheer determination Mary possesses stuck out to me in the beginning of the reading. While other slaves had some time to I guess rest for a couple of hours she would go out and do extra work for small payments in hopes of accumulating enough one day to buy her own freedom. Even though she saved a lot of money and even found herself a husband and people to assist her with her savings, her master wouldn’t budge and shut down all offers to sell her. While a free woman in England her wishes to be free and get back with her husband were still denied even though she had help from a group known as the Anti-Slavery Society. Through out all the attempts to return back a free woman to be with her husband Mr.Woods would turn them down even though he was offered a pretty large sum of cash. All in all Mary’s resilience is amazing and I found it funny how she told her husband that if he wanted to marry her he would have to come to church with her. It just shows how strong she is and even though the odds are against her somethings must get done her way.

Story started off kind and heart warming especially for that period in time, in which the most horrendous things were going on. The narrator begins speaking about running along with Betsey holding hands and being so innocent and full of life to not understand the true meaning of the words Betsey would say as they ran around. Sadly though she had to be sold off and this is when I figured all the horrible stuff you usually hear about attached to slavery, would become her life. Mary was very fortunate though to be sent to a new home in which the owners were very kind to her as well. She got to care for a baby child there and was very fond of the family and they liked her as well. Unfortunately they couldn’t afford to keep her and she was sold off, again, which pained her even more because she was becoming well attached to this new family and they just got yanked away from her. Most stories and details that come to a person’s mind when they think about slavery is the whippings and the beatings. Mary’s story though starts off in a joyful sort of mood and leaves you gasping every time you hear of her being sold off. Its so heart warming to see a slave story start off in such a good mood but then all those good feelings are pulled right out of you just like Mary was from her homes. Makes you feel the emotional pain she felt after being in basically heaven. This pain and sorrow can be seen even with Betsey surprisingly a white woman who “owned” Mary and is now tearing because of this. It makes me wonder whether Mary’s emotional pain surpassed her physical pain and whether the thoughts of the emotional pain would linger during beatings to sort off, cushion the blow.

What I have gathered from this read so far, Mary started working for Mr. and Mrs. Wood in Antigua. Upon this time Mary suffered from an illness called rheumatism. This illness left her quite crippled to the point where she had to start walking with a stick. Although she suffer from rheumatism it was still expected of her daily duties (this sure could not have been easy for her). Later on in the story she met a man named Daniel James. James was a carpenter and cooper, he also was a slave who brought his freedom. In 1826 Mary and Daniel had gotten married and while the two were happy Mr. and Mrs. Wood were enraged by the them getting married. At this point in the story I started to become angry because of the way Mrs. Wood treated Mary after she found out she (Mary) had gotten was married. I mean beating Mary because she got married was uncalled for and throughout the story you can see Mrs. Wood mistreating Mary only for the fact she had gotten married.

The interesting  point I found while reading the text was on the bottom half of page 21 when Mary explain that she got sick with Rheumatism. Now I know that she must have been in a lot of pain because the illness affects the joints and causes them to become very painful. She explains that she could not do much work though it was still require of her. It puts it all into perspective, with me being a nursing student and learning about the condition that she is speaking of I am aware that she needed rest especially in the times when she had flare ups of the joints that’s the time she needed to rest. She was not able to do that because of her masters demands and obligations she had to fulfill.

I found this interesting because they put her out into a little old house and though she cried it wasn’t her master that turned to her aid. It’s as if they didn’t cared it she died all they wanted was for her to keep working regardless  the condition she was in. She fought to do her best and even had to speak up for herself about the bad treatment she was receiving. I am inspired by her strength though I never wish that anyone else would ever have to go through anything like this.

                              History of Mary prince (pg.1-19)

In the beginning of the book the author expresses how happy she, was being owned by her master miss Betsey, who treated her almost like a sister, and being able to spend time with her mother and her other siblings. We also see how deeply they all felt for each other when her and her siblings was being sold to new owners; not only them as relatives, but also compassion from the other slaves in the yard. These two instances are important to me because I feel that they have a huge impact on the authors point that; despite the fact that they were viewed as commodities by their owners they didn’t think of themselves in that manner, as they were capable of showing affection towards each other as well as draw strength from the love they had for each other. We see this when the author’s father brought her back to her master after she had ran away, and he told the master that she ran away because she was being ill-treated, while in the same breathe pleading to him not to punish her for running away. She saw how much her dad cared for her which then gave her the strength to stand up and somewhat voice her opinion.